You Are Not Responsible For How I Feel

Why our modern fashion for playing the victim robs us of agency and leads to poor outcomes

Image credit: Focus on the Family

Anyone who uses United Airlines’ in-flight entertainment system and selects either a TV show or a movie will be presented with a message that says, If you think the contents of this entertainment may offend you or offend another passenger, please choose a different option.

Welcome to the wonderful world of hyper-victimhood.

The ludicrous statement on the United Airlines entertainment monitor was no doubt crafted by United’s in-house lawyers in an attempt to reduce the company’s likelihood of being sued by someone who’s been persuaded by Politically Correct babble that they are entitled to go from birth to death without ever once encountering anything that could potentially cause them even the most fractional emotional or intellectual discomfort.

This pernicious doctrine is now also prevalent throughout the US educational system and is increasingly manifesting in the educational systems of European nations that really ought to know better. Students demand “safe spaces” and reject any content that could potentially require them to grapple with the fact that the real world is unlikely to conform to their princess-and-the-pea ideas. Censorship is now liberally applied to shut down anything that any overly-precious thin-skinned lefty-trendy could possibly find even marginally objectionable. Meanwhile, over on the populist far-right, entire swathes of the curriculum are being removed because right-wing dullards likewise are unwilling to countenance anything that could be contrary to their beliefs.

In other words, although no one has yet declared the right to torture heretics, we’re back in the world of the Holy Roman Emperor’s Spanish Inquisition; burning books and excising vast realms of knowledge is now the go-to move on both sides of the political divide.

On both sides, people are clamoring to be “protected” which in reality boils down to accepting someone else’s decisions about what they can be permitted to read, think, say, and do. This is not protection; it is being imprisoned inside someone else’s tiny worldview.