How the universe works

Source: Facebook, with thanks to Clementine Ford

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Why isn’t she pushing him off a cliff?

I’m going to regret this but didn’t someone say nobody has the right not to be offended?
Or is that missing the point?

Slightly. The last bit “Your offense is YOUR problem (and not the speaker’s),” is important. I don’t much want to live in a world where people give no thought or consideration to the people around them, do you? More than that though this is mostly about the perpetual confusion of ‘freedom of speech’ with ‘freedom to push my opinions wherever *I* want to’. It’s not explicit in the comic that this is what this gent is talking about, but it will be apparent to anyone with experience of this brand of commenter among my target audience. If you don’t identify with that, that is genuinely totally okay.

Relieved.

Gratuitous offense is itself offensive. Careless offensiveness needs gentle correction. Thoughtless offensiveness needs education. Provocative offensiveness can make one think.

Sadly, sometimes all forms of offense are grouped together and treated the same.

As for “freedom of speech” (regardless of the obligations required for all rights), I really enjoyed Stanley Fish’s The Trouble with Principle. Enlightening.

Silence is implicit assent.

Is that why you comment on every single comic? 😉

Not every one, but I do find many worth commenting on.

I’m amused at how he shut her down by saying that it’s wrong to shut people down. Her silence is pointed, but still silence, and so maybe not the best retort to his double-bind.
It’s certainly mockable. How the “universe” works? Neither spiral galaxies, nor subatomic particles, nor even your cat, will bother to blame you for your opinion of them.

Sometimes you’re just too tired to argue with idiots.

Get some rest, have courage, speak up, and win.

Poor paradoctor. He has a condition that makes him unable to read facial expressions, so when someone looks at him like he just dropped trou and shat on their carpet, he assumes they agree with what he said because they didn’t say anything.

This is the Web. There are no faces, only text.

The absence of resistance should not be taken for consent.

Oh my God, he knows how the Universe works! Pretentious schmuck!