The other night I was out with some friends, and after some conversation someone half-jokingly accused me of having "no filter" when it comes to speaking my mind. Over the past few days, I've taken some time to think about this accusation and have come to the following conclusion:
Saying I have "no filter" is a bit of an oversimplification and inaccurate, right? I mean, I certainly know how to filter my speech when I'm around adults, children, clients, and strangers. I do this on a regular basis. It's not like I get off on being blunt to everyone around me despite the consequences. I'm not reckless, at least not for the most part...
If I COULD be accused of being reckless, it would be around people with whom I feel I share many general sensibilities but perhaps have too quickly judged as such. See, I think my problem is not that I lack a filter, but rather that I inaccurately judge how far I can go with people who seem to be similar to me in terms of political/social ideas. I guess that when put in a group of seemingly open-minded people, I have a tendency to assume there's no way I can offend them, and therefore then let my filter down.
I think this whole theory makes a bit more sense when you understand that I tend to base the quality of a conversation on how honest everyone is allowed to be, or inversely, how little sway cultural taboos have in steering the conversation's course. I suppose I just hope everyone that I open up to is comfortable with and accepting of all lines of critical thinking (or joking, which ends up happening a lot when my best friends are around), so therefore they won't get offended easily. Granted, this doesn't include personal insults, which I think are generally always best avoided in public situations.
So, I suppose if I want to avoid having people think I'm insensitive, obnoxious, and generally too blunt, I should spend a bit more time getting to know them first before making statements that time would have warned me would offend them. Granted, this does go a good bit against my heart-on-sleeve and freedom-of-speech-at-all-costs tendencies, but there is probably some safer gray area for me to shoot for that's not entirely censored or blunt.
The bottom line is that I never intend to offend people. At worst, I'm just trying to push the boundaries of acceptable speech so that we're all a little freer to speak what's on our mind. And that's not so bad, is it? Words are just words, after all. The intent is what hurts, and mine is (usually) not malicious. Perhaps then, I should be offended that everyone else assumes I have a negative intent in mind when I say what I will? Probably not, but it's worth pondering...
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2 comments:
I think this is a good example of a cultural difference! ;-) I think the North East of the US is comparable with Northern European "directness" while the South of the US can be rather "British" in terms of what's socially acceptable to say or not say. I'm curious what you think about it in these terms...
I tend to agree with this, although I generally think Europeans as a whole (with the likely exception of the British) are much more prone to direct conversation than we are here in the States, at least in the South.
Do you really feel that Northern Europeans are that much more direct than Italians, Spaniards (is that still a correct term?), and Greeks, to name a few? Surely the Dutch, French, Polish, and Russians are known for being direct, but what about Scandinavians?
To be fair, my experience with these people groups is limited to how many exchange students from their respective countries I met, but you've been there a lot longer and have perhaps a more thorough outlook on all this.
By the way, the person that accused me of having no filter was in fact (coincidentally), Dutch, albeit raised in the South her whole life...
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