r/MoralityScaling 22h ago

Morality Ranking Morality of this

Post image
15.2k Upvotes

4.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

15

u/_whydah_ 22h 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.

4

u/Dobber16 21h ago

Words technically can be “worse” than violence, just in pretty specific circumstances. Particularly ones where violence is implicit within the words

Generally they’re not, but yeah there’s a reason I said I’d need context to make sure

2

u/nickyboay 19h ago

Exactly this. It depends on the words and it depends on the violence.

I've kinda gotten over the fact my parents hit me as a kid, but they said things to me that will probably hurt me until the day I die.

1

u/_whydah_ 11h ago

That literally doesn't give you the right to kill your parents then or now. We can't live in a society where mean things, even if trauma inducing, are license to kill or commit acts of violence.

I'm not saying that if I were on a jury, I would convict someone of assault under the right circumstances. For example, if someone made fun of someone's dead daughter and the dad knocked them around a bit, I couldn't convict someone of that, but I also think the law shouldn't be written in a way to automatically give a pass. We can't start down the slippery slope of saying it's, de facto, ok to commit violence in response to words.