EMPATHY - Writelog 11

This afternoon, I finished writing a segment of EMPATHY that will definitely offend someone.

I say that without pride, without boasting of an edgy wit or bold conviction. I certainly didn't set out to offend, and I won't tell you that this was some stand against an overly sensitive or restrictive society. It is merely a fact.

I twas bound to happen. This particular story brushes against a topic upon which offending someone is not just easy, but inevitable. It is a world of byzantine internal politics, with competing factions that each claim status as arbiter of what is appropriate and whose ideas and even language are in opposition to each other. To appease one is to agitate the other, and one can easily insult everyone involved.

This is the privilege of the doomed project, and it is not courage but fatalism that led me to leave this section in place. When you know the deck is stacked against you, it removes the need to appease anyone, and when offending others in inevitable, is frees one to be honest.