There seems to be a lot of confusion in Internet arguments between things you have a right to do, and things you ought to do. It may be true that your right to swing your fist ends at my face--but come on, do you really want to be the kind of fucknut who walks around swinging his fist everywhere?
In other words, our only obligation is to avoid harming others' person or property, but that alone doesn't make you a good person. You do that bare minimum and I won't harm your person or property--but I won't like you. Just because someone is within their rights doesn't mean I have to approve or shut up.
I was reading a discussion about a woman with Nazi tattoos, and one of the moderators of the forum said:
If someone is a sexist, racist, every other -ist they are still a person and especially if these are only the person's THOUGHTS and the person isn't actually acting on them (ie raping and attacking people because they are female, or black, or white, etc). It's perfectly legal for her to believe in her white supremacist crap. As much as I disagree with her beliefs (ie IF they even are her beliefs since none of us actually know her) I'm still not going to put her down.
What the hell is that crap? Because something is legal, you aren't allowed to even say anything bad about it? Yes, she's still a person, but she's a really bad person. I agree that the woman shouldn't be arrested or anything for being an asshole, but you're allowed to--in fact I think you should--freaking talk bad about her, Jesus.
In a free society, you have the right to be a tremendous jerk. It's merely my strong recommendation that you do not exercise this right.
Ut. Freedom of expression is self-correcting, but only if we all exercise it. Being afraid of offending offensive people breaks the system.
ReplyDelete"In other words, our only obligation is to avoid harming others' person or property, but that alone doesn't make you a good person. You do that bare minimum and I won't harm your person or property--but I won't like you. Just because someone is within their rights doesn't mean I have to approve or shut up."
ReplyDeleteBingo. If you merit being called a raving douche bag, I reserve the right to do so.
Elmo - Ut?
ReplyDeleteAnd I'd say that you're partly right, but also that frankly, I'd prefer that people with horrible opinions didn't express them at all. I would never stop them with legislation or violence, but I believe that they're wrong to do so.
What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that ethics exists on a deeper level than "must or mustn't"--there's also "should or shouldn't", where you have multiple valid options but they are not all equally good.
I can say you shouldn't be a Nazi without saying you mustn't be one.
Yeah, I've never understood the idea that as long as it's legal, it's okay. If I tell someone he's an asshole, bleating back that it's his constitutional right to act like an asshole proves exactly nothing. Calling someone a dick is not persecution.
ReplyDeleteUt?
ReplyDeleteGrunted assent. I think I got it from Flaming Carrot, originally.
And we agree. I'm adding that when horrible people _do_ insist on saying horrible things, I think the correct response is exercising your own right to speech. The moderator missed the point, as you say.
when horrible people _do_ insist on saying horrible things, I think the correct response is exercising your own right to speech. - Are you bashing gays by any chance? Please don't.
ReplyDeleteAnon - I think he's bashing people who bash gays. (Or anyone else.) That's a horrible thing to do, and that's when good people need to exercise their right to say how horrible it is.
ReplyDeleteSometimes it's almost too easy to be nice to people you strongly disagree with. On campus once, some member of a group I disagree with (I don't even remember exactly what they stood for, but doesn't matter) was struggling to open a door while holding a huge pile of demonstration materials. I opened the door for him. I hadn't thought about any deeper meaning; I don't think I even interrupted the sentence I was speaking to my friend. But my friend later commented that it was weird for me to have helped him like that.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, yes, I find no fault in the logic. OTOH, standing by the door and not opening it would have felt incredibly petty and dickish. It's not like the guy would have known I was punishing him for his views. And if I did walk up and say "I'm not helping you because of X", that would still have seemed petty and mean for the sake of being mean.
Nobody is "switched on" about their views and looking to fight for them 24 hours a day. It's hard to pick an ideological fight with someone who's switched off, and just trying to open a door.
MG - It depends what the views were. If they were a member of a real hate group I might very well snub them even on something as petty as door-holding; if they were merely political opponents in a more civil way, I'd go ahead and be a regular person to them.
ReplyDeleteWhere the hell did you get bashing gays from that, Mousie?
ReplyDeleteI'm an amateur and occasionally professional rhetoricist, and I'm interested to examine how communication can fail so utterly -- how you got a meaning out of elmo's comment(s) that's 180 degrees from what I got, and what Holly got, and presumably what elmo meant (though in fairness that's precisely what's in question here).
Jesus I love you. I was having this EXACT conversation with someone the other day.
ReplyDeleteHe was upset at me for calling him out on an EXTREMELY unkind comment, and said that I was trying to limit his freedom of expression. My response? "Just because you CAN say almost anything you want to doesn't mean you SHOULD."
I really wish more people considered this.
Are you bashing gays by any chance?
ReplyDeleteNo.
But my friend later commented that it was weird for me to have helped him like that.
To put a very fine point on it, when you're actually involved in an issue I think it pays to be civil to the opposition. Right or wrong, issues are won and lost as much on impression as on the strength of the arguments. If you come across as petty, even if you're absolutely right and your opponents are reprehensible people and demonstrably wrong, you have a good chance of losing.
"To put a very fine point on it, when you're actually involved in an issue I think it pays to be civil to the opposition...If you come across as petty, even if you're absolutely right and your opponents are reprehensible people and demonstrably wrong, you have a good chance of losing."
ReplyDeleteThis. Taking the High Road seems to be a lost art in this day and age.
(Not to mentions that if, say, you're Black and you end up holding the door for some Aryan Nation douchebag, it'll drive 'em absolutely nuts. ;D )
Hm. I think you need to be clear on the ‘they have opinions I think are bad’/’they are a bad person’ distinction. You might not like neo-Nazis expressing their white supremacist opinions; but they probably don’t like you expressing your racial-equality opinions…
ReplyDeleteSo, I think you’re right that we should be able to criticise other’s views, even if holding them is legal – but remember that they’re legal for a reason – because we (Western liberals…) believe that someone having a belief others (even most) consider to be ‘bad’, doesn’t mean they don’t get to say it. You can criticise their opinion, and dislike them, but not write them off as generally worse than you. (If nothing else, it’s an incredibly divisive and destructive form of debate, not to mention hypocritical.)
Unless of course you have some argument for why you own moral view is objectively right…?
Black Ice - Yes, but if you're black you sure as hell don't have to hold the door for the Aryan Nation, and if you're white, well, wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea.
ReplyDeleteAnon - I don't think all opinions are equal, though. I think all opinions have a right to be expressed, but white supremacy isn't just different from racial equality, it's worse! And white-supremacist ideas aren't randomly distributed among the populace, they're formed and held by fucked-up people who suck.
And that may be my opinion, sure, but it is my fervent and vociferous opinion and I'm not going to water it down.
I don't think all opinions are equal, though...white supremacy isn't just different from racial equality, it's worse!
ReplyDeleteAnd it's worth pointing out that the distinction, in this case, can't be dismissed as a cultural assumption. "Broccoli is good" and "broccoli is bad" are purely subjective opinions, neither of which is more or less correct than the other.
But in many cases, one opinion fits the evidence well (like "the 'races' have essentially equal abilities and any variation that exists is trivial"), while the opposing opinion is held in spite of the evidence (like "white people are smarter than black people").
Cultural relativism, properly thought out, is a wonderful thing, but it doesn't do to characterize every didagreement as a mere conflict of assumptions in which truth is a subjective quantity depending on your point of view. It's factually incorrect to think that modern women need men to take care of them. It's factually incorrect to think that gay parents are more likely to raise maladjusted children. It's factually incorrect to think that gun control lowers violent crime rates, or that black people are less intelligent than white people, or that pornography turns normal men into rapists, or that the Earth is 6000 years old. Many debates really do come down to matters of determinable fact, and the "X doesn't like Y, but Y doesn't like X either" model is not valid for all debates.
None of which is to say that white supremacist bullshit, factually disprovable or not, should be illegal. For a variety of reasons, the only way freedom can work is if we allow people to say offensive things even if we can prove they're wrong.
But as far as calling them bad people... They advocate forcing their worldview on others, and stripping fellow citizens of their civil rights based on a demonstrably untrue philosophy that they cling to despite plenty of evidence in the 20th century of where it leads. If they aren't "bad people" then nobody is.
Clearly the issue is different if their beliefs are based on demonstrably false, factual opinions - but not all moral disagreement can be dissipated with factual evidence alone. For example, many people want to draw an important moral distinction between ‘human’ defined in a species wide sense, and ‘non-humans’. Others, myself included, think that animals should be included on the ‘morally worthy’ side of the line; and others still would include foetuses and so on.
ReplyDeleteI don’t see what appeal to fact there can be to say I’m right in thinking ‘sentience’ is a more important moral criteria than ‘human’ (or indeed ‘white’). I could appeal to ‘the ability to feel pain’ or ‘intelligence’ (defined one way or another), but the moral value of those features still needs to be explained.
I don’t mean to come across as a cultural relativist about this – certainly it’s contradictory to say ‘I value toleration, and so will support the intolerant’. I’m happy to argue with white supremacists and the like – it’s just, factual errors aside (and that may be a big aside I guess), I don’t see why one set of moral views ought to be privileged. Argue your point sure, but do it with an open mind – not everyone with ‘bad’ moral opinions are stupid or mean or evil, and they aren’t going to be convinced if we assume they are.
Anon - I don't think you can be blind to what the issue is, though. Some issues really are fuzzy--I disagree with pro-life people, for instance, but I would treat them with door-holding civility because I acknowledge that it's reasonable for good people to hold different opinions in that area.
ReplyDeleteOther issues are less fuzzy, and it's not just factual basis--there are some opinions I believe are simply immoral to hold. My belief in racial equality has less to do with studies and test scores and more with a foundational belief that a person's a person.
I also tend to think about a person's motives in holding an opinion. Someone who's pro-life may want to put women in their place, but it's also possible that they're genuinely concerned about unborn babies and I do respect that. I'm difficulty seeing a warm fuzzy "yeah, I can understand why you feel that way" justification for white supremacy.
I should clarify, there's no opinion that justifies taking things out of the opinion arena and resorting to violence or legal action based on the opinion alone. (Unless it's, like, about your mom.) But I do think that some moral views--the really basic ones, the life and liberty stuff if not every specific interpretation thereof--really ought to be privileged over some really crappy ones.
[shrug]
ReplyDelete"Moral" is a concept nearly impossible to argue. With regard to animal rights, we can discuss the nature of rights, where they come from, the nature of nature, the nature of social compacts that subvert the natural order and whether (given a certain consensus about the foregoing) it's reasonable or desirable to extend the protections of that compact to entities that can't comply with its terms... But whether animals are "morally worthy" seems to come down largely to "I feel like they are" "well I feel like they're not". A debate is either extrapolating from fact or not, depending on how you frame it, but when it's not, there really doesn't seem to be anywhere you can go with it.
(Don't misunderstand me; I'm not saying "if only we were all rational, we'd heve no disagreements". Even where both parties are intelligent and rational and accept the same facts, strong disagreement can and will exist. I'm just suggesting that meaningful debate must begin with evidence-based positions, and there are some political and philosophical positions--specifically our white supremacist example--that are simply divorced from the facts or rely on ignoring the majority of facts.)
Argue your point sure, but do it with an open mind – not everyone with ‘bad’ moral opinions are stupid or mean or evil, and they aren’t going to be convinced if we assume they are.
I'd never take the position that people with stupid opinions must themselves be stupid. People are really complicated, and lots of (possibly all) smart people believe at least one stupid thing. But evil? Well... Again, if "I want to deprive you of your rights by force because of a factually baseless belief that I won't let go of" isn't evil, then I don't know what is. If the word "evil" has any meaning at all, these guys fit.
And in debates with real stakes, where people's rights hang in the balance, it's important to pragmatically acknowledge that we aren't really arguing to change the mind of the person on the other side of the table. We're arguing to change the minds of the people watching--the great majority that isn't really too invested in the given issue one way or the other. People who hold strong irrational opinions aren't very likely to change them because of a rational argument, particularly when they've built lifestyles around the opinion.
I agree that civility is key (in most debates you do more harm than good by shouting about your opponent's stupidity), but I also think it's appropriate to maintain confidence that you're right when you've drawn your conclusions from the best available evidence and your opponent is working from bad information of feelings alone (as is very often the case with racist, sexism, or homophobia). Open mindedness and acceptance of the fallibility of your position is for debates with rational people.
But I do think that some moral views--the really basic ones, the life and liberty stuff if not every specific interpretation thereof--really ought to be privileged over some really crappy ones.
ReplyDeleteThe more I've thought about it, the more I think a carefully thought out "moral relativism" (that is, acknowledging that, objectively, no purely moral position can be said to be "better" than another) demands that we condemn coercion in the name of morality. Meaning, ironically, that a belief in equal moral validity demands we condemn moral positions that advocate coercion. It's an apparent contradiction, but I think it's actually pretty consistent and, ultimately, inescapable.
In that model of moral relativism, by acknowledging that all moralities are objectively equal, you implicitly must accept that coercive moralities are inferior to noncoercive ones. Again, it's weird. But I haven't yet heard a decent model for moral relativism that can accept coercive moralities as "equal". (Again, leaving substantial room for disagreement between smart, honest people over what is and isn't coercive.)