If Mort Divine ruled the world

[Einherjar86]

The notion that respect must be earned predates post-modernist thought, and respect =/= being left alone, nor does it equal being treated well. You can respect your enemy and seek to do them harm.

It's incumbent on you to clarify your terms here. There are a lot of assumptions packed into these statements--first and foremost what you mean by "respect." You can respect something about your enemy and seek to do them harm; but clearly what you respect isn't the fact that your enemy is a living person who feels pain. Plenty of ethicists would argue that, at the very least, acknowledging that another person feels pain establishes grounds for respect--perhaps not respect for that person's values or beliefs, but respect for their existence.

Also, the notion that respect must be earned might predate the twentieth century, but I think there's a sleight of hand there in that it implies certain actions or behaviors are inherently deserving of respect. If no one's inherently deserving of respect, is any act inherently deserving of respect? I just think it's a more complicated concept than you presented.

EDIT: I feel a responsibility to share this:

https://us.pg.com/structure-and-gov...9gR4Te5MWxglQ3gAeaVJp0uYvBxV5Pj1oPUUvZR1F56Tc

and this comment from a friend:

"Gillette is owned by Procter and Gamble. A little bit of googling reveals that its board of directors includes several GOP donors, including at least one GOP politician. Gillette's exercise in "woke" branding is based on a calculation of profitability. If you like Gillette razors, cool. As it happens, so do I. But don't be fooled: these people don't give a fuck about you."

 

[Bloopy]

from what i remember "boy will be boys" is usually just used as a way of allowing "masculine" guys to do some kind of specific thing that most females would never do in a million years, like egging a house or maybe roughhousing of something
it's usually not used to excuse "fucked up shit" behavior

Yeah, not usually, more like very occasionally at most. Though I only looked at a few pages about the phrase yesterday before I found this:

https://www.freetobekids.com/blogs/news/its-time-to-retire-the-phrase-boys-will-be-boys-forever

Last year we heard from a mama whose daughter was out on the playground for recess one day when three boys held her down on the slide. Two sat on her legs, and a third held her from behind by the neck of her dress and slammed her head down twice. Another stabbed her in the eye with a stick multiple times. There was blood. This mama told us, “We are very lucky that my daughter's eye was fine, but the three puncture wounds on her eyelid were between a 1/4 inch and 1/8th of an inch from puncturing her actual eye.” Mama called the school. “We have to do better than this, we have to talk about this behavior,” she said. She was fed the typical lines: they didn't know what they were doing. It was typical play that got momentarily inappropriate. And yes, you guessed it: "Boys will be boys."

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

@Einherjar86
respecting a person's values or beliefs [or battle-tactics] is a completely separate thing from respecting their existence
people "respecting their enemies" has been a thing in pop-culture since Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty

i thought the whole fucking world already knew that Gillette was owned by proctor and gamble

@Bloopy
OMFG
that article is fucked up

 

[Dak]

It's incumbent on you to clarify your terms here. There are a lot of assumptions packed into these statements--first and foremost what you mean by "respect." You can respect something about your enemy and seek to do them harm; but clearly what you respect isn't the fact that your enemy is a living person who feels pain. Plenty of ethicists would argue that, at the very least, acknowledging that another person feels pain establishes grounds for respect--perhaps not respect for that person's values or beliefs, but respect for their existence.

Also, the notion that respect must be earned might predate the twentieth century, but I think there's a sleight of hand there in that it implies certain actions or behaviors are inherently deserving of respect. If no one's inherently deserving of respect, is any act inherently deserving of respect? I just think it's a more complicated concept than you presented.

The first Oxford definition of respect is perfectly acceptable:
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/respect_1

1. a feeling of admiration for someone or something because of their good qualities or achievements

2. polite behavior toward or care for someone or something that you think is important

The latter definition isn't a very good one, because it can be at odds with the first. But the tie between the two is the "good qualities/achievements" and "importance". Simply being an animate object in the species is a such low bar for "achievement" and "importance" that it would render them meaningless. It's true that what we attach significance to beyond that to determine importance or achievement is going to be laden with value judgments, so in that sense no, nothing is inherently deserving of respect.

Pain in particular seems like a terrible point of focus to establish anything other than certain physical systems (e.g., nervous system).

If you like Gillette razors, cool. As it happens, so do I. But don't be fooled: these people don't give a fuck about you."

Bingo.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Blurry_Dreams is right historically-speaking, it's just that the term has taken on new meaning in recent years to conflate and young male rowdiness with rape and murder. That stabbing story sounds like total horseshit and the kind of anonymous victim-seeking that infests blogs, unless "recess" means an incredibly poor high school where violent crime is common. And fwiw I hate all meanings of "boys will be boys", I hated vandalistic rowdy kids in elementary school and I don't mind seeing them pumped with pharmaceuticals and mentally castrated today. There are many elements of the male sex that have no place in civil society; people should just admit that other negative traits can and should be expunged from the female sex, as well as all various groups of ethnicities, rather than committing clear demographic-pandering.

 

[Einherjar86]

Pain in particular seems like a terrible point of focus to establish anything other than certain physical systems (e.g., nervous system).

Why do you feel that way? I'd think you would be particularly keen on pain as a point of establishment for some kind of intercorporeal ethics, seeing as it connects intimately to subjective experience.

Also, you're in a minority when it comes to the importance of pain. That tends to be a central point in debates within ethical philosophy.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

There are many elements of the male sex that have no place in civil society

lmao

 

[Dak]

Why do you feel that way? I'd think you would be particularly keen on pain as a point of establishment for some kind of intercorporeal ethics, seeing as it connects intimately to subjective experience.

Also, you're in a minority when it comes to the importance of pain. That tends to be a central point in debates within ethical philosophy.

There are benefits to pain, and some amount of pain is necessary to be healthy. There's a difference between pain and suffering.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

 

[Einherjar86]

There are benefits to pain, and some amount of pain is necessary to be healthy. There's a difference between pain and suffering.

I agree completely on the difference between pain and suffering, and that being alive means experiencing pain; but if we're talking about pain as grounds for establishing ethical behavior, I'm not sure I see your point.

I feel pain while running, for example, but that's pain I'm willingly accepting due to its benefits. I can't think of a case in which someone inflicting physical pain on my body is ethically acceptable unless we've established so beforehand. I don't think "spare the rod, spoil the child" is an ethically sound position, and firmly believe it's a sign of weakness and impatience on a parent/guardian's part.

So the point isn't that pain is inherently unethical, if we want to return to your language about people not inherently deserving respect. As I said, I don't think it's the case that people do inherently deserve respect. But if we're talking about the ethics of interpersonal relationships, then the knowledge that one is causing pain is, I think, a fine place to begin reflecting on whether one is acting ethically.

So to pose it in simpler language, I don't see at all why pain is a "terrible point of focus" when discussing ethical responsibility. Nothing about ethics is inherent, absolute, universal, etc. But we have to start somewhere, and I don't understand why pain isn't a good place to do so.

 

[CiG]

I don't need Gillette to care about me personally (nor would I ever assume or ask a corporation to do so) I just need them to care about my money, and what it represents to pull that money. Not supporting companies for acting like cunts is a grand old tradition.

 

[Bloopy]

A very reasonable article about what the Gillette advert missed:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...4fa976-1a69-11e9-8813-cb9dec761e73_story.html

edit: And another response ad -

 

[Dak]

I agree completely on the difference between pain and suffering, and that being alive means experiencing pain; but if we're talking about pain as grounds for establishing ethical behavior, I'm not sure I see your point.

I feel pain while running, for example, but that's pain I'm willingly accepting due to its benefits. I can't think of a case in which someone inflicting physical pain on my body is ethically acceptable unless we've established so beforehand. I don't think "spare the rod, spoil the child" is an ethically sound position, and firmly believe it's a sign of weakness and impatience on a parent/guardian's part.

So the point isn't that pain is inherently unethical, if we want to return to your language about people not inherently deserving respect. As I said, I don't think it's the case that people do inherently deserve respect. But if we're talking about the ethics of interpersonal relationships, then the knowledge that one is causing pain is, I think, a fine place to begin reflecting on whether one is acting ethically.

So to pose it in simpler language, I don't see at all why pain is a "terrible point of focus" when discussing ethical responsibility. Nothing about ethics is inherent, absolute, universal, etc. But we have to start somewhere, and I don't understand why pain isn't a good place to do so.

This is a lot to unpack so I can't really break it down without too much chopping.

Yes, there is positive pain with physical stress in terms of ability increase, the micro-fracture of bone and muscle as we exercise. There can be positive gain in other ways of increased tolerance, both physically and mentally. Ranger/seal/recon schools push the physical and mental side. Psych therapy pushes the mental side. Not sure what corporal punishment has to do with it.

 

[Einherjar86]

This is a lot to unpack so I can't really break it down without too much chopping.

Yes, there is positive pain with physical stress in terms of ability increase, the micro-fracture of bone and muscle as we exercise. There can be positive gain in other ways of increased tolerance, both physically and mentally. Ranger/seal/recon schools push the physical and mental side. Psych therapy pushes the mental side. Not sure what corporal punishment has to do with it.

I realize this is a quick response, but I'm having trouble understanding what the misunderstanding is.

I get that pain has positive consequences. All the examples you're referencing (ranger/seal/recon and therapy) have to do with persons who submit to some kind of agreement over an acceptable level of discomfort. Likewise, people who exercise probably enjoy the discomfort to the extent that it has positive outcomes.

But again, when it comes to interpersonal relations in which no prior agreement exists, why isn't acknowledgement of another's pain a reasonable premise from which to formulate an ethics of behavior?

 

[Dak]

I realize this is a quick response, but I'm having trouble understanding what the misunderstanding is.

I get that pain has positive consequences. All the examples you're referencing (ranger/seal/recon and therapy) have to do with persons who submit to some kind of agreement over an acceptable level of discomfort. Likewise, people who exercise probably enjoy the discomfort to the extent that it has positive outcomes.

But again, when it comes to interpersonal relations in which no prior agreement exists, why isn't acknowledgement of another's pain a reasonable premise from which to formulate an ethics of behavior?

People who inflict some pain, psychological or material, on others, may be repaid in kind. Is it unethical to repay pain with pain purely because it is pain? I don't even consider pain in the equation but that's how it looks from a "pain" perspective. Just a pain stalemate.

 

[Oblivious Maximus]

FALSEHOOD FLIES, AND THE TRUTH COMES LIMPING AFTER IT

Moral outrage requires absolute belief in your own infallibility – if you accept that you are wrong about one thing, it risks bringing down your whole belief system. Identity politics, being part of a greater whole, and crusading across the internet in search of blasphemers is often all people have to make themselves feel important or worthwhile. They will cling to this sense of moral superiority at all costs, even that of the truth.

 

[Dak]

Of course. The media is at a fever pitch assaulting every "cishet white male" for not cowering. It's gonna be either a civil war or WWIII in the next 3 decades at this rate.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

these modern feminazis are doing nothing but breeding a generation of men that are going to hate women in the future. It's going to be bad for them one way or another.

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

I just need them to care about my money, and what it represents to pull that money.

this is literally what a commercial's director does
the company picks a specific demographic and then they make a commercial that will get that specific demographic to purchase that product
the more pissed off you got about a commercial, the more money they made from some demographic that disagrees with your views

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

these modern feminazis

i personally know a woman who thinks men-hitting-women is wrong but actually thinks it's completely okay for a girl to beat-the-fucking-hell out of her boyfriend