Example: I believe that IP is a direct contradiction of nature, sacrificing the advancement of humanity and the world for selfish gain, and therefore is sinful.
Edit: pls do not downvote the comments this is a constructive discussion
Edit2: IP= intellectal property
Edit3: sort by controversal
I thought of a few stupid things, but everyone talking about kids made me think of this one.
I am strongly against Trickle down suffering.
“I put up with this terrible thing when I was your age, and even though we could stop it from happening to anyone, it’s important that we make YOU suffer through it too.”
Hazing, bullying, unfair labor laws, predatory banking and more. It’s really just the “socially acceptable” cycle of abuse.
I agree, and I take it this far: “I worked hard and paid for my house, why should some lazy loafer get housing for free? I paid 24,000$ in tuition, why should kids get free college?” I think that, at some point, one guy has to be the first guy to benefit from progress, and all the people who didn’t benefit just have to suck it up. I would 100% pay a much higher tax rate if it meant that homelessness was gone, hunger was gone, kids got free education… I’m Canadian, so I don’t need to say this about health care. Yeah, I paid an awful lot of mortgage, but if someone else gets a free house? Good!
UBI is coming to Canada sooner rather than later.
Strongly agree. Someone has to break the cycle of abuse, it’s wrong to contribute to the cycle so that it can continue harming others in the future.
Edit, one example that comes to mind is the extremely long shifts in the medical field in America. One guy who was really good at being a doctor happened to be someone who voluntarily took on very long hours. Now there is this persistent mindset that every medical worker must accept long hours and double shifts without notice and without complaints.
There are a few cases where it benefits the patient to avoid handing off the case to another doctor, but generally it just limits the pool of people who are willing to go into the medical field, and limits the career length and lifespan of the people who do go for it.
Trickle down suffering is a great term for it, I’m going to use that for future use.
I sort of disagree. Some pain and suffering is what helps some people become better versions of themselves. Doesn’t work for everyone though, so it shouldn’t be the default experience, but rather a last resort.
I agree with OP, and I think you may as well but are stating it differently. Hardships and difficulty so indeed provide the opportunities to better oneself, but that shouldn’t come from contrived abuse like bullying or hazing. Those are instances of someone using their previous difficulty as an excuse to make it harder for someone else which I don’t believe is morally correct.
Maybe, maybe not. My thought for the comment was “tried to help, didn’t work, off you go and experience as is”.
Because not everyone learns the same way, so we can’t apply a fix-all universal method. Some kids, adults even, don’t get it until they experience it themselves.
What that “it” is changes from person to person and every time we think “why don’t they just understand”, maybe it’s that they can’t understand and need a different way of learning “it”. Which sometimes is painful.
I get you, and I agree with that. What I’m talking about is more specific. I’m not saying remove all suffering. Suffering will always exist. I’m saying if given the option to cause suffering to another or not, “well, it happened to me” is NOT justification for suffering.
It’s not pain and suffering that you admire its perseverance. You can have one without the other.
Perseverance against what if not pain?
The fact that this is your reply goes to show you need to learn more.
Sorry, I’m not into S&M play.
Yes, facing adversity does build resilience. However, creating adversity for another just because YOU had to face it is wrong. I had a professor who called our career a “brotherhood of suffering” and would purposely create artificial stumbling blocks and make things more difficult because he had the same done to him. It’s perpetrating a cycle of abuse. I’ve now gotten to the point where I’ve taught in university and in the hospital and I try to break that cycle. It’s still a very difficult path, the content and pace are still taxing. Many still don’t make it to graduation, why make it harder then it needs to be?
Misguided pride or PTSD perhaps?
Unavoidable pain and suffering, sure. This is about contrived, otherwise unnecessary suffering to “prove a point” or pay it forward in a negative way.
Ah yes, the “poverty builds character” argument that’s often used to justify poverty.
Nah mate, it’s the “rich ppl need to experience poverty in order to empathize” argument.
Why should anyone need to experience poverty in the first place?
Because resources are finite and frugality is needed at times.
Global agricultural systems produce 4 million metric tonnes of food each year. If the food were equitably distributed, this would feed an extra one billion people (paper)
Food is clearly not finite, we produce more than we already need, so why does it cost money? Why don’t we give food to people simply because they don’t have enough pieces of paper or coins of silver?
The ancient people of Teotihuacán decided to stop building pyramids and instead built everyone homes, in a sort of luxury social housing, that “In comparison with other ancient Mesoamerican patterns of housing, these structures do look like elite houses.” (Source) This one is especially fascinating and maddening.
It seems that a peoples society can just, you know, make the decision to build and provide a luxury life for everyone, even in the “hard” ancient days of old. Why can’t we provide a good life for everyone? Why are people obsessed with the idea of suffering being a prerequisite to urban society? It would require proof of a large scale, urban society with no evidence of hierarchy being able to collectively build some sort of intricate sewage technology without any top-down management or something… https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/aug/chinas-oldest-water-pipes-were-communal-effort
Poverty is artificial, it’s a product of using social violence through some abstract currency to protect people from literal violence. Money isn’t the root of all evil, but evil is the root of all money.
I agree completely, also, that Teotihuacán link was a fascinating read, thank you for that.
Nice theorycraft, but it’s just theory. In real life, it doesn’t work.
For one thing, by our own definitions, life is inherently evil. It takes, consumes, destroys, selfishly breaks down something else in order to sustain itself. We may rationalize it in different ways, but it can’t escape that attribute. And as long as an individual has to sustain themselves, they will have no choice but to commit evil. But we selectively view badly those who indulge themselves.
Another is that perfection cannot be achieved, wastage is unavoidable. We have to produce more than is needed or we will end up with less than required.
Accidents, logistics, incompetence, corruption and the like cannot be completely prevented. There will always be something beyond the calculated parameters that can and will eventually overwhelm a system.
And let’s not forget about the desire to control. Whether tyrants or the utopic society you’re implying for, it’s about control, whether to control oneself or all others. But is the mind that easily controlable and should it be? The desires we have and the willpower to pursue or restrain them aren’t that easily defined.
We are not all of the same mind. Neurodiversity proves that people are different in thought and in feeling. The pursuits and responsibilities two different individuals can maintain for themselves over their lifetimes can go below or above the set standard and a civilization must take into account the satisfaction of its citizens in order to avoid its own downfall.
Also, what was achieved in one society will likely not be accepted in another. So good luck expecting everyone, everywhere to accept a unitary system simply because it’s better. I sincerely have my doubts that anyone can succeed in that.
This all has to take into account the planet’s uneven geographical resources distribution as well. Our current production rates barely give a damn about sustainability. Soil nutrition, water consumption, population density, logistics and so on have to be taken into account, so this means population relocation, specialized production specific to regional conditions, limitations of product diversity and availability.
Anyway, what you want can’t be done and if it can be done, it can’t last because people aren’t static pieces of paper. A near-perfect distribution of basic needs requires a level of sacrifice and constant maintenance that we lack the willpower and stare of mind to accept responsibility for at this point in time.
…
Tl;dr:
To make it simple with a one-off example, will you feed fascists or racists if it meant their continued oppression of minorities? And if so, can you ensure everyone else will do the same?
Equal or equitable basic needs indeed need equal or equitable behavior, but we ourselves lack that. And due to that lacking, we make do with what we do have.
What should be doesn’t matter, only what is.
Mine: Kids are pretty great, actually. They are smarter than you think and can make sense of a lot of stuff you wouldnt expect them to. You should treat their thoughts and feelings with the same respect that you would give an adult.
If you look at the facts kids are leaning towards progress. Less underage sex, less drug and alcohol use, and women are more educated then ever. Boys are starting to lag though:/.
I don’t think “less underage sex” is a good thing. It means that humans remain in a state of childhood longer and longer. They’re achieving life milestones at later and later ages. I’m not gonna say when the correct time for everyone to start having sex is, but when I was in high school 15 or 16 was a lot more common than 18+
Is this an “I turned out fine” opinion, or is this based on something more concrete?
Do you actually think it’s a bad thing to have sex at 16 years old? I think it’s a bad thing that young people are so terrified of living their lives for so long
No, I never said that but it does show that this serious situation isn’t taken lightly.
What serious situation
If you dont think sex shouldn’t be taken lightly phew o boy.
Sex has nothing to do with emotional or mental maturity except with more education you are less likely to have casual sex. It has nothing to do with “becoming a man or woman”. Plenty of adults are extremely accomplished without getting sex involved. Sex is literally just an act of putting your genitals together. How does that make an adult from a child? It doesnt.
It literally does though
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That’s actually a crazy thing to say that we need more under age sex.
That being there are 2 types of people, the ones who cherish childhood and those that want to go up.
We need teenagers to start living their lives again, which it seems like they’re not. A lot of people under the age of ~24 are in a really poor state, developmentally
Teenagers slept around because they were bored. Now they can learn coding and game. They are legitimately using less drugs. Drinking less and having sex left because they are busy developing skills for work and life.
This is so dystopian
I think Gen Z voters reversed the trend in many nations including Germany and the USA, at least the males have a strong conservative bias compared to Millennials.
Part of Gen Z and almost all the people my age I know are heavily conservative. It’s pretty isolating.
Unpopular Opinion: Kids are great? get off the stage
U should lurk more lemmy comments. Mfers here really are anti children
Kids are crazy smart of you don’t baby them their whole lives. Talk to them like responsible adults and (surprise!) they’ll learn to behave in responsible adult like ways.
That’s a mixed bag. They can be very smart, but they still don’t have the experience to properly contextualize many things.
Hey, thanks for this answer. I am under the impression that there is a lot of negative talk about having kids in the News/internet etc, which made me very anxious about the decision to have my own. And while I think that it’s important to vent about the difficulties of parenting, I sometimes miss people who voice the positive things about it.
My kids bring me great joy. I share my hobbies with them and adopt theirs. Spending time with them is not a loss or hindrance. Having kids is not for everyone and that’s fine, but the negativity online it outright toxic.
You should definitely not feel bad about that. And please don’t let the doomers on this platform influence how you feel about your decisions. They have a very negative view on the world because they are terminally online, don’t go outside, don’t see all the wonderful things life has to offer just around the corner or down the street. I mean, times are tough, shit happens, that’s a fact. But kids actually are better at adapting to changing times than we are.
I like to call them little adults in this context.
As in, they are adults, but still growing. If adult is the end game, we should treat them as such.
This doesn’t mean don’t protect them tho respective of where they are at, which is dynamic and surprising.
Kids aren’t dumb, but they are stupid.
They are still growing and cannot handle the full dose of reality yet.
Plus you can make them do a ton of chores for twenty bucks a week.
Ah yes, the lovely child labor.
/s
I also apply this logic to animals. A lot of people, even some pet owners, are quite far divorced from our connection to animals, and don’t spend enough time with them. Even wild animals, they are far more intelligent, inquisitive, emotional, and communicative than most people give them credit for, and coexistance with them would actually be a wonderful thing. I’m not religious, I don’t say grace, and I eat meat… But anytime I eat an animal I try to at least be mindful and thankful for the animals sacrifice.
“Humans are the weakest of all creatures, so weak that other creatures are willing to give up their flesh that we may live. Humans are able to survive only though the exercise of rationality since they lack the abilities of other creatures to gain food through the use of fang and claw.”
Absolute free speech is overrated. You shouldn’t be able to just lie out your ass and call it news.
The fact that the only people who had any claim against Fox for telling the Big Lie was the fucking voting machine company over lost profits tells you everything you need to know about our country
People in the US often misunderstand what sorts of speech can be “free”. There’s plenty of restricted speech in the US - hate speech can intensify the sentencing on crimes, libel and slander are both punishable civilly, speech that directs or is likely to incite “imminent lawless action” (e.g. yelling fire in a crowded theater - that is actually the legal reason for why you can’t do that if there isn’t a fire).
That doesn’t even begin to cover the sorts of speech that are heavily suppressed by the government and media but aren’t legally restricted - like how the media chooses not to cover large popular protests sometimes (famously, the antiwar protests around the invasion of Iraq/Afghanistan), or gives disproportional representation to counter protesters to give the illusion that both sides are equally popular, or how anti-capitalist stances are generally ignored or downplayed. Not illegal, but if you can’t really engage in those sorts of speech publicly, they may as well be.
Agreed, news needs to be held to a higher standard than it is now. There’s a whole list of journalist code of ethics that basically distils to be truthful, minimize harm, be independent, and be accountable.
*some example of minimize harm;
- don’t dig through a celebrities trash looking for condoms
- if there’s an accident you don’t show pictures of the dismembered victims
- don’t identify victims of abuse
- don’t claim an accusation as fact until proven (this why every news stations says “allegedly” all the time)
I believe that the more wealth a person has, the more likely it is that they abused and harmed others to achieve that wealth. Therefore, the more wealthy a person is, the less I trust and respect them.
I don’t think that it’s wealth generation is equal to immorality. But the more wealthy you become the more insulated you are from the struggles of regular people.
If capitalism was not so psychotic, inhumane and bloodthirsty, I might agree. In the current world market? If you are worth more then double/triple what your average local family house is worth, I will probably hate their personality and what they stand for.
They’ll still get the benefit of the doubt and I’ll still engage, because everyone is their own person, but they are playing 3-0 behind and have lots to prove. There’s a reason upper management is full of similar personality types.
I think you just proved my point. Your willing to give them the benefit of the doubt (a moral judgment) but you’re gonna be wary of them.
Nothing is wrong with that stance.
Mine is related: I believe in an estate or “death” tax, at least on the ultra-wealthy. These people have exploited workers their whole lives to “earn” it, and almost certainly used unethical loopholes to hide it and keep it from being taxed, so at least recover the taxes before it’s dropped in the lap of their heir. They won’t even personally be negatively impacted by it since they’re already gone. Sure, the next-of-kin gets less, but that’s the whole point; they did even less to actually earn it!
Being “proud” of your acheivements is fine.
Being “proud” of your country or your state or your football team that you’re not a member of,or your ethnicity is douchebaggery.
Killing yourself is ok. You don’t know what it’s like to be them and be in their head.
I’ll never do it. Even in darkest depths, but respect anyone’s right to say peace out.
Agreed. The idea that you owe people your life is pretty nuts. At the end of the day, you can be robbed of everything, including your life. But it’s the one thing you’re not allowed to end. In a perfect world I do think that people who are suicidal should both:
(a) have to discuss their suicide with a trained professional. What does this look like? Idk. But probably along the lines of “are you capable of healing / can we heal what is causing these thoughts or no?”
(b) be able to get professional euthanasia. No pain, someone to be there with them through the process. Not just a sterile room where you go to die, but a place you are going to leave your pain behind and move on
If there is an afterlife, hopefully they find peace there.
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That’s absolutely true, and as I said, I’m not a professional and I would never claim to be, and would never want someone to end their life if they could be helped (probably every person who would regret it). That being said I think there is a social stigma of “don’t do it because what would happen to [x]”? I’ve had close friends that ended their lives and the focus after was on who it affected rather than why or how they got there and why they didn’t get help. Additionally our society is built on a system of “work to live” which can certainly be crushing to those who already feel crushed. Hopefully we can do better in the future.
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Sure, I won’t say anything further. The original post was about common morals that you may disagree with and now we’re in pragmatics, no reason to continue
The pay rate of the lowest paid worker of any company or institution should be somehow legally and directly tied to the pay rate of the highest paid executive.
If the executive wants to make more money and gets a raise, then so do the workers.
unpopular moral take: All religions are absurd cop outs and you should choose your own model for how to be a good person.
Circumcision is multilation
The stock market should be illegal in all countries. Its basically a legalized gambling ponzii scheme.
Retirement also shouldn’t be tied to this type of system.
Suicide shouldn’t be illegal. If you’ve tried treatments and seen a therapist for years but just want out - you should be able to schedule a day to be put to sleep.
I think its immoral not to give people a dignified way out.
Open borders. I strongly believe in open borders as a moral imperative. Human beings have been migrating for survival, resources, and exploration for over 20,000 years. The concept of nation-states imposing constraints on movement is a modern invention that doesn’t align with the inherent human need for freedom of mobility. People in the southwestern states of the US with Mexican roots will tell you “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.”
Stealing is OK, the ok-ness of the stealing is inversely proportional to the wealth of the person you steal from.
If you steal 100 dollars from someone who only has 1000 dollars, that’s reprehensible, but if you can nick a few million off a billionaire fucking go for it.
I think immigration laws are inherently a violation of universal human rights. What is a more basic expression of freedom and liberty than being able to choose where in the world to build your life?
Full marks for unpopular (at least everywhere but here).
Counter-moral: any community has the right to decide its own membership.
I would argue a community can decide their membership, but society is a collection of communities and cannot decide their membership. Otherwise you end up with theocracies and/or racial supremacist states.
a “you can choose who you associate with, but not who your neighbors are” sorta deal
That’s a great way of putting it.
it’s okay to tell billionaires to kill themselves
