31 May The opposite of offense being not more offense, but laughter (LOU MARINOFF)
Whether or not they are frequent or intense enough to be harmful, the world is full of provocations. The only part of this scenario you can reliably control is your response.
How you respond to proffered offenses depends on your experience of life as well as your attitudes and habits, which in turn depend on your philosophy. If your current modus operandi isn’t working for you, the philosophy you are living by may need a tune-up.
By changing your philosophy, then, you can also change the way you respond to provocation. You can even diminish the likelihood that others will attempt to provoke you.
Responses to offense vary across a broad spectrum, from culture to culture and from person to person.
The worst option is violence, which “pays back” offense with harm. Another option is tit-for-tat: exchanging insult for insult.
You can also use humor to defuse the situation.
You can be cynical or caustic, retaliating in a way that often goes right over the head of your offender.
Too many people have failed to learn to defend themselves against proffered offense, and they seem to exist in a perpetual state of being offended, or are at least constantly prepared to be offended. A lot of them appear utterly humorless. Many do not love themselves or the world very much. They experience continuous disease. Instead of becoming happy themselves, they want happy people to share their disease.
So they invent rules for controlling what people are allowed to say and even think, with a constant eye on not allowing anyone to offend anyone else, thereby protecting (they think) themselves as well. Ultimately this creates a counterproductive system that not only interferes with personal liberty, but also inhibits free-flowing love of life and the healing nature of humor. It’s essentially a Soviet-style system, with centrally planned thinking rather than a centrally planned economy.
Only one thing is certain about this system: It produces more disease than ease for all concerned.
It is wiser for you to deflect trifles, perhaps subtly turning the tables in the process.
My favorite example of this kind involves the conductor Herbert von Karajan. One day Karajan was walking briskly along a downtown city street, and another man was walking just as briskly along an intersecting street. They were on a collision course, but were unable to see one another approaching because a large corner office building obstructed their views. They literally collided at the corner, and both of them bounced back at the shock and surprise of the collision.
“Imbecile!” exclaimed the man to Karajan.
At this, Karajan simply doffed his hat as if in greeting and replied, “Karajan.”
This anecdote illustrates an intermediate level of moral self-defense.
I call it “social judo” when I teach it in workshops.
Instead of taking offense and retaliating by similar name-calling or worse, Karajan did two surprising things.
First, he reflected the intended offense back to the offender. As if he were a duck shedding water, it never actually touched him.
Second, he transmuted a potential quarrel into a humorous episode – the opposite of offense being not more offense, but laughter.
People who can laugh at themselves, and make others laugh, are not only happier in general but are also much more difficult to offend.
Now if Karajan were called an “imbecile” on a regular basis, everywhere he went, he would sooner or later tire of doffing his hat, because the continuous stream of offense would wear down even his capacity to defend himself. But as it stood, he struck just the right chord.
That’s hardly surprising for a great conductor, but you can do it too.
The Big Questions: How Philosophy Can Change Your Life
Lou Marinoff
