4 ms·

To continue the steel manning, here's a thought experiment: What if a large percentage of people decided to exclude you from everything for some arbitrary reas

by api 4y ago

To continue the steel manning, here's a thought experiment: What if a large percentage of people decided to exclude you from everything for some arbitrary reason. Just you. People know who you are and pass you up for jobs, promotions, home loans, value your contributions less, etc. The reasons don't make sense. They're impervious to argument. In some cases people deny that they're doing it, or seem genuinely unaware, but they're doing it just the same. To you. Only to you. Nobody is initiating violence. Nobody is actively stealing from you or harming you. They're just boycotting you, excluding you, assuming the worst about you by default... What would you do? How long would this have to go on for you to turn to violence if nothing else made any difference?

belorn 4y ago
First off, I would define that as violence if it came to an extreme. Imprisoning people is to exclude people from everything, including space to move around. Society in general define that as violence. So following this thought experiment we must then enter the philosophical discussion to define what violence is. Excluding people from everything in modern society causes harm. Starvation, exposure to the environment, psychological harm, atrophy of muscle and body. Excluding people from health care lead to further harm and eventually death. Taken to the extreme and we got murder. If a majority of people voted to allow murder and violence then the most likely outcome is a civil war, but if in this thought experiment we are talking about only allowing murder and violence towards a single person, the best strategy would be to flee and seek asylum. If we however limit this thought experiment to an degree which isn't murder and violence, and within the already set limits that government laws has specified (such as the European law of human rights), then if a large percentage of people decided to exclude me from a limited number of things, the best approach would be to political active to make the law even better while at the same time personally avoiding those people. No violence required. Mahatma Gandhi and nonviolent resistance is a good model when laws are unjust and need changing.

by api 4y ago

belorn 4y ago

First off, I would define that as violence if it came to an extreme. Imprisoning people is to exclude people from everything, including space to move around. Society in general define that as violence. So following this thought experiment we must then enter the philosophical discussion to define what violence is. Excluding people from everything in modern society causes harm. Starvation, exposure to the environment, psychological harm, atrophy of muscle and body. Excluding people from health care lead to further harm and eventually death. Taken to the extreme and we got murder. If a majority of people voted to allow murder and violence then the most likely outcome is a civil war, but if in this thought experiment we are talking about only allowing murder and violence towards a single person, the best strategy would be to flee and seek asylum. If we however limit this thought experiment to an degree which isn't murder and violence, and within the already set limits that government laws has specified (such as the European law of human rights), then if a large percentage of people decided to exclude me from a limited number of things, the best approach would be to political active to make the law even better while at the same time personally avoiding those people. No violence required. Mahatma Gandhi and nonviolent resistance is a good model when laws are unjust and need changing.