OT -- Re: random cover of a range

[Daniel de Kok]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 4:05 PM, Anonymous Coward <anonymous at cowards.org> wrote:
>
> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> It takes a weak person to be harmed by words.
>
> Let me put it this way: if you've been picked on, put down, *hunted* by the people around you and generally treated as a sub-human piece of worthless garbage for over eight years of your life across both primary and secondary school, often with no friends or even acquaintances for years at a time and came out completely and utterly unscathed, then you are obviously a robot and won't mind when I remove your head.  Because otherwise you have NO FUCKING RIGHT to say that.

First off, I think there should be made a difference between adults
and minors here. I think adults can get harmed by words, but at a
certain point one is able to identify the mental reaction it incurs
and be able to decide to react or not to react upon it. Most minors
haven't developed the facilities to do such reflection yet, and there
words can really hurt or even have a lasting effect.

I don't think language should be restricted. An observation I make in
daily life (of course, this is not universally true) is that religious
people are usually more easily offended. When have you heard calls for
censorship when someone offended darwinism or Kant's categorical
imperatives? At the same time, it happens all the time when someone
makes a parody of something that is written in the bible or another
religious book. "Offense" means different things to different people,
and trying to limit it isn't going to help anyone.

Shouldn't we talk about D or (Belgian) beer here? :^)

Take care,
Daniel