Old title - Tolerance - Is violence ever justified?
For reference - https://lemmings.world/post/19791264 and all comments below the post about tolerance and non-tolerance
is it too naive for me to believe any and every lives matter? I do understand if someone is coming for my life, and i stop him by retaliating back, most nation’s laws would deem me innocent, maybe even most people will - but was it right?
It has not happened with me yet, and this is post is not politics related, a general discussion about tolerance, but I dont know how will I respond to such a situation, Is there a correct approach?
I know in a imaginary utopia - we can have a society where everyone thinks any violence, or for that matter, any evil deed is evil. And I know real world is far from being a utopia, but i believe most people can differentiate between good and bad. In my opinion, most people who do such acts are not really doing it because they enjoy it, some do because they have to, some think they have to, and they have been brain washed.
I also think if we ask a binary (yes/no) question to everyone - Is violence justified" - most people will vote no. I know there would be some exceptions (even in perfect utopia’s like N. Korea, lords only get like 99% majority)(/s).
Now if we change question - “Is violence ever justified” - many will now vote yes, and start listing out situations where they think it is valid.
This question was also brought up in Avatar. For people who don’t know - should Aang (a person with firm opinions, and more importantly a child - 12(112) years old) kill Lord Ozai (for now, consider him embodiment of evil for simplicity, but still a human). Many shows get away from asking, by basically having monsters (non human) as the opponent, so it is does not feel morally wrong. But here the question was asked. His past lives (in this world reincarnation exists, and aang is the Avatar - person who can control all elements) also suggested he should kill him, and he is tethered to this world, and this is no utopia … In the show they got away with basically a divine intervention.
Maybe here is my real question - Is it correct to have your morals be flexible?
Now for my answer, I have almost never felt correct labeling people good or bad, I have almost always treated people depending on what the situation expects me to (maybe how I feel I should be treating). In some sense I have a very flexible stance, and in some others, I dont. For example - I never cheat on exams or assignments - I can’t justify cheating, If I am getting poor marks, then I should prepare well. But If someone else asks me to help them cheat (lets say give assignment solutions) - I dont refuse either, as I have understood, even though judging people by a few numbers is bad, world still does that - mostly to simplify things, and in that sense, a higher grade for anyone is better for them.
I dont even know what can be a answer. I dont know if it exists, or it can exist, I am not really trying to find it either, consider this just a rant at clouds.
edit - I am not asking a binary question - you are not expected to answer a yes or no, see the line just above this edit. It is not even really about violence - it is about morality
edit 2 - Changed title, old 1 is still here for full context. I dont know why I chose that title. I am not blaming anyone who answered on the basis of title, It was my bad to have some title, and ask a “not really orthogonal but generalised question” in the middle, hoping people answer that, some one did, I thank them. Many people have written (or in similar vein) - violence should be be avoided, but not when it the last thing. I understand this general sentiment - but according to me - having a excuse to ever do violence allows you to have loop hole, just blame the circumstances.
Someone gave a situation where they would do violence - someone trying to assault a kid - and I agree I would too (If I would be in such a situation).
I had a small back and forth with someone about morals - my stance is morals are frameworks to choose if a action is moral/immoral. And then the question is really how rigid should your moral framework be, and should it depend on background of people in consideration?
Thank you for this question and for being interested in there topics. It is very important that people think about and discuss such matters.
I love your example of Avatar, it is a very good one. I think, after watching Avatar a few times, the most important lesson there is not the fact that Aang came up with a way to defeat Ozai without killing him (so basically “theres always an other way”). It is kind of implied that it was a “better” way, but noone can really know for sure. Maybe killing him would have been better in the end. The real lesson, in my opinion, is that Aang kept thinking and brainstorming and wrecking his brain day and night trying to figure out whats right and whats wrong. He didnt simply accept the opinions others imposed on him, even though almost every person he respected had the same one. He needed to come up with an answer himself. I think if we keep thinking about our decisions and try to see things from different perspectives without blindly following narratives or popular opinions, thats worth a lot.
To one of your many questions, which was basically “does the end justify the means?”, youre not going to get a definite answer because noone knows and noone can know. Some people might pretend to, but they dont. It might apply in some cases but wont in others. And even if it seems reasonable in a scenario, you never know the real outcome. As an example, if you had a time machine, should you go back and kill Hitler as a Baby? Sure, you would stop him from starting WW2, but you would commit an objectively horrible crime in that moment. Also, what if 5000 years later that leads to the world ending? You never know.
All we can do is make as good a guess as we can about whether what we are doing is the right thing. If we keep thinking about our decisions and constantly update/re-evaluate our beliefs, we should be on the right path.
I believe morality is relative to the current condition - it can’t be absolute when nothing else is. In fact, can only be based on your understanding of the current reality, even if you are wrong.
I’m still partial to the general philosophy of Dr Who. Killing is to be avoided even at extreme cost. But when survival is put on the line, it’s time to put a bullet in someone, or blow up their entire species. When you reach that point, go as far as you have to, in order to make sure you don’t have to again.
sorry, i have not seen it, but that basically seems like giving up on the whole species, based on very little sampling. To which I would ask, who gave us that power, and if we have that power, should we keep that power?
Power is never given, it is taken. Might makes right is the only law of the universe. Who gave a cheetah the power to eat a gazelle? Who gave a fungus the power to kill bacteria? The question of tolerance or intolerance is a question of when to use, or not, the individual or collective power of a person or group.
As to when is it right to extinct a species, would you save the dinosaurs from the asteroid? Bear in mind, you extinct your own species if you do. And who gave those dinos the right to use up a whole planet’s worth of resources, that mammals are obviously better suited to make use of. Extincting a species is making ecological room for other species to evolve. It’s just that right now, humans are demonstrably horrible at choosing which species should be around, or not.
Also I highly recommend Dr. Who for the hidden morals wrapped in often ridiculously stupid sci-fi fun.
When we get to fungus killing bacteria - we are discussing ethics of food chain, which is absurd. It is not about survival. If we go by your reasoning (which if i read correctly is definitely a bit sarcastic, so not taking at face value), is survival the only aim? if so, why even bother doing most things?
I am always sarcastic, it’s just my nature. That said, where you are on the food chain is the basis of all power to affect the world/universe. That’s who ‘gave’ us the power to decide if another species should go extinct. We took it, as all power is gained. There was no giving involved. Once that power is gained, giving it up, is giving up your position on the food chain. In a very literal sense. Otherwise you’re not giving up the power to kill another species, you’re just choosing not to. Which in most cases is the best choice, and also is what gives you the choice of tolerance.
As for motivation to interact with the world, that’s personal. In the long run we’re all space dust decaying to barely perceptible heat. In the short run, finding your own contentment might require some adjustments to the world around you. Even just enjoying the day may come at the cost of tomorrow, so choose your actions well.
Also from the evolutionary biology perspective - top of food chain is the worst place to affect anything. These top pedators depend on all the bottom clogs to spin well, and if they dont, almost always top of food chain suffers. Dinos were wiped because they were just too big to handle suffocation, there prey (for carnivore dinos) were either dead or in burrows which they could not access. One of the only good top of food chain members are sharks - because they are just built good and still have large varied diets, and it is not like all shark species have survived.
The idea of peace has always been attacked and defended violently. Acknowledging the irony in that is clever, insisting it’s an unsolvable paradox is obtuse.
In the same way, there is no paradox of tolerance. This kind of thinking haunts the mind of the theorist, but burns off in harsh light of reality like morning fog.
Can we not achieve peace without violence? What really stops us? Is it just that people are corruptible, and they would when given chance. I dont think so, maybe my naivety, but people are not inherently evil, they are just lazy, and would do nothing in most situations, and beyond certain trigger, most people people try to seek a new lazy spot, for that most people try the laziest approach.
Those who do not want peace will need to be forcibly dealt with.
I think you’ve drawn the wrong borders around concepts, and are getting tangled as a result.
Regardless of how we’d like things to be, morality is just plausibly-generalised threat perception.
If people habitually went around doing that kind of thing, would you feel threatened by that?
If so, then you will feel the emotion of outrage, and you will consider the act to be Wrong.
Killing people and taking their stuff? But I’m a people, and I like stuff - I don’t want that to happen! That’s Bad and Wrong!
And that’s the reason dehumanising the outgroup (or drawing a hard distinction of kind) is the first tactic used by oppressors: Oh goodness no, we aren’t killing people and taking their stuff; that would be awful! Nonono, we’re killing :demographic: and taking their stuff; that’s completely different and can never come back to bite you or yours, so relax, it’s fine.
And of course, sometimes all your choices suck, thus the whole concept of trolley problems. Which threat makes my world less safe: a cold-blooded one-guy killer, or a useless five-guy allower-to-die standing there with his hands in his pockets? Are me-and-mine more likely to be in the big group of victims or the little one?
The choice you consider ‘best’ depends on these kinds of questions.
Threat perception is the engine that drives your moral framework. You can go and try to build a system out of words that will predict its moves, but that system is always going to be a crude imitation of the real thing, and there will always be edge-cases that throw up conflicts.
Framing things in terms of how it affects categories-you’re-in can be a bit unflattering, so most people try to bury it in their system of words.
When you do get that cognitive-dissonance feeling where your gut and your brain disagree on what’s right, it’s generally because your words are too specific, narrowing in on little details instead of the bigger picture.
It’s definitely good to pause at this point, unpick the conflict and try to derive a wider principle that gives better answers - though you could fairly argue that this isn’t really moral flexibility, just getting better at describing the morals you do have.
Real moral flexibility would be reassessing threats in their various contexts, and examining which categories of threat go where in the likelihood/severity matrix, and letting that inform your emotional responses. And yes, that’s a very good thing.
I think de-escalation should always be tried first, and in real life it’s the only thing that’s worked effectively for violence directed at me.
But I do think there is sometimes a need to defend with force; and somebody has to do it in that case, it’s not reasonable to be able to be nonviolent only because someone else is willing to do the violence on your behalf.
I do think it’s safe to say that a majority of the human violence that occurs on our earth is unnecessary and not only that - it’s counterproductive to whatever the violent person is trying to achieve. But I cannot believe it’s NEVER warranted. Like if it was a bear or alligator attacking you and you had the means to violently end the attack, you probably would because you know they can’t be reasoned with. Is it unimaginable that some humans might be similar in that they cannot be reasoned with, or not in time to stop them?
I don’t believe in the death penalty. But there are people I will vehemently defend, and others where I’m not going to die on that particular hill. My morals are flexible.
Violence is a last resort, but not so much so that it must never be done. There are situations with leave you no other options by design.
However that doesn’t mean I think committing violence is fine. I think Luigi did more good than harm with his action, but that doesn’t mean I think he shouldn’t bear the consequences of that decision. I salute him for trading the remainder of his own life to remove a shitty person from this earth.
But it was as much luck as anything that he did more good than harm, and like someone who drives home drunk from the bar without hurting anyone, you can applaud the result but still understand it was awfully reckless and they should suffer consequences to discourage them and others from making that same choice.
Violence, in most instances, is what many might call a form of escalation.
Suppose someone got on your nerves and you kicked them down a well? Or there was a country overrun by fanatics and the president ordered a genocide? Or there are people who have succumbed to some kind of immorality and someone set out to scare them with violence? These are all examples of the kind of instance where one might say that death is “a step above” the problem at hand. Think of the Allport Scale.
If you are in a bank and a bank robber starts threatening everyone and they take a particular interest in you or someone close to you, and you disarm and maybe cause them to die, that is harder to say is escalation, since the possibility of a violent outcome was already in the picture.
If one is to accept the idea of escalation, to escalate an issue, by definition, makes you worse than your enemies. Many people around here have unfortunately compared billionaires to Nazis when a Nazi would be closer analogously to the bank robber and the billionaires, even the ones who practice what many have called extreme acts of inaction, would be more analogous to the people mentioned who have “succumbed to some kind of immorality” (and yet there are some who aren’t even immoral, so that’s not even a good analogy either).
“Subdue your enemy without fighting.” ~ Sun Tzu
I agree mostly - but not with the most part in beginning. There are a lot of situations, where 2 parties involved are of not same stature - someone among them may not be in a position to prevent escalation
Stature wouldn’t be the only factor though in forcing one’s hand. As in, when you are in a situation where escalation would be tempting, you also have to look at all options as well as the gravity of the situation. This is perhaps the biggest criticism of a lot of acts of terror, as the choice to harm is oddly specific in a world of other options. For a decade, we had the Me Too movement, and although it was kind of overblown, engaging in activity that caused celebrities to watch themselves by means of lawsuit is, in terms of escalation, much preferred over doing the same thing with violence. And those who could not sue could protest, and those who could not do that could campaign, and so on, and all of those things would be better than violence, unless violence is necessary and matches the profundity of the situation. In a world where escalation is of no concern to anyone, nuclear war would have probably already happened over something dumb like calling Kim Jong-un fat again, a fear that probably is unique in uniting the fediverse. Always weigh things like the pros and cons.
by stature, I meant in context of power sharing in the dynamics.
unless violence is necessary and matches the profundity of the situation
I also replied to someone else, but how do we know when violence is necessary? And how much?
Violence is necessary when nothing can be done that has less unnecessary ramifications. A cornered mouse fights because it has no other resort, but any other mouse would run and not fight.
Problem is, people are not good at predicting, most people cant think much in future, not really because of our limits, but the problem itself, and having moral allowance ever, allows for being corruptible, and assuming that current situation requires violence, when in actuality it did not
When a situation is clouded, do people not still know at least some of their options? I imagine the people who went through with the Me Too movement weren’t sure what kind of results or perhaps humiliation or intimidation they were going to face due to their situation, assuming their accusations towards the celebrities were true. Some, I’m sure, strongly contemplated witness protection. But the ability to sue was a given, and they used it despite how clouded the situation was, and they remained headstrong because they had their eyes on a solution, and the majority won their cases without absolute unrest. They knew what not to look forward to.
Violence shouldn’t be the first action taken, but once all other options are exhausted, violence is necessary
how do we know we have exhausted all options? could it be our ignorance just getting the better of us?
uh, history? paying attention to current events? It’s very cyclical
sorry, i am tired, but i have answered your question above. In short - we are shortsighted, and not really that smart. we always view history from tinted scoped lenses, if we find situations where violence was necessary, then we also find situations where it did not result in violence. And even if last time it required violence does not equate to violence this time to. Re-evaluate all situations, That is the least we can do, and getting violent is a very taxing activity on us. If try to reason, the time it would take for it to be just as taxing is much larger, so reasoning well is still pretty beneficial.
I will argue that if a problem was solved in the past without violence, it’s only because there was nonetheless the threat of violence. Gandhi is the classic example - he’s the one everyone remembers, but he wasn’t the only leader in the struggle for Indian independence. Those in power generally refuse to negotiate with terrorists, but given the possibility of prolonged bloody conflict, they may choose to negotiate with the nonviolent alternative.
My opinion:
I think asking “is violence justified” in a binary manner means the question can’t be answered.
Not all questions have binary answers.
Morality itslef is a quagmire of philosophy.
You can have moral killing, and immoral pacifism.
Rigid adherence to a moral code could lead to immoral acts. Too much flexibility in morals leads to amoral behaviour.
Every life is important, but not to the point where it overrides someone else’s rights.
All of this is a spectrum.
It could be naive, but that feels like a binary position on a complex matter.
I never expected a binary answer.
You can have moral killing, and immoral pacifism.
when can be killing moral - how much evil (and of what kind) do you have to do to deserve that outcome. I can somewhat understand immoral pacifism, but is it immoral to take a stand in a non violent way.
Rigid adherence to a moral code could lead to immoral acts. Too much flexibility in morals leads to amoral behaviour.
I agree with the latter, but I dont know about the former - there can be 2 situations - either your morals were not refined enough to tackle the situation - or you did not act correctly according to those morals correctly
Every life is important, but not to the point where it overrides someone else’s rights.
I get this, and can understand it very easily. Great point. But a problem is still there - who should be put in the deciding situation. As a society - In most places we have judges - who are supposedly wise - but they are just as much human, and just as corruptible. There are juries, but still a small finite number, who may all be thinking incorrectly(For example - 12 Angry Men) Can a solution exist where we dont trust any person, but a system. I dont trust a machine predicting likeliness. I can get by with a mathematical framework - but who should be the one forming it ? Constitution is one such framework - and assuming it has mechanisms to update it self - then it should be fine, but do the the people updating it not get a lot of power, who are again corruptible.
“Violence is never the answer” only because it’s historically the only thing that actually works.
It’s propaganda meant to defang the population because it is an actual threat to those in power.
The question is put on wrong terms. All social order is derived from violence. What make the law, the law is the menace of violence. What supports democratic institutions are the violence of police and military against who don’t abide the order. So, violence is inescapable. The righ question is not if it’s justified, but WHO and WHEN have the right to commit violence. When put under these terms, it’s much more simpler question.
sorry to be rude - but the question is not about violence. If violence is inescapable - then for whom is the violence justified - who gets to choose that. I went into more detail about this on someone else’s reply, but it is the flexibility is what i am questioning
You say that you believe most people can differentiate between good and bad, but note that people often think they are doing good while doing evil deeds. The human mind is exceptional at reasoning even against logic or facts when it is to preserve a positive self-image. You mention being brainwashed; often, people “brainwashed” themselves.
Defaulting to tolerance, goodwill, and expecting good is a good start, but tolerance must end somewhere. Excessive tolerance will inevitably lead to it being used/exploited. At various costs.
Flexible morals make sense. Different contexts require different adaptions. Considering them flexible or not may also be a matter of not including enough data points/context that sources moral conclusions.
The solution to the tolerance paradox is that intolerance should not be tolerated. What this intolerance of intolerance looks like might vary, from shunning to telling them off to arresting them.
In the case of Nazis shunning and telling off has been tried in the years before WW2. It was made known that you can’t make Nazis go away just by telling them to stop. We fought an entire war because they kept trying to impose their fascist ways on the world. And now they have returned, so why should we waste time with diplomacy again? Even Germany, having learnt the most from WW2 and having some of the most strict anti-fascism laws, is now home to one of the largest far-right party in Europe. We know how to get rid of Nazis and other fascists, the same way we did last time. And we know that if we let them be they will come for us, and try again to impose their fascist ways onto the world again.
In this case violence towards the intolerant is justified, because we know they will not listen to reason.
unless violence is necessary and matches the profundity of the situation
Are you not being unreasonable here?
The question is not about politics, but morals and having select applicability.
How are they being unreasonable?
assuming that the said nazi would not reason, most people only do something severe because they are down very low, and some visionary comes and enlightens them, by telling whom should they target, they got swayed, because someone gave them some causal reasoning. To now change there opinions, we have to be more thorough and reasonable.
they are not really unreasonable, but atleast presumptuous, which is not great either.
Nazi’s aren’t really known for their ability to reason.
then why did they become a nazi in first place - did they randomly started killing people. I am not saying nazi’s had good reasoning, but they had some reasoning
What if… why…
If you want to keep your head in the sand fine.
There are people who are unreasonable and think violence is acceptable. You don’t reason with them.
If you are having a hard time accepting that, be more reasonable.
Sorry but now you are being unreasonable - I make a statement - Try to reason with nazi - you oppose that - now you present me with info that they were historically unreasonable - I ask there must have been a reason - you reply that i should keep my head in sand (Ostrich-ising aren’t we?)
Should we start afresh? We (I am assuming you and I are both on this one) consider Nazis bad. Historically, these were people who believed certain race (presumably theirs) is superior - and there are inferior races who have looted these supreme races - so they conquer half the europe to reach former glory. They also had very misogynistic view point, and believed females were only for breeding. People who became nazis, became nazis because they were in a financially bad situation, and in such situations, your abilities to reason are reduced, and some godly figure comes and tells them yada yada yada, they follow the figure, because the figure gave them hope.
I think If we now reason with them, they would be hesitant, since they have tasted hope, and we are not offering them any.
Now if we clearly elaborate to them the hope is just a hoax, eventually understand, if not, then it is okay for them. As long as they are no longer harming anyone (emotionally or physically). If they are harming, then saving the people from them would be moral, which may include violence, which would give them further scars, and reasons to believe that these groups are not good.
I dont even know why I am trying to reason with you, is it because I believe back and forth brings people on same page, maybe. Maybe it is because (presumably), you have been just downvoting me for no reason other than disagreeing. If so, atleast try to reason and maybe bring me to your viewpoint. I am not saying you are bad, but try to reason
What the actual fuck. “keep your head in the sand”? This person is actually digging for answers to very difficult questions like how the Nazis became so obsessed and all you have to say is “just accept they were born evil. How could you even question that”? Thats fucking fascist propaganda right there. Youre the one with your head 10 feet deep in the sand.
