We get offended faster and more efficiently than anyone. <\/strong>And it\u2019s not just our speed that separates us from the rest \u2014 it\u2019s our endurance. We have a limitless capacity for offendedness. Every week there are dozens of new national outrages and boycott campaigns and social media crusades to raise awareness about some offensive thing, or to get someone fired for saying some offensive thing, or to teach people that some previously non-offensive thing has now become offensive.<\/p>\nMost of all, I find myself positively dazzled by the dexterity and athleticism with which we get offended. We can juggle six or seven outrages all at once, and then drop them and pick up new ones in the blink of an eye.<\/p>\n
Our creativity and meticulousness are also quite notable here. We can look at any situation and extract hundreds of offensive factors that an untrained eye probably would have overlooked. We conjure up more fabricated outrages and controversies in a month than past civilizations could have mustered in a thousand years.<\/p>\n
Do you remember what everyone was super worked up about four weeks ago? Yeah, me neither. That\u2019s the point. We move on to the new outrage so quickly and the old ones are buried and forgotten. Well, whatever it was way back then, I\u2019m sure it was REALLY bad and we were REALLY upset.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s always something. We have located the Fountain of Eternal Indignation, and we drink it by the gallon.<\/p>\n
So then it is no wonder that this is the climate which has given rise to a concept called microaggressions.<\/p>\n
Have you heard about these? I was thinking about them a lot yesterday after I watched this stirring and important PSA on the subject by Andrew Klavan:<\/p>\n
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