4 ms·

Yeah you can get lost in the details for as much time as you want and you can also justify pretty much every kind of behavior imaginable by artificially constru

Yeah you can get lost in the details for as much time as you want and you can also justify pretty much every kind of behavior imaginable by artificially constructing a scenario that favors whatever point of view you are trying to defend. Everything is subjective, I agree, but I think everyone could be mature enough to discern the line between "I can't avoid doing this" and "I'm just being an ass". If most people were honest enough to just think "this is wrong, I'll refrain from doing it" we wouldn't even need laws in the first place. The problem is not how subjective are the issues at hand, the problem is the attitude some people take when confronted with those issues. You can make extremely detailed laws that are designed to take into account every possible situation that may arise and still have someone study them well enough to discover a flaw and use that as a shield for, well, being an asshole. "Yeah the law says that I can't pee on toilets but I didn't pee on it, I just threw the pee there later from a bag. Gotcha!"

baddox 12y ago
There are much better examples of subjective cultural norms than greggman provided. The notion of personal space, for example, varies significantly between cultures, and there is no significant objective reasons one norm is better than other.
- bnegreve 12y ago
  Even among one culture (whatever it means) there are countless of better examples of things that cannot be sorted out in the jerk / non jerk category. Usually people that work at night, how much noise they can make when they came back home early in the morning? What about people practicing music instruments? Can students party at night if they have neighbors, just once in a year? once in a month? Is it ok to bring a stroller in crowded areas? etc. I don't think it's possible to give an answer to any of these questions that will get more than 60% agreement in any sufficiently diverse community, even given the full details of the situation.
  - UrMomReadsHN 12y ago
    In the general sense the the USA as a whole tends to value individual freedoms over the collective. It is a individualistic culture. Sometimes I wish that we were a more collective culture. Not much more, but I think there are pros to being more collective than we are because as humans we are social animals. I don't know if it is just me but I think perhaps we have gotten more individualistic in the past few decades and those questions would illicit different responses 40 years ago. Hitchhiking used to be common but now we are afraid strangers are going to kill us, even though the world is actually safer today. I even admit I am absolutely terrified of random stranger violence, irrationally. I know that if I were to become a victim of violence it would be far more likely to be someone I know who did it and not a random stranger on the street. Most people are not killers or serial rapists or muggers. Yet, I still can't shake the fear. But you are right, those answers would very much vary between countries. Those are my thoughts on the matter anyways, for what it is worth. (Probably not much :))

baddox 12y ago

There are much better examples of subjective cultural norms than greggman provided. The notion of personal space, for example, varies significantly between cultures, and there is no significant objective reasons one norm is better than other.

bnegreve 12y ago
Even among one culture (whatever it means) there are countless of better examples of things that cannot be sorted out in the jerk / non jerk category. Usually people that work at night, how much noise they can make when they came back home early in the morning? What about people practicing music instruments? Can students party at night if they have neighbors, just once in a year? once in a month? Is it ok to bring a stroller in crowded areas? etc. I don't think it's possible to give an answer to any of these questions that will get more than 60% agreement in any sufficiently diverse community, even given the full details of the situation.
- UrMomReadsHN 12y ago
  In the general sense the the USA as a whole tends to value individual freedoms over the collective. It is a individualistic culture. Sometimes I wish that we were a more collective culture. Not much more, but I think there are pros to being more collective than we are because as humans we are social animals. I don't know if it is just me but I think perhaps we have gotten more individualistic in the past few decades and those questions would illicit different responses 40 years ago. Hitchhiking used to be common but now we are afraid strangers are going to kill us, even though the world is actually safer today. I even admit I am absolutely terrified of random stranger violence, irrationally. I know that if I were to become a victim of violence it would be far more likely to be someone I know who did it and not a random stranger on the street. Most people are not killers or serial rapists or muggers. Yet, I still can't shake the fear. But you are right, those answers would very much vary between countries. Those are my thoughts on the matter anyways, for what it is worth. (Probably not much :))