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ok. yes. we should certainly be cognisant that unless we are careful, our message might be not be received in the spirit that it was intended. and I am certainl

ok. yes. we should certainly be cognisant that unless we are careful, our message might be not be received in the spirit that it was intended. and I am certainly running the risk of being dismissed out of hand by saying something that is unnecessarily offensive. but these are pragmatic matters for people who are actually trying to proselytize. I fundamentally disagree that the speaker is somehow morally responsible to not violate the listeners preconceptions - that undermines the greatest tool we have as a society.

solatic 5y ago
If you are not trying to persuade the other person, if you are only trying to describe, as non-judgementally and as objectively as possible, some context or situation, then you can't offend anybody. This is an axiom of Nonviolent Communication. If you do end up offending somebody, it's because you veered away from the objective and started to put your subjective viewpoint into it. If you're describing your subjective viewpoint to another person, you're either looking to persuade them or to feel better about yourself (i.e. seeking empathy).