I have grown exceedingly tired of people telling me to “not make waves”, to “keep the peace”, to essentially pretend that everything is OK just so to not offend. To lie about something to prevent conflict. This is essentially what is at the root of Political Correctness, is it not? To deconstruct language to a point that you can hopefully word things in such a way as to not offend people. It fails at that, spectacularly, and all it really does is confuse the language and make communication impossible.
But beyond political correctness, it is frustrating to go to some, for example, family event and everyone skirts around any subjects that could be confrontational or possibly offend. Everyone gives a fake smile and pretends they all get along, regardless of convictions. When two people with differing beliefs do this, it makes what they believe in seem secondary to the ever-needed “peace“.
But is it truly peace? Is completely avoiding confrontation such a high ethical power that you can’t say anything of value? If I speak up in a group mostly of Atheists, and state that Biblical Creation is true, am I being unduly confrontational, or am I simply stating a truth that I believe in and refusing to compromise my ideals for this pervasive “peace“? Am I being peaceful by not stating the truth at the correct time, or am I being cowardly?
I have decided, and am getting more and more in the mindset of simply stating what is true, as I know it to be true. For years, I have stopped caring if people get offended by what I say — the truth is often quite offensive to people. And I have messed things up some times, and needed correction, because what I had thought was true actually wasn’t. But that doesn’t stop the conviction, or the confidence in speaking what I believe to be true. Unashamedly speaking it without doubt or fear. After all, what can people do to me? Not much, really.