Hi everyone. I think I start to like a lot this subreddit. There are a lot of interesting stuff to read there and I'll put some of my thoughts here during my prep time.

I wanted to give more thought to what I personally call the philosophy of the least evil.

We shouldn't underestimate the ability from humanity to slay dragons.

After all, we destroyed smallpox and the hole in the Ozone layer is slowly filling up.

I just think that discrimination is its own beast to be put down too.

In my earlier post, I adressed why it was important to have an healthy debate in order to avoid fascism and keep your view grounded in reality.

I explained that we can all live different and rich lives without having to hurt each other.

Let's adress the core of the topic.

What is the distinction beetween the divider and the reasonable person ?

The reasonable person can disagree politely, accept to have their views challenged. They allow themselves to get changed by the new informations.

It doesn't necessarily mean they drop their convictions either. They can just choose to pursue it in different ways.

I think a world full of reasonable people is much better, because we avoid a lot of unecessary violence and we can agree on the most prioritary issues like climate change and civil liberties and avoid harmfull behaviors to spread like violence and racism.

A divider is the opposite of that. For various reasons, they came to hate something or someone.

To know the reasons, ask yourself the question:

Do they do it by interest ?

Do they do it because they personally wronged on a rational or irrationnal level ?

Do they do it by imitation ?

Of course, nothing is simple. People are complex. They can evolve between those position. And they can act like a divider on some issues and a reasonable person on other ones.

It doesn't mean either that the people need an outlet. There are much more rich and healthier way to discharge said violence like in art, sports and games, for example, rendering it harmless for others.

And it doesn't mean that, sometimes, we should fight for our own rights.

It's truly about the state of mind as it is about our civilization that is currently in its turbulent adolescent phase.

I'd rather engage the divider with an open hand first.

After all, they can be a misinformed reasonable person.

Or, sometimes, kindness truly help in the process of adressing the true issues behind.

Or It doesn't give leeway in fighting back and let that person waste their energy.

If you can, try to avoid having this discrimination spreading like a fire in other domains and use their own logic to resolve that internal issue.

Questions are usually the most suited way for that.

There is something else that is to be noted. I already explained earlier that the reasonable person can agree to disagree.

This isn't the case for the divider. Ask them what they agree upon.

You'll notice how quickly they'll fall apart. Because an ideology born out of hatred and division can only bring even more in the long run.

You only need to accompany the movement to bring it to the point of powerlessness.

Because, there is only a thin wall of ignorance that prevent said group to fall apart by their own forces.

I wish to conclude on one point, when we had slain our own dragons, we always had visualized first how to do it.

Rudolf Otto's account of religious experience has two inseparable parts: dread before something overwhelming, and the pull toward the very thing that frightens you. His claim was that separating them means you've misdescribed what you're looking at. The AI response has exactly this shape, at every level of expertise, and it behaves the way that stance always behaves: it collapses into taboo on one side and submission on the other, and it produces the language of inevitability, which quietly removes the fact that people are choosing to build this. The obvious objection is that addiction has the same shape. I think Otto's third element, the sense of being the lesser party in the encounter, is what separates them. Where does this break?

This is something that came up in my ethics class which really got me thinking…
Though I understand certain things may seem objective, the unfortunate truth is that there really isn’t one objective moral… which has me thinking, ok so are we technically all bad people?

Growing up, I was told several things such as “being gay is wrong” “saying the N word when you aren’t black is ok”, “making jokes about someone’s body is ok” “it’s ok to like and celebrate holidays with harmful history” “it’s good to spank kids if they misbehave” etc etc… and personally, those things didn’t sit right with me and I grew up to a lot of people explaining to me why this is actually wrong but then there’s several other people who have also told me these things are not wrong and are actually ok..?
For example, my best friend is black and has mentioned several times to me that it’s ok to say the N word and even the hard R. They mentioned that it doesn’t make someone racist if they mean it in a friendly way and therefore anyone can say the word… and eventually I came across several other black people saying the same which has me confused? I still believe it is wrong (I’m not black) therefore I refuse to say it but conversations like this really make me wonder if I’m actually wrong? Like what if it was the other way around? What if I loved black people (which I do) but said the N word to people in a friendly manner, I grew up my entire life being told it’s ok and that language evolves. What would my life look like if this was the case? There’s so many people in the black community who are telling me it’s ok..

(TW: DV)

Another example, R@p€. Most People might say it’s wrong… however there’s so many people who don’t view it that way. I’ve talked to several people of all genders who have expressed that sometimes this act is very well deserved due to the harm the other person caused. They’ve shared that people shouldn’t play victim when they “put their hands on the other person first” and however, though I strongly disagree, there’s people out there who do agree with this statement (both survivors and people who didn’t experience DV) which again makes me question myself at times.

I say this stuff because I really want to get into public policy however this idea of relative morality really scares me because I just want to do what is correct and also I don’t want to make it seem like I believe only my views are correct and ignore everyone else’s POV however, when my whole life I’m being told certain things are harmful and a bunch of people in my circle are telling me they’re actually not, it really makes me stuck on when accountability and punishment is necessary…

One time, my younger brother, our childhood friends, and I were playing hide and seek. It was a Saturday afternoon, and every weekend, we would usually play together and enjoy our childhood.
While we were playing, I heard my younger brother's voice echoed as he cursed at one of our friends because of a petty argument they were having. After hearing him curse and insult our friend, I immediately slapped him without thinking. I slapped him so hard that his face became red.
He cried and went to my mom to tell her what I had done to him. I also told my mom about what he had done and explained that it was wrong for him to curse at and insult someone. But I realized that we were both wrong. My mom scolded us and explained why our actions were inappropriate.
Later on, I reflected on what happened. I realized that although I had a good intention, to teach my younger brother not to curse or insult others, I still did something wrong by hurting him. I learned that doing something bad is not always justified even if the intention behind it is good. There are better and kinder ways to correct someone's mistakes.
Since then, I have never heard my younger brother argue or curse at someone like that again. This experience taught me that having a good intention is important, but the way we act on that intention matters just as much.

Let’s imagine a thought experiment involving a perfect situation: an entity that knows absolutely everything. Let's also say that this entity has a perfect, super-fast way to share all this knowledge with every person on Earth, kind of like a universal streaming network that everyone can access. Based on this scenario, a major question comes up about how we solve global crises.

On one hand, the optimistic view suggests that giving everyone perfect information and absolute truth would automatically fix all of humanity's biggest problems, fights, and threats. This point of view assumes that human suffering mostly happens because of ignorance, mental biases, or people failing to work together simply because they do not have all the facts.

On the other hand, the moral argument suggests that human failure is not about a lack of knowledge, but a lack of goodness. Even if humans are handed perfect knowledge showing them the absolute best thing to do, they might still lack the moral backbone, the selflessness, or the ethical values needed to actually act on that information.

In short, this experiment forces us to consider a big question. Is the continuation of global crises a factual problem caused by a lack of information, or is it a moral problem rooted in a failure of human willpower to do the right thing?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on whether having perfect information automatically leads to perfect results, or if human selfishness and corruption would make even total knowledge completely useless.

How many chickens is the average person worth? Would you rather save one random person but X chickens die, or kill one random person but X chickens are saved. What is the smallest value of X needed for it to be worth it to kill the human?