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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • I think you’re being intentionally reductive, and you think that that reductionism is appropriate (i.e., only physical pain is valid pain). But I don’t agree, and most people wouldn’t in 2025. Psychological pain is pain, and you can likewise inflict it in a morally culpable way. You probably agree with that premise - you wouldn’t defend someone being actively abusive, like a psychopathic partner - but we’re just debating where the line is.

    There’s still a valid debate about the limits of freedom from mental pain in the public sphere and our corollary duties to each other - I get that, it’s not “any pain is too much,” nobody reasonable thinks that - but this is entirely foreseeable, preventable and to doggedly insist that you have a right to inflict it doesn’t mean that it’s right to inflict it.


  • You can both give someone armor to fend off blows, and also raise people to understand you shouldn’t inflict those blows, both help. But calling someone “retarded” is not something a good person does.

    Nobody is making the word bad. The word is intrinsically bad because it inflicts unfair and callous pain on others. A person’s right to inflict that pain is debatable, but is also immaterial, because what we’re saying here is that using those words without regard to the other person and causing that pain recklessly, makes one in some real sense a bad person. They can say the pain inflicted is “not their intention,” but that’s also immaterial if they are recklessly disregarding that pain. And accountability for being a bad person is just a natural result.


  • Look, I was a teenager in the 90s, and I too probably used “retard,” “gay” and plenty of other words in ways that were offensive in 2025 (or even 2010, or 2000). But as we live in the world, most of us, you know… grow.

    While Elon, Trump and all of these other crazy people complain about sensitive liberals, in reality they are the ones feeling triggered by the fabric of reality constantly reminding them that they continue to have the emotional intelligence of a 90s teen (at best). When someone tells them not to say “retard,” they say “NO, 90s ME WAS NOT WRONG, YOU’RE WRONG.”

    But Elon, if you haven’t developed enough to feel superior to your 90s self, to treat your 90s self like a different person you’re allowed to disagree with, something is wrong with you. It’s all just emotional, infantile contrarianism to avoid admitting that they have no capacity for self-reflection.