The Snowflake Effect

The world has moved on, as Roland would say. So much has changed over my life. Most of the things that used to enrage me as a child are no longer a thing. We've gone to the moon. We have smartphones and ebooks and we're all in touch with people all over the world, pretty well all the time unless we take steps to limit our access. Gay people are out of the closet and demanding equal rights, and racism, although still prevalent, is at least something that doesn't quietly slip under the radar.

Nowhere, though, are the changes more fundamental than in the way we deal with one another. This is particularly noticeable in situations where we encounter something we don't like. Once upon a time, if we saw something of which we disapproved, we used to 'walk on by'. Perhaps we'd have a discreet little chunter to our friends, but by and large we tended just to look away when confronted with something we thought was in poor taste, or even morally reprehensible.

Nowadays, however, a common response is to go on the warpath instead. Don't like someone's outfit that you see in the street? Take a picture on your phone, upload it and shame him on social media. Disagree with something a person said in a comment? Why not spend a couple of hours insulting him and inciting your friends to attack him, too. The more the merrier! Yes, let's have a mob by all means! See someone with his dog offlead in a place that isn't a designated offlead area? Follow him and find out who he is and report him to the council. See someone at the train station in a fur coat and you disapprove of wearing fur? Yell at her until you've reduced her to tears. It's your right!

This combative instinct isn't limited to seeing unpleasant sights, either. Did someone ask you to call your dog away when it was jumping all over him in the park/ attacking his dog/ spoiling his picnic/ giving him an allergy attack? Never mind complying with the polite request. Instead, follow him around screaming abuse until he gives up and leaves. Did someone ask you to keep the noise down in the library? Harass him until he gives up and leaves. Think I'm exaggerating? I'm not. In fact, I'm speaking from personal experience. Many personal experiences, some that have happened to me, and many more that I've witnessed happening to other people.

It isn't always an aggressive frontal attack, of course. Much of the attacking I see done nowadays is of the whining variety. Oh, poor me, I saw something nasty. Boo Hoo. It's meant to enlist sympathy from bystanders, so that hopefully everyone will hate your target. This is what I call the Snowflake Effect.

Triggers

Another thing is that now we have 'triggers'. All kinds of people are claiming to be 'triggered' by all kinds of things, even things as trivial as a funny meme. Now, if you see something nasty in the woodshed, you aren't just offended or disgusted on your own turf. It's become normal to accost people and rant at them in the street or on the internet. We are, it seems, no longer tough enough to survive encountering something unpleasant in our day.

This idea of the 'trigger', borrowed from the language of psychology, has spread far and wide, and Amazon is full of books carrying 'trigger warnings'. Members of writers' groups solemnly discuss the need for such warnings, and I've even seen trigger warnings placed at the head of Facebook posts.

What is a trigger, really? It's an event that causes a powerful recall of a traumatic event in a person's past, when that person suffers from PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), a serious and debilitating psychological illness. Typically, this will result in an event called a flashback, where the patient experiences a recall of his traumatic memory that is very immediate and consuming, sometimes to the point where the person experiences himself back in the time of the traumatic events.

This is really nasty stuff. Really, really nasty. It is most commonly experienced by combat veterans and people who've gone through experiences so appalling and frightful that they are mentally scarred by it, to the extent where they have a diagnosed mental disorder. It's a serious psychological event that causes horrible suffering, and perhaps horrible behaviour as a result.

So-called 'triggers' are mostly bullshit.

My point here is that PTSD is a real illness and a very serious one that causes untold suffering, and it is in my view grossly disrespectful to its victims to appropriate the clinical language of the disease to describe the petulance of a spoilt, entitled person when seeing something he dislikes, or with which he disagrees.

Where To Draw The Line?

So where should we draw the line, when deciding whether getting involved is warranted? Personally, I think the law of the land is a good guide. Is the thing you've seen illegal? Then, depending on its severity, you may want to call police, or even intervene directly where the matter is urgent (e.g. an assault in progress).

Where it's not a matter of illegality but of offending some other set of norms (religious, moral, good taste, whatever), I think a good rule of thumb is whether you or someone else are actually being harmed. Actually. Not in your opinion, or according to your personal moral code, or anything else subjective, but right here, right now, someone is suffering actual damage. Those cases are fairly rare.

Being Offended Is Not A Head of Damage

Being offended by something, believe it or not, does not give you rights over the offender. You do not have the right to demand that others live according to your standards. Myself, I'm offended by a lot of things. Heaps and heaps. I can hardly get through a day without seeing something I consider offensive. Facial hair on women. Dreadlocks. 'Lay' used intransitively. Speedos. Little birds in cages. Pornography being marketed as 'erotic romance'. Americans grabbing their left tits when they hear their national anthem. The word 'tasty'. There's no end to it. And you know what? Almost always, I just shut my mouth, because at the end of the day it is none of my business what other people do. Well, okay, I usually do say something about intransitive 'lay'. But that's not because I'm on the moral high ground. It's more that I can't help myself.

Far be it from me to suggest that my own conduct should be viewed as any sort of universal guide. But really, haven't we gone a little too far down the path of entitlement? A right can only exist in the presence of its corresponding duty; my right not to be punched in the nose is the flip side of your duty not to punch me in the nose. They're not even corresponding, linked things - they're the same thing. Where there is no duty, there can be no right. And therefore, if it's not my duty to refrain from saying anything that someone, somewhere might not like, it's equally not your right to demand that I (or anyone else) do so. Because, after all, we're not two years old.

In Gift of Continence, a woman plots to kill her unfaithful husband.
 This is just the kind of over-the-top reaction that should be avoided in life.
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