Trinidad, on 2014-April-17, 02:13, said:
I know that you don't think it is OK to not tolerate people who promote beliefs. In fact, you don't think that is OK at all. It's horrible. Freedom to express beliefs and opinions is extremely valuable and important to you.
... except when those beliefs are horrible beyond your imagination and, in your view, damage society. (And the examples you listed are horrible in the views of many people, including me.)
Now, if you and I are allowed to make an exception for those beliefs that are too horrible for our imagination then certainly others are also allowed to make similar exceptions. After all, we are not morally superior to the other N billion people on this planet.
- Vladimir Putin thinks that promoting gay rights is horrible beyond his imagination and is damaging society.
- The religious right think that promoting abortion or evolution theory is horrible beyond their imagination and is damaging society.
- Kim Jong-un thinks that promoting freedom of speech is horrible beyond his imagination and is damaging society.
It is important to realize that - though they may seem outrageous to you and me - these are not outrageous ideas. They are well established, and widely accepted in and supported by their respective communities. At the same time, Putin, Kim and the religious right are perfectly correct that these will change their society, and, since they are happy with their society as it is, "change" means "damage".
So, if we want to promote evolution theory or free choice to the religious right, it is imperative that we allow pedophiles, or religious fanatics, to promote their ideas and beliefs, even if we think they are extremely harmful to society.... because others think the same about our ideas.
So, let the pedophiles and religious fanatics come and let them vent their opinions. We will beat them with our arguments ... and with our respect, rather than with our intolerance.
Rik
I appreciate the tone of this post.
And I appreciate that your view is politically correct and reflects a common view that all points of view have equal status and are entitled to be debated in public, even if that debate entailed a huge amount of propaganda and advertising. Thus a billionaire pedophile should be entitled to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, pounds, euros etc on advertising his view that having sex with a 4 year old is good for the adult and the child.
Now, that probably wouldn't work, I accept. However, another billionaire might respond with a campaign advocating the murder of the first, and offer a hundred million reward for doing the deed.
That would be acceptable to you?
If not, why not? Are you saying that it would be ok to offer the reward but not to do the killing? How would you distinguish between the moral culpability of the reward-offeror and the killer?
My view is rhat we are social animals and as such when we live in a society, the society is entitled to create rules, which rules constrain the range of permissible actions.
Some societies, indeed all of which I am aware, attempt to constrain thought as well, and I am not happy with that. I have no problem with socirty constraining action however
I would not want to live in a society in which there were no constraints against rape, murder, assault, selling untested and harmful drugs, failing to keep food clean, etc.
I think it naïve to say that one should allow someone to cry 'fire' in a crowded theatre, or to say that one should be allowed, in a room full of intoxicated people, to urge that they riot. I think it wrong that one should punish a person who shoots an abortion doctor on religious grounds yet permit a religious leader to take out ads telling people that god wants them to kill abortion providers. Lest you think I am picking on religion, I would think it wrong for a person to kill a priest or iman because an atheist had taken out ads saying that the only way to stop the evil of 'x' religion was to kill its ministers, and I think society can and should sanction the one who promoted the murder as well as the one who did the act.
I think that to assert otherwise is to idealize human behaviour and to ignore psychological realities. It is a sociological equivalent to the economic ideas of libertarianism.
Humans are not rational animals. We do not, as a species, make purely rational decisions, individually or collectively. That means, of course, that sometimes we enact constraints that some of us find abhorrent or misguided. The reality is that we are going to have constraints on behaviour and, unfortunately, we need them. I see no moral difference between saying thou shalt not kill and saying thou shalt not tell others to kill. It seems that you do. I wish that humanity was composed only of people who would ignore commands to kill, and then I'd have no problem saying that one shouldn't punish the promotion of murder. But we aren't that way as a species. Incite people enough, and some will act out. Look at the riots that happen in some muslim countries when a Koran is burned. If you remember back long ago (tho you may be too young) look at Jonestown.
Maybe the day will come when we, as a society, evolve to the point that people cannot be persuaded, by lies and appeals to prejudice, etc, to inflict harm on others. If and when that day comes, I doubt that we'd need many constraints at all. However, we don't live in that world and until we do, as social animals living in a society that constructs rules, we are entitled to say that some behaviours are prohibited, and that imo includes prohibiting the encouragement of the prohibited act.
The distinction I draw between allowing people to think, feel and believe as they choose, but not to be free to promote action based on that belief may seem arbitrary to you and maybe it is. Deciding where the dividing line is between an expression of one's feelings and advocating acting on those feelings may be difficult. I have no desire, for example, to say that a person cannot argue that abortion is wrong. I draw the line at advocating that one who kills an abortion doctor will be rewarded in heaven.
In a perfect world that distinction need not be drawn, since no one would be induced to murder. Until that day arrives, I endorse the right of a society to prohibit certain acts and the active promotion of those acts.
Edit: just to return the pedophile organization for a moment, since that is a concrete source of disagreement between us, the reason I support the banning of any organization that says that sex with young children is healthy is that I would hope that many people who have pedophilic urges are able to avoid acting out because they know that it is wrong to do so. Surely some of these unfortunate people would find their resolve slipping away if they saw that there was an active, acceptable campaign telling them that it was ok to have sex with a young child.
When my choice lies between allowing the promotion of sexual abuse of children or reducing the risk of such abuse, it is an easy decision to make. I say this knowing that one can easily make a slippery slope argument, and I don't say there is no merit to such arguments. I do say that if the choice is between no rules at all and some rules that need to be carefully chosen then, even with the inevitability that some of the rules being, to me at least, wrong...I go with the rules and hope that we can all choose the rules carefully. I'd love to live in a society where we needed no rules, but that hasn't yet arisen.
'one of the great markers of the advance of human kindness is the howls you will hear from the Men of God' Johann Hari
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