Mindreading skills to avoid giving offence.

Green_Red said:
I take offence to this thread as it was me that made the reference to Hannibal and his ability to destroy Rome with the help of elephants. Romans shouldn't be so easily offended. No wonder they lost their empire.
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Why would Romans be offended? They 'won' in the end. After a long starvation siege, Carthage was destroyed, the city razed, and the entire population made slaves. That was some real racism.
 
Mark Pawelek said:
Good day mods,

I've been told that I need to be able to know what other people might be thinking before I write a post.

This arose regarding elephants mentioned in connection with Hannibal. As you may or may not know, Hannibal Barca was a Carthaginian military commander (born in what is now Tunisia), who tried to conquer Rome by invading Italy with an army containing elephants. This innocent, ironic, historical reference was interpreted as 'racist' by someone. Now whether a person interprets a post as racist or not depends on their culture and upbringing. For example, elephants are used, or were used, in India and Burma, recently for actual physical labor. So people born there, with that culture may not interpret a reference to elephants as racist. However, if one is an animal rights activist they may find other offence in a reference to elephants.

My point here is: How are we supposed to know how people will interpret our posts and what offence they may find? What level of mindreading is suitable for posting to The Cafe?
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I remember that post. I also remember not taking offense to it.
I also remember the thread changing discourse.

This thread however is the next level
 
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