Very true, I agree with your points. Just like procuring a file of CSAM, procuring a shrunken head or even something like an elephant's tusk would be imo contributing to a demand for more to be made, as well as perpetuating a culture where those things are desired or even accepted to a degree, which could in turn lead to even more morally unsound methods of producing/acquiring them.
However I would also add that I think even in the hypothetical where accessing or even storing/viewing some CSAM files somehow didn't contribute to any more being produced or shared by anyone, it would still be fundamentally unethical to access it/store it/view it, because while the most clearly abusive component has already happened, continuing to view or use the product of those actions is further violating the child's right to not have themselves commodified or exploited like that, and disrespecting their right to privacy... for the same reason that a peeping tom is violating someone's right by spying on them in their privacy, even if the person doesn't know it happened (except in this case, it's a violation on top of another violation - the child has been exploited, and then people are further violating the child's rights by viewing it).
This aspect of something being fundamentally unethical even if it doesn't contribute to more bad things happening in a measurable/utilitarian sense but in more of a deontological way where the action itself is violating certain moral duties by disrespecting their bodily autonomy, is where I'm coming from by thinking that using/displaying the dismembered body part of a person is unethical regardless of whether doing so contributes to more of that product being created.
I think when it comes to consent, we usually do assume that someone's not okay with something (or err on the side of caution that they might not be) rather than assume it's okay to do something to a person unless they've explicitly requested that it not happen. It works the other way round, where we only do something to them if they've said it's okay. Of course there are exceptions to this, such as helping someone when they can't help themselves if it's extremely critical or if it doesn't violate them at all (like putting a warm garment over someone who's fallen asleep in the cold), or what might be argued as necessary to do for a child's development so that they can live a functional/healthy life. And then there are cases where it'd be ideal if we could not do anything, but the situation forces us to choose an option of what to do, such as dealing with someone's dead body. In those cases I think the safest thing to do would be to choose one of the most common methods of interment, since 1. The person was likely aware (though not necessarily) of the main methods of disposing of someone's body that are usually practiced by humans when someone dies, and probably had the opportunity during their life to object to them and request something different if they didn't like it. 2. Those methods are generally regarded as the most respectful options available, and so statistically someone would be likely to also agree with that sentiment. 3. They're also arguably some of the least invasive/violent/brutal ways of dealing with someone's body, though of course none of them are completely nice since you're disposing of a dead body after all.
Yes, I think so. Lay it to rest and stop f***ing with it, finally.
So is necrophilia acceptable if the person doesn't experience it and no one is around to see it?
If not I don't really see why necrophilia is unacceptable but using a person's distorted and preserved body as a display item is acceptable.
Doesn't the consideration of what a person would have wanted/not wanted to happen to their body after their death matter? While someone is alive, even when unconscious (asleep), it is a violation to exploit or violate their body in some way without their consent. Why is it that as soon as someone dies and loses physical control of their body, we should no longer respect their bodily autonomy and it's now fair game to do what we want with it? That's still their body that they may have felt uncomfortable with people doing things to.
Yeah but it's less brutal, violent and visceral than vultures tearing your body apart and leaving a skeleton. I agree cremation seems nicer actually but the fact remains that burying and cremation are the 2 most common ways of disposing a body, which the person (usually) had an opportunity to object to in their life if they preferred a different option, and generally seen as the most respectful & least invasive. So it can't be perfect but not violating/desecrating/defiling or exploiting/using a body for something or disposing of it in an unconventional and gnarly way seems like a reasonable thing to do.
And keeping someone's head preserved and distorted and using it for display purposes for all time seems way more disrespectful and exploitative of their bodily autonomy than really any form of just disposing of the body/laying it to rest normally.
If we consider post-mortem rights to matter morally, then something like necrophilia or defiling someone's body after their death would be immoral even if they don't experience it (obviously) and even if they don't have any family or loved ones around to witness it or know that it happened. As an extension of themself, their dead body has intrinsic moral value as far as an obligation to treat it respectfully in accordance with what the person would have wanted or been okay with, not merely instrumental value that it serves to loved ones or the environment. And since we consider a person to have more moral value than the environment (otherwise it could be ethical to kill people to remove their environmental impact), even if it was more harmful to the environment to dispose of a body in a certain way (e.g. standard burial or cremation) over other methods, it would then still be ethical to dispose of it in a way the person either opted for or was likely aware would be done, rather than a less commonly known/practised and more invasive yet eco friendly method such as sky burial (putting their body on a mountain top and letting vultures tear it apart).
In other words someone's bodily autonomy extends into death because they lived in their body their whole life, have a personal attachment to it as part of their identity, and just as they likely wouldn't want it violated while alive (even if they were asleep for example), also likely wouldn't want their body used for something disrespectful or really anything other than a standard form of interment (process of disposing of a body or putting it in a final resting place) that they would probably be aware would happen when they died, or is as generally uninvasive/dignified as possible, unless they specifically consented to something different or made a particular request for what would happen to their body.
IF all of the above is considered true, then (or just in general) wouldn't it be unethical/disrespectful or a rights violation to preserve a human's shrunken head for hundreds of years and then have it in an oddity collector's shop to sell it to people to display in their houses?
Sure, if you look at it from a utilitarian perspective I suppose.
"One's rights end where another's begin" - Morally speaking I agree with this, and I've heard this phrase used by animal rights activists to argue that humans shouldn't have the right to violate animals' (moral) rights to be free, to not be killed, harmed, exploited etc. at least by humans who are moral agents & don't need to do so.
Again, there is a difference between moral and legal rights. Just like in the case of human slavery where some humans technically had the legal right to enslave other humans - and I would agree that those laws were unethical to begin with since the moral rights of those slave owners to do things ("positive" rights) ended where the moral rights of the victims to be free from oppression/harm/etc ("negative" rights) began - many people argue that the current legal rights of humans to, basically, enslave & kill non-human animals, are similarly built on unethical laws, and don't translate to moral rights, in the sense that humans' rights also end where other animals' rights begin, morally speaking (such a position would of course entail action to liberate non-human animals via boycotting of animal exploitation (veganism) as a moral obligation, similarly to how when the laws that enabled people to own slaves were in place, boycotting the slave trade and being an abolitionist would also be considered a moral obligation by most people today).
I would also add that it seems that rights are a human concept/social construct, even just in the sense that we're interpreting what we believe to be ethical/right/moral, even if it's objectively correct; or we're enforcing laws based on what people believe is correct, or in some cases what serves certain people personally at the expense of what most people believe is right if the laws are corrupt/undemocratic.
So I think if we're going to claim that a certain right "just is", since we're the ones creating these concepts even if it's based on our observation of the world and an interpretation that was theoretically objectively correct if not a belief, it falls on us to rationalise and describe how we're coming to these conclusions and what we're basing this assertion of a certain right on. Otherwise, "it's a human right because it's a human right" is just circular reasoning and has no explanation. How are we formulating our basis for what is a human right? Is it legality? Is it moral beliefs or what we reason (or even logically prove somehow) is objectively morally right? Or ... what?
For example, in the case of animal rights theory, many people believe that there are moral rights that animals hold as moral patients, i.e. "negative rights" (= freedom from something being done to an individual) not to be exploited and killed by humans (moral agents), which extend logically from the belief (or fact) of human rights also being morally correct. And in this view, humans by way of our laws, do hold legally the "positive rights" (= freedom of an individual to do something) to exploit and kill animals, but these legal rights are simultaneously violating the moral rights of the animals to not have these things done to them by humans/moral agents.
In this case too, similar to what you said about the human condition, we could argue that something about the condition of animals (which could for example be sentience/consciousness, which they share with humans who are also animals), is the basis for them having these rights, but even then we're still speculating based on what we believe is either subjectively or objectively moral (since in that case obviously what's legal is in contradiction with what's deemed to be moral), and I'm not sure what third definition of rights could be being applied there whether it be in the context of human rights or animal rights.
Human rights describes the individuals that the rights pertain to, no? So those human rights could either be based in legality or in morality, which wouldn't always align. People may also have different beliefs about which human rights are morally justified and which ones aren't. If there's a third kind of human right that isn't based on what's legal or what's believed to be (or, fundamentally is) moral, then what's it based in?
Inherent to the human condition is interesting, but isn't that still a moral stance/belief? Even if you argue that it's objectively moral (and if you don't believe in moral subjectivism/moral relativism) or objectively the right thing for humans to have rights based on the kind of beings that they are, how is that separate from morality? As far as I know when someone says "this is a human right" they're usually asserting that they believe it's morally correct for humans to have a certain right, and that it would be wrong to violate that right. Occasionally someone says "this is a legally protected human right" to emphasise that it's a legal right enforced by law. I'm not sure by what metric rights could be ascribed or theorised conceptually to apply to certain individuals, if not law or ethics.
For example, you could say that the law did violate the enslaved's moral human rights, by assigning other humans a legal right to own them, which many at the time would have also believed was their moral right, even if we don't agree with that today or assert as being objectively immoral. If their human right to not be enslaved wasn't legal or moral, I don't see what the third option could be.
I'm fairly sure human rights can be used to describe either moral rights or legal rights. In most contexts people are using human rights in a moral sense, but it can be used in a legal sense too. If you're arguing for a third definition of human rights which isn't based in morality (what's good) or legality (what's been passed as law), then what is it based in?
They weren't a white supremacist and they were in favor of banning slavery while simultaneously believing it to be an authoritarian decision. They were using this to argue that authoritarianism can be justified sometimes. Your comment assumes that saying something is authoritarian means that you're against it.
But authority can be used/imposed to take away some else's authority, can't it? Or can authority only be used to do something to someone, not to prevent someone from doing something?
If it was legal for certain people to slap certain other people, then the people doing the slapping would have the authority over the people being slapped to slap them. But then if the law was changed and took away their authority to slap them, that would be using authority over those slappers to stop them. Does this make sense? Both can be true at the same time
Do you agree that someone can theoretically have a legal right to do something bad (as in, be legally allowed to do it) without that being a good or moral right for them to have?
I think you're only believing "right" to mean one thing and one thing only, when I'm using it in a sense where legality and morality don't necessarily coincide (even if they do in other contexts, conditionally).
So when I say they had the legal right to own slaves, and that right was taken away from them, that isn't a matter of opinion/belief because that's factually what happened, but that doesn't mean that I think they had the right morally speaking, which is a different concept.
I hope this makes sense.
At the time it was a legal right that some humans had, even though it came at the expense of others' moral right (that most people now believe they had, including myself) to be free. Please tell me you understand this. I don't think owning others is a human right in a moral sense, even if it was a legal right for some back then. There is a difference between legal rights and moral rights, because legality is not the same as morality. Sorry if that sounds obvious but I think it's necessary to clarify in order to approach this question with understanding.
Legal rights vs moral rights, that's the confusion.
They legally had that right at the time. I don't think they should have had that right, or that they morally have that right. I think we're talking about 2 different meanings of the term "right". In one sense (legally), they had the right, as in it was codified into law. That's not a belief as much as a fact. The part which concerns my belief is whether I think they should have had the right or if they have the moral right, which I don't. I hope that makes sense.
That's a weird assumption when I said it was good that it was abolished. Humans shouldn't have the right to own slaves is my belief. (But they did have that right at the time legally speaking). Or another way to put it, is that I don't think humans have the moral right to own slaves, even if they did have the legal right. This was a response to someone else telling me that banning slavery was an authoritarian decision. I just wanted to get clarification and try to understand it better.
Thanks, I think this answers my question. Even if it was a majority decision, it seems intuitively like the government (and the majority of people) imposed some kind of authority over the remaining slave owners (who were in the minority), but I understand that generally such a decision wouldn't be considered generally "authoritarian" just because it used that authority, unless it was imposed upon the majority of people.
Just as it imposed authority over them to take away their authority, right?
Obviously it was a good thing that it was banned, but I'm just wondering if it would technically be considered authoritarian.
As in, is any law that restricts people's freedom to do something (yes, even if it's done to also free other people from oppression as in that case, since it technically restricts the slave owner's freedom to own slaves), considered authoritarian, even if at the time that the law is passed, it's only a small section of people that are still wanting to do those things and forcibly having their legal ability to do them revoked?
Or would it only be considered authoritarian if a large part of society had their ability to do a particular thing taken away from them forcibly?
A Buddhist was saying to me that anything bad that happens to someone is deserved because they must have had bad karma as a result of having done something bad, either in this life or a previous incarnation. I don't believe in any of this personally, but I think it would be helpful to understand the idea of karma a bit better, because this seems problematic to me on its own.
Wouldn't it logically follow, then, that it's fine for any person to choose to commit harmful actions on another person, since if those harms did happen to befall the person (even if it was as a consequence of our willful decision to cause them), it would be deserved due to bad karma they had from a previous life (even if they were a young child/baby in their current life for example)? And then couldn't we use this to justify literally any harm we choose to do as being deserved due to assumed bad karma, making the idea of avoiding causing harm (ahimsa/nonviolence) meaningless or pointless?
Also, another way that this idea seems to contradict for me, is that if us choosing to harm someone else automatically means that they'd done something bad in a previous life to "deserve" it, then since we're physically capable of doing that to any individual that exists, wouldn't that mean that literally everyone has done something wrong in a past life, has bad harma and is deserving of that punishment? What if someone bombed all of humanity, would that mean that everyone had been bad in their past lives? Surely there would be some individuals that hadn't done anything particularly bad even in their past lives, didn't have bad karma and didn't deserve that punishment? Or is everyone just terrible (or has everyone been terrible in a past life) and therefore we all deserve to be punished for it, and it's okay for anyone to enact this punishment as they see fit?
By the way, I also believe in forgiveness and mercy even for those that DID do something wrong, but that's a separate idea I guess.
If I was going to try to rationalise this idea of karma in a way I was more comfortable with, I guess I would interpret it that if someone does something wrongful, they may bring bad karma back upon themselves, but that's something for the universe to decide how to address (it may even come about in ways that don't involve decisions of individuals) and it doesn't mean it's acceptable for us to choose to dole out punishments on any individual because we assume they deserve it. Not only does that seem highly likely to be causing injustices to innocent individuals, or at least showing a lack of mercy, but it also just seems like a way to justify or rationalise the harm we cause that we're actually doing for other reasons that have nothing to do with a perceived duty to serve karmic justice.
By the way, for context, the Buddhist person I was speaking to used this idea of karma to defend the evils humans cause to other animals in factory farming. Supposedly, all those animals must have had bad karma from a past life and therefore it was okay what we do to them. Which seems like a pretty gross idea to me, and very far away from the principle of ahimsa/nonviolence...
Have we really become so unempathetic as a society that the act of putting yourself in others' shoes is unbelievable to the point that people assume you must be part of the group you're defending? So I often see people being unfairly discriminatory and mean to certain types, attributes or qualities of people, which I know some would be offended and hurt by. But whenever I stick up for them, I get comments like this: "Tell me you're x without telling me you're x". "F*** off, x". A good example is gay people or trans people. I get heavily criticised for defending them and people immediately assume that I'm gay or trans just because I'm expressing that I empathise with how they're treated in society and think people should be kinder toward them. There are lots of other examples but I'm worried I'll be antagonised here just by saying them, so I picked some slightly more socially acceptable ones (yes there are some far less socially acceptable things than LGBT these days, in my experience, despite the rampant LGBTphobia).
Or what would that be called? Pretty much the same things that would usually be considered ableism, but when there's not a recognised disability involved but just health issue/s (which could be "disabling").
For example, not believing someone about their health issue, dismissing it or refusing to believe that it impacts their ability to function or can be a valid excuse for things (often solely on the basis that it's not a recognised disability), blaming someone's health issue on different things they aren't caused by (and trying to attribute it to the person's behaviour as if it's their fault), and/or claiming that their opinions can't be taken seriously due to their health problem
Would it be called health-based discrimination or something (despite somewhat mimicking the same mentalities as ableism)?
I do make a habit of carrying tissues everywhere, but I can imagine there would be cases where that's not practical...
They're also both very witty shows, and sort of a "joke a second" rather than joke a minute.. constantly hilarious and with so many little funny details packed in everywhere. Missing a show like this.
The word can have swearing but not genderisation which might be offensive (mother) nor allusions to sexual dominance (motherfucker). Nor, other possibly offensive connotations. It seems that the word is commonplace and people won't stop using it, so an alternative to the word may be useful. But the problem with alternatives, is that people might not use them unless they carry a meaning that's attention grabbing in some way, and when it comes to this word it needs to be able to be used in either a serious (non-funny) or comedic way.
I grew up with a thick Australian accent with a drawl I dislike, and have been consciously trying to change it for a while. The problem is I tried to make it sound more American at first but keep getting drawn to speaking "Britishly". Now it's a Frankenstein of all 3 accents and I don't know what to go with.
Some points for both:
▪︎ American accent sounds "cooler"
▪︎ British accent sounds more "proper and elegant"
- Australian accent sounds more "relaxed" (but I dislike this for myself, personally).
I want to be respectful but if they say they don't care what pronouns I use for them, that feels like it puts the decision on me to choose what to call them and I guess I would probably default to "they" because choosing a gender for them feels weird... am I wrong?
People often talk about swapping out plastic straws for other materials to help the ocean/fish and the environment, but they also complain about paper straws falling apart easily. Other alternatives that are slightly more sturdy like straws made of straw don't seem very common.
But do we even need straws? My first reaction was that any liquid can be drunk directly from the vessel it's in, and straws just add another level of convenience. If we don't want to use plastic straws and the alternatives mostly suck (actually all straws suck 🤓), why not just ditch straws entirely?
While child labor is viewed negatively, apparently child labor and child slavery aren't the same thing, and child labor though it could still be exploitative/cruel in other ways, can be done voluntarily by the child, and with fair treatment/compensation/etc.
I suppose you could make the argument that any child labor opens itself up to problems, but could it be done responsibly? And if not, then at what age do we draw the line of labor being not ok regardless of consent?
I thought, coconut milk is made by soaking the white bits of coconut fruit ("flesh") in water; while the coconuts naturally contain a clear liquid called "coconut juice" or "coconut water".
But do some coconuts naturally have a milky white liquid inside instead of a clear liquid?
I want to say something like this:
"These products are found to be healthfully risky."
"These products are found to be healthily risky."
"These products are found to be risky health-wise."
"These products are found to be medically risky."
Unfortunately "healthfully" and "healthily" seem to only be used in positive contexts, relating to good health rather than just to health/degree or nature of health in general. As a result, used like this it sounds like an oxymoron/contradiction.
"Medically" sounds too formal and also sounds more specifically focused on the risk of complicating other medical issues than about overall heath.
"Health-wise" is ok but it makes it difficult to combine other aspects into the same sentence, for example: "These products were found to be environmentally, economically, and 'healthfully' risky".