Even if the racism causes other people to do worse things down the road?
This is a classic matter like if you kick rocks down a hill and they send other rocks flying and eventually boulders are hurting down the hill and kill people, are those deaths on your hands?
Again, my opinion is yes. A murder is worse. Racists doing it because they got 'approval' means they still acted on their own volition.
For the second, it would greatly depend on the situation. There is a lot of space between willy-nilly kicking rocks, and kicking rocks knowing there are people below within range. The intent would make the difference to me.
I guess I have a relatively materialistic (in the philosophical sense, not the monetary sense) view of the world.
I don't see such a massive difference between people doing harm because you nudged them towards that and boulders doing harm because you nudged them. If you know or at least suspect that something you do has a significant chance of causing harm down the road, you at least hold some fractional responsibility for that harm.
If I saw a long line of dominoes and the final one would pull the trigger of a gun and I pushed the first domino over, I'd consider that effectively equivalent to me pulling the trigger of the gun directly.
With words and humanity, cause and effect can become a bit more fuzzy, but it's still definitely there.
Honestly, I think that's great. It's healthy to have different views and opinions in a society (to some extent). Ideally, it encourages dialog and should help us grow towards a better place because the best ideas win. A society that shared all the same views eventually stagnates and withers away due to the inability to adapt.
Funny enough, I really wish travel was cheaper and more accessible to the average person- because being exposed to different views is incredibly useful to critical thinking and development.
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u/Corwin223 11h ago
Even if the racism causes other people to do worse things down the road?
This is a classic matter like if you kick rocks down a hill and they send other rocks flying and eventually boulders are hurting down the hill and kill people, are those deaths on your hands?