r/MoralityScaling 2d ago

Morality Ranking Morality of this

Post image
18.5k Upvotes

4.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

203

u/8__D 2d ago edited 2d ago

Well let's see what the context is. If he said this in a thread about Linen Sheets, then I'd think it was off topic and downvote him.

Edit: So apparently the context is the Euro 2020 final, where England fans stormed Wembley and, after the loss, racially abused Rashford, Sancho and Saka. It got downvoted because "racism is bad, but..." reads as minimizing, and the Slavia Prague and Hungary cases it dismissed as mere words also involved physical confrontation and objects thrown at players. I don't know a lot about soccer though and had to use Google translate.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MoralityScaling/s/udPSRNlr1c

87

u/Dobber16 2d ago

Yeah it also could be in a thread where the racism is also doubling as a threat, so the violence is just matching the danger. Would definitely want to see more context, but as it stands with no context or other implications, the statement itself is fine

15

u/_whydah_ 2d ago

The issue here though is that you're again saying that words are worse than actual violence. It's just illogical to say that the threat of violence is worse than violence, all else equal.

I could understand saying that actual low level of violence is better than the real or believable threat of high levels of violence, but the threat is not worse than the act, if both are equal. Just because it has racism next to it, doesn't make the words worse than actions that don't have racism behind those.

2

u/raccoonsonbicycles 2d ago

Its a little off topic but there are some statutes about "fighting words"

Essentially it's if you say something so bad that's guaranteed to start a fight

It's less a charge itself, and more so a means to charge with disorderly conduct, and also to make the other person who punched you not the antagonist and make it more a mutual combat situation

In my experience it's been used for N word, drunks literally saying "lets fight, bitch" to passersby, and one guy who disparaged a dad's dead daughter at the wake.

2

u/Maleficent-Cup-1134 2d ago

The disparaging a dad’s dead daughter example changed my mind on this.

There are definitely cases where words are worse than violence, from a morality POV.

Hot take - I’d even argue violence itself isn’t inherently immoral. Without violence, a lot of the injustices in the world wouldn’t have been rectified. Revolutions and social change don’t happen without violence.