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If I am a not responsible for other people’s life choices it is OK to revel in their misfortune. No one is responsible for other people’s actions. Therefore it
by dambi0 3y ago
If I am a not responsible for other people’s life choices it is OK to revel in their misfortune. No one is responsible for other people’s actions. Therefore it is always OK to revel in other people’s misfortune?
Or is the mechanism different?
- jvanderbot 3y agoCan't someone feel good that they dodged a bullet that another person was not willing to dodge? That's whats going on here. OP isn't going to a buffet and mocking starving kids - both folks were intelligent people, one of whom is justifying their life trajectory, and the other is taking a different tack. I bet you'd be able to conjure up instances where you go "whew I'm glad I didn't do what that person did". We all can. That's not reveling in their misfortune, it's learning.
- darick 3y agoI would argue that the difference in phrasing is what makes OP come across badly. "I'm glad I didn't do what that person did" just evokes satisfaction with your decision, perhaps relief that you made the choice you did. Saying you felt "so smug I didn't do what that person did", definitely comes off worse IMO. Now you are not just happy with your choice, there's this sense of self satisfaction/superiority that's a bit unsavoury.
- jvanderbot 3y agoThat is true, but a generous interpretation of the post leaves plenty of room for a benign intent.
- dambi0 3y agoMy pleasure in avoiding being shot isn’t enhanced if someone else is. If someone dies in a car accident I can be glad it wasn’t me, but I haven’t learned anything. If I do learn something from someone else’s misfortune, I could be pleased, relieved, possibly proud but I’m less sure about being smug. I still don’t quite grasp the point about not being responsible for other people’s actions. If it’s never true then I’m not sure it’s all that useful. It seems more like this is about our perception of other people’s responsibility?
- jvanderbot 3y agoThis is quite pedantic at this point - A generous reading of my posts and OPs shouldn't trigger this kind of vitriol. I apologize if my statement came off as dismissive of others' misfortune. I maintain the spirit of my statement: There is nothing malign about being glad at avoiding misfortune that others could also avoid (not random things like shootings - jeez this is nuts to compare "choice of lab" to "random acts of violence").
- dambi0 3y agoThis is an interesting way to raise good faith interpretation of discussion.
- kergonath 3y ago> A generous reading of my posts and OPs shouldn't trigger this kind of vitriol. It should not, and you should not have to defend yourself against this kind of behaviour. I would not have phrased it like that, but I agree with your message.
- dambi0 3y agoCould you help me understand which posts enjoy generous reading and which are not so lucky please? Can I always assume the generosity to ignore what’s written? There’s a post in this very thread that dismisses the parent comment as stupid of all things. I wasn’t sure how much generosity it warranted. Thanks.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago> Can't someone feel good that they dodged a bullet that another person was not willing to dodge? Sure. But that doesn't mean you can't show some basic human sympathy to the people who didn't "dodge the bullet".