Reported in Politico [pol] Minnesota Governor Walz does not understand “responsibility” or “unacceptable” behavior.
“I take full responsibility. There is absolutely no reason something like this should happen. Calls were made immediately. This is a very public apology to that team,” he told reporters at a press conference. “The issue here is trust. The community that’s down there that’s terrorized by this, if they see a reporter being arrested, their assumption is it’s because something’s going to happen that they don’t want to be seen. And so that is unacceptable.”
Parts of that are not entirely stupid, but most of it is. Consider the question of responsibility. What does that mean in this context? If I take responsibility for something, is that an action in itself, or is it a promise of future action? Or is it just a mouth-noise that means, “I hope this news cycle goes away.” And what does “unacceptable” mean? Especially if you call something you just accepted “unacceptable”?
Walz is deliberately speaking partial thoughts. Complete thoughts, in this situation, would sound like:
“This is a public apology to the news team, and I have directed the chief of police to identify and terminate the officers who showed such terrible judgement. Furthermore, the response of the police department to this crisis has been to exacerbate it – this, in spite of several agreements that the police would improve their sensitivity to discriminatory or over-use of violence. I am directing the formation of a task force that will examine the police department’s funding and the state’s relationship with the police union, to get recommendations for what leverage we can apply to get better compliance from our employees.”
Clearly, that’s purely fictional, but it’s an example of how to accept responsibility: you tie your acceptance of responsibility to a commitment to act. Otherwise, you’re just saying “oops.”
There’s a special case of a situation in which a screw-up is impossible to repair, such as – for example – when one of your ignorant thug cops kills a civilian or arrests a news crew on live TV. In those situations, you don’t accept responsibility, you say that you are holding the people who caused the situation personally responsible. Then, you can say that what happened is unacceptable and that you’re going to make sure that those other guys are going to find out exactly how unacceptable it is.
The Japanese Yakuza had a charming custom, where a gang member who screwed something up terribly was expected to cut one of their fingers off, box it up elegantly, and present it to the oyabun (boss) as a tangible demonstration that they understood and accepted responsibility. That’s how it’s done. Naval captains accept responsibility for the loss of their ship by going down with it.
I feel not the slightest bit of sympathy for Walz. Because anyone who wants to play in the political area of the US, at this time, has to understand that police violence is a Big Issue. If they’re not smart enough to pick up a few easy votes by holding the police union and chief of police’s feet to the fire, they’re too stupid to be in politics – they’re not even qualified to run for village idiot.
Self-portrait, 2014
Being a governor is a leadership job, and as such, they have to manage a large and complex organization. One of the best corporate CEOs that I met was a former county executive – after running a county in California, a software company with 150 people was a fun little project. I got to see how a top-notch executive takes over a business, of any size: they direct their mid-tier managers to prepare a strengths/weaknesses/budget/opportunity analysis and recommendations for each department, then they walk through it and load up on information. It would be impossible for a competent executive to take over as governor in a US state, and not check out whether the police in major metropolitan areas are a liability or an asset. A new governor would have to know those things – they’d want to know about ongoing lawsuits and budget, because no matter what your views are, having a violent police force is more expensive – your insurance is higher and so are your other liabilities. Executives must know and track these things.
What I’m getting at is that none of this ought to be a surprise to Walz. That’s what makes this whole thing an unnecessary tragedy. Governors and majors in the US have been rushing to take advantage of DoD programs to buy used military gear, and have either encouraged or made minimal fuss about programs that teach cops to think they are “warriors” (as opposed to thugs?) that want to crush resistance, not collaborate with the population. There’s no excuse, and the time to have accepted responsibility and realized that the situation was unacceptable was when he asked for the job.
Good post.
But the image is… um, odd. You seem taller barefoot than with boots on. :)
(Was that deliberate?)
This is stupid. There is nothing charming about it. If you screw something up, you try to undo the damage, make amends, try to improve things so that similar crap doesn’t happen again. Pointlessly injuring yourself is plain stupid. As for ship captains, obviously they shouldn’t be the first ones to run for life boats. But, assuming that it is possible to save all the lives on a sinking ship, committing suicide is stupid.
Geez, men and their stupid honor. To me this sounds like toxic masculinity. Or macho masochism or whatever. A person makes a mistake, they are too proud to live with the consequences and actually do something useful in order to fix the wrongs they did, so they kill or disfigure themselves to avoid the dishonor. Death before dishonor and whatnot. What an idiocy. You know, maybe the victims would prefer the guilty person to actually do something useful like improving the living conditions of those people they harmed. Or do you expect the victims to get pleasure and happy satisfaction from knowing that the guilty person chopped off their finger or killed themselves? Maybe they would instead prefer practical improvements in their living conditions?
[Andreas, here “a charming custom” is very clearly used as an sarcastic (ironic) expression of disgust. It is most certainly not being used literally. cf. ‘paradiastole’]
Of course it’s not a surprise to him. But what to you expect him to say? “This is how it works: you are an occupied population, we own you, and we can do whatever the fuck we want. My purpose here is to ensure your continued compliance. Vae victis!”
What Governor Walz understands, and you apparently do not, is what his job actually is. Hint: it’s not “serving his constituents”. (Except in the “it’s a cookbook!” sense…)
Andreas @ #2: At the individual level, yes, it’s stupid. But for the tribe/service/group, it’s a (very extreme) form of quality control. Everybody knows what failure means…. you’re scared off by that? Good, we don’t want you. You failed that badly, but you refuse to pay the price? You’re a liar and a traitor, out of the tribe, and held as an example of the worst possible kind of person. Closed social groups (such as military services, Yakuza, police, Mafia, etc.) are *defined* by high-cost traditions.
John Morales@#1:
But the image is… um, odd. You seem taller barefoot than with boots on. :)
(Was that deliberate?)
I shot it to be a composite, with stand-ins (light-stands) to mark my position(s) while I composed the scene. There is a good chance that I didn’t wind up in the right place.
The body armor was sourced, by me, for a friend who is an armor fetishist, and I diverted it briefly for my own purposes to make the photograph. I recall being in a bit of a hurry, since I had to re-box and ship the armor right away, and I forgot to take multiple pairs of shoes and wound up barefoot. I did not treat it as an important photograph, so there are lots of things I’d change if I were taking it more seriously. For one thing, I’m carrying a 1970s Pentax K1000 around my neck, and I strongly doubt one of those has been at a protest since the 1970s. I have plenty of digital cameras and I should have been holding one of those.
Andreas Avester@#2:
This is stupid. There is nothing charming about it. If you screw something up, you try to undo the damage, make amends, try to improve things so that similar crap doesn’t happen again. Pointlessly injuring yourself is plain stupid. As for ship captains, obviously they shouldn’t be the first ones to run for life boats. But, assuming that it is possible to save all the lives on a sinking ship, committing suicide is stupid.
As John Morales points out at #3, I was being a bit wry.
I always respect suicide as an individual’s choice.
In the case of a naval (military) captain, it’s understandable in the context that their career is over and, from what I have read, there’s going to be a board of enquiry that takes the captain and their actions to pieces, very publicly. If the circumstances involve a fuck-up (which, since we’re talking in the context of fuck-ups, we should assume) they’re going to spend years being grilled over and over again about every minute aspect of their mistakes. While I don’t argue that death might be preferable, it might seem that way to a person who is at the fulcrum of a great big fuck-up.
In the case of the yakuza fuck-up, their alternative is
– spectacular apology
– being cut to pieces by amateurs with swords and ending up in a dumpster or trash compactor
Forgiving yourself and looking forward, not back, is not an option, nor is quitting.
Japanese culture has a nasty streak involving forcing people to kill themselves through social pressure. Masaki Kobayashi’s film Harakiri (1962) explores this horribleness and some of its consqeuences, and features an amazing performance by Tatsuya Nakadai. Kobayashi was not exactly in favor of the intense toxic masculinity represented in the movie, in fact he was pretty anti-establishment and most film critics consider Harakiri to be showing a mirror to the establishment’s stupidity and cruelty. Which, it certainly was. Speaking of toxic masculinity: one key plot point in Harakiri is that some samurai would rather die than have another cut their samurai man-bun hair off. That may seem ridiculous but it’s one way of demonstrating conclusively that so-and-so lost a fight, because now they’re hairless for a few months, and I’ve got their top-knot in my pocket.
As always, I am terrible at noticing this. Oh well.
I can agree with this statement only as long as it truly is an individual choice and the person has carefully considered it and is absolutely confident that their life is unbearably unhappy or painful and they are certain that their circumstances cannot improve if they hang in for a while and seek alternative solutions.
But I absolutely loathe societies that encourage suicide in certain circumstances. The examples you mentioned here are of cases where suicide is socially encouraged or even expected.
I am not suggesting that people should forget and move on. I am suggesting that instead of doing something stupid like chopping off fingers they should do something productive like undoing/fixing/improving the harm they caused. And when the harm cannot be undone, then they should work to prevent similar fuckups from happening again in the future.
This is an example of a stupid culture.
Also, why the hell do people have to get into such nonsensical fights in the first place? Healthy competitions between people are fine, but societies should not tolerate any fights/competitions in which the loser is expected to die after a single loss.
Andreas Avester@#8:
as long as it truly is an individual choice and the person has carefully considered it and is absolutely confident that their life is unbearably unhappy or painful and they are certain that their circumstances cannot improve if they hang in for a while and seek alternative solutions.
Why do you feel you have any right whatsoever to put conditions on why someone else might want to end their life? They could want to end it out of boredom, or because it’s friday, or because they flipped a coin – it’s not for you to say. (You may want to review Albert Camus’ commentary on suicide, contra Nietzsche)
But I absolutely loathe societies that encourage suicide in certain circumstances.
I’m comfortable with societies that do/don’t encourage suicide/survival. But my basis for not wanting suicide to be encouraged is exactly the same as why I disagree with your wanting to say when people shouldn’t commit suicide – based on your opinion. You’re being just as arbitrary. I don’t see how any of it is anyone’s business. Although I could argue that “going down with your ship” is part of the social contract of Naval Officers and that, if you’re signing up for a job with a tradition of going down with your ship, then maybe you should pick a different career instead. I’m not really a contractarian, though I would argue that a contractarian would necessarily agree with that position; the Naval Officer should die.
societies should not tolerate any fights/competitions in which the loser is expected to die after a single loss.
Why? If it’s the participants’ decision, why not? I could imagine an MMA league in which the fights are to the death and the participants are actually happy about that. That would also be one of those social contract sort of situations.
I am not suggesting that people should forget and move on. I am suggesting that instead of doing something stupid like chopping off fingers they should do something productive like undoing/fixing/improving the harm they caused. And when the harm cannot be undone, then they should work to prevent similar fuckups from happening again in the future.
The way causality works, it is never possible to undo harm; all harm is permanent. And when junior yakuza see old Fuckup Fred of The Five Fingers and think “I’m going to be more careful!” As the fail.com poster says: “sometimes your life’s purpose is to serve as an example to others.”
When somebody wants to kill themselves because of pain, then the society should support them. For example, terminally ill cancer patients should be able to obtain euthanasia upon their request. When somebody wants to kill themselves because it is Friday, then the society should try to save their life. For example, if on a Friday doctors get a patient with sliced veins who is still alive, then doctors should try to save this person’s life.
What other people choose to do with their life is, indeed, up to them. What laws the society creates in order to either facilitate or hinder their choice is up to the society. I happen to have certain ideas about what kind of laws I would prefer. Your preferences can differ, but I do intend to advocate for the laws I prefer.
Reducing harm is not arbitrary. For example, there exist societies which encourage rape victims to kill themselves. This results in measurable suffering. If such societies stopped piling extra abuse on people who are already victims of various forms of abuse, then the result would be tangible improvement in terms of how much suffering happens on this planet.
Me demanding that societies should not encourage suicide is no different than me demanding that societies should stop racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia. It’s not arbitrary, instead I am demanding that certain groups of people stop being abused.
Telling another person to commit suicide is a form of abuse. Incidentally, successful, wealthy, white men aren’t the ones who are encouraged to kill themselves. Instead it’s various groups of already marginalized people who experience this particular form of abuse.
Incidentally, do you think it is fun to be a trans person who gets encouraged to commit suicide by transphobes? Don’t you think that being told to kill themselves can be detrimental for trans people’s emotional wellbeing?
And no, I am not going to accept that encouraging a trans person to kill themselves is wrong while simultaneously encouraging a ship captain who made some mistake to kill themselves is acceptable. In my opinion, some things are always wrong. Rape is always wrong even if the victim is in prison for having committed some heinous crime. Murder is wrong even if the victim gets executed in prison by the state. Etc.
In practice, encouraging suicides can have splash damage. Even if you encourage suicides for people who, in your opinion, deserve to die, then all this public talking about suicides will harm the mental health of some innocent person who happens to overhear it. There is a reason why there exist trigger warnings for discussions about suicides.
On top of that, as soon as some society normalizes and considers it acceptable to encourage suicide in some situations, some sadistic people would see that as a green light to encourage suicides also in other situations where you personally wouldn’t see it as justified.
This is a stupid tradition. Stupid traditions should be abolished.
I could imagine how in your hypothetical scenario most of the people who participate in this MMA league come from poor families and have accepted this job only because they couldn’t earn income in other ways. Have you noticed how in real life most of the dangerous jobs are done by people who happen to be poor and don’t have alternative employment options?
Sure, often fuckups cannot be undone. But if a black man gets murdered by the police, chopping off somebody’s finger isn’t going to help people of color. There is no tangible benefit for anybody. If instead the guilty person devotes their life to ending institutionalized racism and tries to make sure that similar tragedies do not happen again, then there is some actual improvement.
Do you seriously want to life in a disgusting and brutal society?
I prefer a civil society in which torture doesn’t exist. (Telling somebody to kill themselves or chop off their finger is something I would classify as torture.)
My preference is such, because I don’t own guns and have little muscle mass. In a brutal society I would be among the first people to get crushed and abused.
Incidentally, societies which allow various forms of torture usually abuse various marginalized groups of people the most. It would suck to be an AFAB trans bisexual person in such a hellhole. Only cis dudes who have always been and felt powerful seem to long for brutal societies.
Anyway, the point of the post (as I understand it) is that it takes more than just empty words to actually take responsibility.
The best way to determine whether someone is being genuine is to attend to their actual actions rather than to their claims. And this applies to claims about taking responsibility no less than to any others.
As I’ve noted before, that was one of the major reasons I became atheistic not long after puberty; I could see what Christians were actually doing (and did historically) and I could contrast it with their claims.
Same thing with this Governor.
Andreas:
Can I just say your comment at 1:49 is awesome? I love Marcus and generally agree with him on many things, but he sometimes has a blitheness towards many issues that lead to uncomfortable and superficial conclusions. We all need “correction” some times!
bmiller, personally, I prefer Marcus’ take. It’s more tolerant.
bmiller @#12
I try to make sure that my opinions are consistent. I oppose capital punishment, torture, and cruel and unusual punishments. Making somebody chop off their body parts is torture and a cruel and unusual punishment. The line between capital punishment and pressuring another person to commit suicide in order to “atone” for their misdeeds is blurry. If somebody truly wanted to commit suicide for intrinsic reasons, the society would not need to encourage them. If a society encourages somebody to kill themselves, then the chances are that this person wasn’t so eager to die on their own after all. Besides, it’s not like a society can possibly encourage suicide without emotional abuse. And abuse happens to be another thing I oppose.
I oppose some actions on principle also in cases when I dislike the victim and feel that they are a disgusting person. I believe this is necessary if I want us to have a civil and kind society. The moment a society accepts that sometimes a bit of torture is OK, some innocent people are bound to suffer.
John Morales @#11
I completely agree that “it takes more than just empty words to actually take responsibility.” But I think that some ways how to take responsibility are better than others. Chopping off your fingers or killing yourself is stupid and doesn’t improve anything. Actually doing something productive in order to compensate to the victim and make sure that similar fuckups do not happen again in the future is more useful.
Andreas Avester@#10:
When somebody wants to kill themselves because of pain, then the society should support them. For example, terminally ill cancer patients should be able to obtain euthanasia upon their request. When somebody wants to kill themselves because it is Friday, then the society should try to save their life.
Why? Why not simply favor the will of the individual? If they want to be dead, let them be dead and make it as easy as possible. If they want to be alive, help keep them alive and happy. By saying that “society should try to save their life” you’re making a bullshit move, democratizing “society”‘s decision as though there actually is such a thing. In case you hadn’t noticed, society specifically does not agree about the individual’s rights to die and when and how. But if you start placing limits on when and how and why, you will inevitably be doing nothing more than enacting your opinion.
You think society should save their life but that’s just, like, your opinion, man – as St Lebowski would say.
What other people choose to do with their life is, indeed, up to them.
You just contradicted yourself. That’s OK but I think you should admit that you’re being arbitrary. It’s important (as we’ll see in a moment)
What laws the society creates in order to either facilitate or hinder their choice is up to the society. I happen to have certain ideas about what kind of laws I would prefer. Your preferences can differ, but I do intend to advocate for the laws I prefer.
“Society” does not have an opinion about these things. At best, there is an emergent consensus – but in this case there isn’t even that. And you’re not able to keep from contradicting your own opinion from one sentence to the next, why do you think “society” is going to be able to form a consistent opinion? I think you’re being fair to label your advocacy as “laws I prefer” but why not acknowledge that your preferences are merely your opinion? I’m not saying your opinion isn’t important – it is – but I don’t see why your opinion should possibly trump someone else’s opinion what to do about their own life. Basically, you’re trying to inject your opinion into the picture by masquerading it as “society” – which doesn’t have an opinion and almost certainly doesn’t completely share yours.
Reducing harm is not arbitrary.
Your opinion about what constitutes “harm” to someone else is at least partially arbitrary. That’s easy to see, because you and they might not agree. Or, you might. But in the case where you agree, why didn’t you just accept their opinion in the first place without injecting your own, and in the case where you disagree, why does your opinion trump theirs?
I don’t see how you can make such an exaggerated claim given the rather obvious fact that there are lots of divergent opinions about what constitutes “harm” – I know some people who would want to ban all cigarettes because they harm the user. I know one person who thinks tattoos are awful and should not be allowed. I know others who wish to control people’s caloric input and there are plenty who appear to want to control other people’s gender identity – all trying to mask their opinion behind an argument of “harm.” You cannot simply assert “harm” without acknowledging that we’re talking about your opinion, and then your whole argument falls face-down on the floor.
For example, there exist societies which encourage rape victims to kill themselves. This results in measurable suffering. If such societies stopped piling extra abuse on people who are already victims of various forms of abuse, then the result would be tangible improvement in terms of how much suffering happens on this planet.
“Measurable suffering”? Really? What are the units of that measure and how is it measured?
I share your opinion that such societies are making a bad move, but I acknowledge that it’s just my opinion – and it’s my opinion that they’d be better off reducing rape incidence rather than trying to reduce rape-related suicide, if the criteria is some sort of “harm” it seems to me that we should look at root causes more than effects. But it’s my opinion they’re all important. On the other hand, it’s just my opinion and rather obviously those societies don’t agree with me.
In my opinion, some things are always wrong
That’s the root of the matter. It’s your opinion and you’re welcome to it. The problem comes when we want everyone to share our opinion and they don’t.
This is a stupid tradition. Stupid traditions should be abolished.
It’s not the choice of the person who follows the tradition? Of course they are being indocrinated in a certain set of traditions, as we are indoctrinated in other traditions. Saying that it’s your opinion that someone’s tradition is stupid doesn’t mean they necessarily agree with you, or will stop.
I’m vaguely reminded of Charles Napier’s response to the Indian then-custom of Suttee (widow burning):
The British custom Napier was referring to was “imperial dictates” – he was used to being able to direct and expect obedience.
I happen to agree that the wife-burning ought not to be a custom, but that’s my opinion. You’ll notice that Napier correctly casts the issue as a difference of opinion and practice and doesn’t reify British imperial opinion as always right – he just treats it as a matter of differential power. That’s the nihilism in me coming out: ultimately the resolution to these differences of opinion seem to boil down to power. If you had the power to enforce your opinions, then your opinion suddenly matters a whole lot, whereas if you don’t your opinion isn’t worth anything.
I could imagine how in your hypothetical scenario most of the people who participate in this MMA league come from poor families and have accepted this job only because they couldn’t earn income in other ways. Have you noticed how in real life most of the dangerous jobs are done by people who happen to be poor and don’t have alternative employment options?
That’s a basic Marxist critique that can be applied to almost any economic activity where there is inequality. That’s another case of focusing on the effect rather than the root cause – it might make more sense to say that instead of banning “to the death MMA” it’d be wiser to build an egalitarian society. But the fact is that what I described already exists – it’s called “the US military” and it does pitch its appeal to poorer people. It’s a fact. It’s my opinion the US military shouldn’t exist, but it does. And there are a lot of poor people who are happy to pursue service in the military as a means of social advancement. At what point do we want to trust an individual to make a choice that may be dangerous to them? I have opinions (my opinion is: “let’s look at it on a case by case basis”) It’s my opinion that boxing ought not be a sport, but it is. Clearly my opinion is not being heeded.
Sure, often fuckups cannot be undone. But if a black man gets murdered by the police, chopping off somebody’s finger isn’t going to help people of color. There is no tangible benefit for anybody.
No, not “often” – I observed that as we understand causality, no fuckup can ever be undone. One can try to make people feel better about it, or whatever, but something that happens is in the past and cannot be changed. Then, you get into the question of what constitutes a remedy and who gets to decide if it is adequate and how. But the fact is that if someone does something, barring time travel, it’s not going to change.
I’m not advocating chopping fingers off, I merely presented it as an example of why this is a more complicated problem than you seem to want it to be. Also, in the context of the Yakuza, it’s tricky to figure out where choice is being applied: could the screw-up run to another country and hide? Is their finger and the pain a good trade-off? Ultimately, who decides, the gang or the gang-member? I don’t know but I have opinions. But, as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, it’s not my opinion that matters it’s the gang and the gang-members’ opinions.
Same applies to “benefit” – whether something benefits someone or not is also a matter of opinion. Putting the Minneapolis cop in prison doesn’t benefit the family of the victim, or the people of Minneapolis, in my opinion. Shooting him would be cheaper, in my opinion. Asking him to do himself a Jeffrey Epstein in his cell would be cheaper, in my opinion. But it’s just my opinion and he probably won’t see things my way. Although, in my opinion, the guy ought to commit hara-kiri or hang himself because it would match my bizarre sense of balance. Again: we are fortunate perhaps that the world does not share my opinion about balance. But it doesn’t share yours, either.
Do you seriously want to life in a disgusting and brutal society?
I appear to, and the alternatives are worse. So, yes. Again, my opinion.\
I know you were being rhetorical, trying to imply that if my opinions were in force, society would be more disgusting and more brutal, but in my opinion if I were god-emperor of the US, the society would be more just and less disgusting. There would be a lot of unhappy widows of former police officers running about, and we’d have to take care of them, but that’s all my opinion anyway. They’d come around.
I prefer a civil society in which torture doesn’t exist. (Telling somebody to kill themselves or chop off their finger is something I would classify as torture.)
Back to root causes. You might want to consider that a guy was tortured to death by being publicly strangled by a cop. Suggesting to the cop that they privately strangle themselves, or perform hara-kiri, or cut off a finger to show that they’ve gotten the point of how badly they fucked up isn’t going to undo what happened but perhaps they could step up and serve as an example to others. Of course, that’s not going to happen because, rather obviously, the cop doesn’t share my opinions about what a decent human being ought to do in the first place.
My preference is such, because I don’t own guns and have little muscle mass. In a brutal society I would be among the first people to get crushed and abused.
If you lived in a brutal society you might choose to learn how to be more brutal. I don’t know.
I’m not proposing that we should make things worse, I’m questioning our ability to make things better. As you know, once a cop strangles someone to death, there is no “undo” on that fuck-up. If we were Vikings we might appeal to the king’s justice and the king might say that the victim’s family got to decide from a list of options (none of which would be anything like non-brutal) But who decides? And what are the options?
I don’t see that there is a “society” that decides anything. The process of “democracy” is an attempt to formulate a process where an entire society has a way of weighing its members’ opinions – but that’s rather obviously broken and that is, in fact, what we are right now adjudicating in the court of public opinion over here in the US. It appears that a lot of people share the same opinion as I do about policing, but I doubt highly that any significant plurality of them share a common opinion as far as what to do about it beyond root cause analysis that the police are too violent. How to get them to stop being so violent? I see opinions all over the place ranging from defunding the cops to inviting some of them to hang themselves and do us all a favor.
Incidentally, societies which allow various forms of torture usually abuse various marginalized groups of people the most. It would suck to be an AFAB trans bisexual person in such a hellhole. Only cis dudes who have always been and felt powerful seem to long for brutal societies.
I think that’s a side-effect of how brutal societies have been structured historically – the cis dudes want to live in Viking times because they believe they understand how things would be resolved in that time and in those circumstances. They don’t realize that they’re completely wrong about that, of course. One of the problems with the king’s justice is it depends heavily on how much the king has been drinking and/or if that ingrown toenail is giving him pain on a particular morning. [c.f Woodrow Wilson and the Versailles conference, where he was suffering from the influenza and couldn’t think straight – arguably helping cause WWII]
I’m not a fan of brutal societies, but that’s what we’ve got.
But why do they want to be dead? Consider for example trans people among whom suicide rates are much higher than average. Why is this happening? Are we all as a group so eager to die for intrinsic reasons? Or maybe the problem is a society that abuses and discriminates us and encourages us to kill ourselves? Personally, I have a thick skin and I’m good at shrugging off verbal/emotional abuse. But some of the shit that people have told me could definitely cause a more sensitive person to become suicidal.
Alternatively, consider people who choose to die because they lack social support. Maybe they feel lonely. Maybe they struggle financially. Maybe they cannot singlehandedly cope with some personal problem. The society should help such people overcome their problems and support them in hopes that maybe at least some of them can have a happy life after all.
In our current abusive, bigoted, and capitalist society many people choose to commit suicide not because they want to die, but because they feel desperate and cannot find a way how to lead a happy life. Some of these people could flourish if other people supported them instead of subjecting them to abuse.
I support euthanasia for terminally ill patients who suffer pain, because in such cases the society cannot cure them or help them in any other way, thus assisted suicide is the best way how we can help these people. But if some trans teen tries to commit suicide due to getting bullied, then giving them a deadly injection is not the best way how to help. Instead we should try to help this person lead a happy life in a tolerant and supportive society.
Of course, how I choose to react to other people’s suicide attempts is up to me. They can accept my attempt to help or they can choose to kill themselves anyway. That’s up to them.
Society is an abstract entity that cannot have an opinion. But majority of people who live in this society can have a similar opinion and reach a consensus in order to pass laws that regulate how individual people have to act in specific situations.
I am fully aware that most people in the legal entity (aka country) where I happen to live do not share my opinion about this topic. I also believe that most people in this country are bigoted and bloodthirsty assholes whose moral attitudes are utterly messed up by some stupid religions.
When I say that the society should act in a certain way in specific situations, I imply that this is how I would prefer majority of people to act and that these are the kind of laws I want in the country where I live. I am very aware that my preferences are very different from what majority of Latvian citizens want. Like I said, they are bigoted assholes who don’t give a fuck about the suffering of some minority groups of people.
If we agreed that harm is arbitrary and a matter of opinion, somebody might argue that racism isn’t harmful and a black man having his neck broken by white police officers doesn’t constitute tangible, real, and measurable suffering. After all, what are the units of that measure and how is it measured? Thus the question of whether it is OK to murder people of color becomes a matter of opinion.
I got the impression that in this very blog post you argued against racism and murders of people of color, you asserted that the victims are harmed.
If some people want to burn themselves because of some tradition (for intrinsic reasons and without being coerced by the rest of society), then that’s their choice. If some people want to burn other people or force other people to commit suicide because of some tradition, than I will argue in favor of abolishing said tradition.
Sure, whoever has power gets to enforce their opinions. I am fully aware that this planet is a shithole for majority of humanity who are powerless.
But just because something is status quo doesn’t mean that I am willing to accept it as good and desirable. Nor do I want people to continue doing all the shitty things that happen right now.
If human societies live in some specific ways then more people have happier and better lives than if they live in different ways. For example, a society in which slavery is forbidden and trans people are socially accepted is better than a society in which slavery exists and trans people are murdered. Of course, a transphobic slave owner of the latter society would disagree with me. Still, I cannot muster enough nihilism to accept all moral opinions as equally valid and stop advocating for a more humane society that doesn’t discriminate anybody.
If it were possible to build an egalitarian society in which only adrenaline junkies who truly want to participate in death matches for intrinsic reasons do it, then I would have no objections against death matches happening in such a hypothetical society. As a matter of fact, I already have zero objections to wealthy people risking their lives while doing extreme sports (assuming their actions are truly intrinsically motivated and freely chosen). But I do object to cases when the rest of society forces poor and marginalized people to risk their health or their lives. For a practical example, I do not oppose a rich white person deciding to climb a mountain for fun. I do object when this person uses their financial power to hire a Sherpa mountain-guide who accepts the job only because they are poor and need money. The wealthy person could instead climb the mountain alone and donate their spare money to a charity that helps impoverished local families so that the would-be mountain-guide gets to feed his kids also without risking his life.
My opinion is that I would never override the decision of another person whose living conditions are already shitty. If they feel that joining an army or becoming a mountain-guide is the best alternative for them, then I do not have a right to imagine that I know better what’s best for somebody else.
But I would advocate for social changes, ending various forms of discrimination, states financially helping poor people whenever possible, etc. so that as few people as possible would need to make decisions about risking their lives.
I remember you writing blog posts in which you argued against capital punishment and torture. I see a double standard here. Is torture now OK because you despise the cop?
For the record, I do think that these cops who killed this black person are absolutely horrible. But I still would never advocate anything that qualifies as torture or a cruel and unusual punishment.
Sure. I’m fully aware that we live in a brutal shithole. But I want to make the society we’ve got better. And I oppose suggestions to make the society even more brutal than it already is.
At first I skipped answering this point, because I can anticipate this getting terribly stuck in the weeds.
How to measure harm that stems from emotional abuse (like encouraging suicides) or torture (like forcing people to cut off body parts)? Or harm in general from various forms of discrimination and abuse? You can count suicide rates, life expectancy, income inequality, access to healthcare, sanitation, education/literacy rates, rates of substance abuse, antidepressant usage. You can look at living standard (various metrics for that one). You can even make a poll in which you ask people how happy they are with their life and calculate how large percentage of people in some society expresses satisfaction with their life. You can look at how healthy people are in some society (various health problems have names and it’s possible to keep statistics about their prevalence).
Of course, at this point I can anticipate that you will argue that any and every metric humans have attempted to use in order to measure our life quality is crude and deeply flawed. This would be true, of course. It’s not like there exists some universal unit to measure human suffering. And yes, I know that utilitarianism has its problems. How the hell can we figure out what maximizing happiness even means? Personally, I don’t embrace utilitarianism.
But I do think that human suffering is real and whether it exists or no cannot be just a matter of opinion.
I can accept all opinions as equally valid in some cases. For example, if other people believe that Dadaism is great art, they are welcome to disagree with me, and I won’t object when they put Dadaist artworks in museums.
But I won’t accept all opinions about human suffering as equally valid. If I did so, I would have no right to, for example, try to stop a genocide from happening in front of my eyes. For example, somebody might argue that slavery and holocaust didn’t cause any suffering for the victims. If I agreed that human flourishing/suffering are not tangible and just a matter of opinion, I would be forced to consider these racist/antisemite opinions as equally valid to my own. And I would be obliged not to oppose slavery and genocides just like I also do not oppose putting Dadaist artworks in museums. Just like people are welcome to create and appreciate Dadaist art, I would have to allow people who consider genocides as non-harmful and beneficial to freely practice genocides.
In cases where I accept that all opinions are equally correct and equally valid, I have no right to enforce my own opinion.
For example, TERFs have the opinion that telling trans women to kill themselves is a good idea. I have an opinion that this kind of transphobia is harmful and wrong, because it causes suffering for trans women. I do not think that in this case both opinions are equally valid, instead I believe that TERFs are wrong. Trans people’s suffering is real and tangible even if various ways how we can try to quantify and measure it remain crude and imperfect. And if we eradicate trans discrimination, then the resulting society becomes are better place to live in. Hence I believe that I have a right to try to try to forbid TERFs from abusing trans people. But I do not have a right to try to forbid other artists from creating Dadaist artworks even if I believe that they are ugly as hell. Dadaists are welcome to have an opinion that differs from mine, and I will acknowledge their opinion as valid even if I strongly disagree. But I don’t acknowledge TERF opinions as valid.
Andreas, since the topic at hand seems to have gone by the wayside,
Opinions are opinions; conclusions (however tentative) reached by means of a valid and sound application of a consistent inference system are effectively facts (provisional to the degree of tentativeness) within that system, not opinions.
What I think you intended to express is something like “in cases where I accept the premises”. Specifically, TERFs presume that gender and sex are not separable.
Given you are someone who is adept at debating, it seems odd to me that you are confusing the concept of validity with that of soundness.
(cf. https://www.iep.utm.edu/val-snd/)