| kain_kusanagi said: Good job coming up with the most absurd situations possible. But I will say that if someone was as emotionally unstable as to cry over the color of my shirt I think I would probably apologize and put on a jacket to keep from upsetting a clearly disturbed individual that deserves even more compassion that a emotional stable person. I don't know what world you live in where you meet people who burst into tears over every word you say. You either know a lot more people with emotional problems than I do your you go around saying mean things to everyone you see. I haven't made anyone cry in a very long time, even by accident. I can't even remember the last time. But I have apologized for making someone visibly uncomfortable due to the discussed topic. I apologized, changed the subject and things were pleasant again. Exercising compassionate isn't just a tool to get out of a tense situation. Be compassionate is part of having empathy. You know, that thing in the back of your mind that makes you identify with other humans. It's that that thing that without it we would be a savage race of thugs. If you make someone upset you are supposed to feel bad about it because you identify with how you would feel if someone upset you. It's not even a question of morality. It's part of the human condition. Nobody should go around actively trying to hurt other people's feelings. Some do, that's why we have words like "jerk" to describe those who don't have compassion. |
The scenarios I listed don't have to be actual to discuss the merits of your arguments. If you have a belief system, it should hold weight among all possible scenarios (those actual and imaginary). Otherwise your belief is based on a condition by condition basis. Meaning your actual belief isn't based on the belief system you provided, but is instead based on whatever factors are affecting the different conditions.
Anyway, you have moved the topic away from what's moral and what's the right thing to do to what humans are biologically programmed to do. This has very little practical applications to the point of this thread - which is the rules and enforcement of the rules of this site. These rules are not based on the human condition, which is why there are no rules that say "please be nice and apologize to other users if you offend them". That would be cool if users did that, but to expect such a rule to be enforced is crazy. The rules are based not on whether or not some random user becomes offended by a post, but rather, they are usually based on if a post is intended to offend for the sake of offending.
If you go around moderating every posts that offend someone, then you are left with a situation like the one I mentioned where you are apologizing 15, 20 times a day over the most trivial and common posts. But instead of apologies, you would have moderations instead and discussion would be virtually impossible; everyone would be afraid that their post would offend someone, somewhere at some time with some specific condition that makes him particularly sensitive to some particular topic.
