As far as I can tell, it’s just a subset of anger, and feels identical emotionally.
The distinction is that in offence, the reason for the anger is roused from what the word or action implies about the state of mind of the offender. In most other forms of anger, the reason for the anger is roused by the direct results of the actions.
For example—if someone physically injured me or another human being or stole valuable, I would be angry, but not the offended kind of angry. The anger is because of the injury itself, and because of the loss of the stolen object.
However—if someone spat in my face, called me a liar, or claimed that some individual deserved to die, I would be offended. I don’t care about the spit on my face itself, nor do I care that the word-sounds caused vibrations in the air. The reason I am offended (angry) is because the action has indicated something about the other person’s mental state which implies that they might do something bad in the future.
The physical strike is an interesting gray area. If someone injures me, I’ll be angry. But if someone slaps me during an argument, I’d be offended—the slap doesn’t really bother me, but the intention behind the slap does hurt and signals future aggression. Same with stolen objects—I would be offended if someone I knew stole my silverware but it’s not because I’ve got one less spoon. I’d just be plain angry if they stole my laptop though, primarily because I need my laptop.
In both cases, the offending party has done something which would mark them as an “enemy”. In one case, the action cause direct harm to me. In the other case, the action indicated that they might cause direct harm to me at some point in the future. In the ancestral environment, anger would illicit the necessary behaviors in both cases.
Edit: Now that I think of it, this post might be better titled “Don’t get angry”. There is nothing particularly different between being offended and being angry, with regards to the extent to which they can cloud your epistemic rationality. However on the instrumental rationality side, if you switch off this form of emotional decision making, you will have to replace it somehow. Do you have the ability to attack something effectively without anger?
Given my definition of “offended”, do you still feel that you haven’t experienced it? Have you also never experienced anger?
I suppose you could call that offended as well, although you could also say that you are angry that they caused offense to other people. Or I guess you could be angry that they have influenced everyone’s opinion a certain way. It’s confusing because being offended doesn’t feel different from other types of anger, we just happen to have a word for anger which comes from that particular source.
I guess what I’m getting at is that being offended isn’t an emotion at all, it’s just one form of anger. The lines concerning what types of anger classify as offended are a bit blurry.
Agree.
I am offended if my customer yells and screams at my customer service for something which is not my customer service’s mistakes. I take it as a sign that whenever I’m feeling offended by my customer, they must be treating my company or my employees unfairly.
When I want to invoke it for performance reasons, I start by building up a strong sense of entitlement. “I am more important than everyone else, I am special, I am right, I deserve deference, I deserve special treatment, I deserve satisfaction at the expense of others,” that sort of thing. Then I look at the things in my environment that violate that sense of entitlement. Offense (or outrage, if I make the differential high enough) follows naturally for me.
Let the conflict between those two things continue to build up and manifest as a negative emotion directed at the person who stated that it is not true.
An example of imagining that something is true is having the idea that things ought to be a certain way, such as thinking that people ought to be not racist. Observe that people are racist. Continue to think that people ought to be not racist. Hear someone be racist.
The difference between taking offense and being angry is that taking offense is when anger is directed at a concept.
It’s okay to be angry at a racist for doing racist things, but it’s a bad idea to be angry at the concept of racism.
Your bullet-points example doesn’t appear to match your paragraph example. “Think people ought not to be racist; observe that they are” is different from “Imagine something is true; observe that it is not.” I can imagine that people ought not be racist (they shouldn’t) but be aware that they are. Then when I observe someone being racist, there’s no conflict between my beliefs and reality. Instead, there’s a conflict between reality and how I think reality ought to be, which I attempt to resolve by calling the racist out in the hope that they’ll behave better next time.
Note that the above says nothing about whether or not I should call out the racist, just that I think epigeios’ example is bad. Also I agree that it’s a bad idea to be angry at concepts rather than the people who believe them.
Does anyone know how to get offended? I have never experienced the emotion and am interested to know what it feels like.
As far as I can tell, it’s just a subset of anger, and feels identical emotionally.
The distinction is that in offence, the reason for the anger is roused from what the word or action implies about the state of mind of the offender. In most other forms of anger, the reason for the anger is roused by the direct results of the actions.
For example—if someone physically injured me or another human being or stole valuable, I would be angry, but not the offended kind of angry. The anger is because of the injury itself, and because of the loss of the stolen object.
However—if someone spat in my face, called me a liar, or claimed that some individual deserved to die, I would be offended. I don’t care about the spit on my face itself, nor do I care that the word-sounds caused vibrations in the air. The reason I am offended (angry) is because the action has indicated something about the other person’s mental state which implies that they might do something bad in the future.
The physical strike is an interesting gray area. If someone injures me, I’ll be angry. But if someone slaps me during an argument, I’d be offended—the slap doesn’t really bother me, but the intention behind the slap does hurt and signals future aggression. Same with stolen objects—I would be offended if someone I knew stole my silverware but it’s not because I’ve got one less spoon. I’d just be plain angry if they stole my laptop though, primarily because I need my laptop.
In both cases, the offending party has done something which would mark them as an “enemy”. In one case, the action cause direct harm to me. In the other case, the action indicated that they might cause direct harm to me at some point in the future. In the ancestral environment, anger would illicit the necessary behaviors in both cases.
Edit: Now that I think of it, this post might be better titled “Don’t get angry”. There is nothing particularly different between being offended and being angry, with regards to the extent to which they can cloud your epistemic rationality. However on the instrumental rationality side, if you switch off this form of emotional decision making, you will have to replace it somehow. Do you have the ability to attack something effectively without anger?
Given my definition of “offended”, do you still feel that you haven’t experienced it? Have you also never experienced anger?
Sometimes. Often more relevant are the social implications of someone saying or doing what they do in front of the observers.
I suppose you could call that offended as well, although you could also say that you are angry that they caused offense to other people. Or I guess you could be angry that they have influenced everyone’s opinion a certain way. It’s confusing because being offended doesn’t feel different from other types of anger, we just happen to have a word for anger which comes from that particular source.
I guess what I’m getting at is that being offended isn’t an emotion at all, it’s just one form of anger. The lines concerning what types of anger classify as offended are a bit blurry.
Agree. I am offended if my customer yells and screams at my customer service for something which is not my customer service’s mistakes. I take it as a sign that whenever I’m feeling offended by my customer, they must be treating my company or my employees unfairly.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/raid-of-the-day ← Try these. The righteous anger/indignation you may or may not experience is, AFAIK, the same thing, it’s just labeled differently.
When I want to invoke it for performance reasons, I start by building up a strong sense of entitlement. “I am more important than everyone else, I am special, I am right, I deserve deference, I deserve special treatment, I deserve satisfaction at the expense of others,” that sort of thing. Then I look at the things in my environment that violate that sense of entitlement. Offense (or outrage, if I make the differential high enough) follows naturally for me.
Imagine that something is true.
Observe that it is not true.
Keep imagining it is true.
Listen to someone state that it is not true.
Let the conflict between those two things continue to build up and manifest as a negative emotion directed at the person who stated that it is not true.
An example of imagining that something is true is having the idea that things ought to be a certain way, such as thinking that people ought to be not racist. Observe that people are racist. Continue to think that people ought to be not racist. Hear someone be racist.
The difference between taking offense and being angry is that taking offense is when anger is directed at a concept. It’s okay to be angry at a racist for doing racist things, but it’s a bad idea to be angry at the concept of racism.
Your bullet-points example doesn’t appear to match your paragraph example. “Think people ought not to be racist; observe that they are” is different from “Imagine something is true; observe that it is not.” I can imagine that people ought not be racist (they shouldn’t) but be aware that they are. Then when I observe someone being racist, there’s no conflict between my beliefs and reality. Instead, there’s a conflict between reality and how I think reality ought to be, which I attempt to resolve by calling the racist out in the hope that they’ll behave better next time.
Note that the above says nothing about whether or not I should call out the racist, just that I think epigeios’ example is bad. Also I agree that it’s a bad idea to be angry at concepts rather than the people who believe them.