Morality

I’m not here to make law suggestions. This is how I approach the world, and especially with speech, I think it’s hard to approach the topics of “What should be legal” as someone who thinks that limiting speech should be used very rarely, and only in specific circumstances.

Especially when you consider that I think laws shouldn’t exist.

I made this flowchart as a thought exercise; I tend to find it helpful to write things out, as it helps me really look at them, especially my own opinions. This came out of me having an opinion that most people in the spaces I inhabit would consider unacceptable. I doubt I’ll talk about the opinion for a while, if ever, but it did lead me to thinking about morality as a whole.

So the first thing I feel the need to define is what “Harm” is. Harm is not a good Christian seeing a queer person existing. That is discomfort. Learning to deal with harmless discomfort is part of being an adult, as is learning how to keep yourself out of situations that make you uncomfortable without restricting the freedoms of others.

You can speak with the person, and ask them not to do certain things while you’re around, but they have every right to say no, and your recourse at that point is removing yourself from their life.

If you can’t, such as being coworkers or classmates, you go through whatever channels are set up to handle that, and sometimes you still just kind of have to deal with it, depending on the source. If it’s someone talking about sex, and you’re generally not okay with people talking about sex around you, it’s reasonable to not ask them to bring it up around you. If you’re asking a coworker to not talk about his husband, but you’re fine with another talking about her husband, you kind of just have to look inward, and re-evaluate your opinions.

Thoughts are not actions. Thoughts are not words. Thoughts can cause no benefit, nor harm, to anyone but the person having them.

I do not care what thoughts you are having. If they’re distressing for you, I feel for you; I have OCD, and I’ve thought some shit. But, one bit of comfort, from one person who has thought Bad Things against my will for as long as I can remember; you’re not a bad person for thinking them. Even if you think them willingly, they’re thoughts, they do not matter in this equation.

This also means that the reason people do things does not matter. I do not care if someone built an orphanage to launder their reputation. The orphans have a roof. Conversely, I don’t care if someone murdered someone for what they thought was a good reason. The person is dead, and that’s what matters. Exceptions for self-defence, and defence of others, but preventative murder is not defence, it’s acting on thoughts.

Abortion is a lot of things to a lot of people. In terms of how I’m thinking about it, it’s two-fold: The person does not exist yet. Life does not begin at conception, it begins at birth. Pregnancy is always a life-threatening situation. Otherwise healthy people do still just die of pregnancy. You’re walking around immunocompromised for 9 months, because otherwise your body would just kill the fetus. Being pregnant is physically harming you in a lot of ways that we don’t like to think about, because miracle of life, and all that, but yeah.

Generally speaking, reacting to people with compassion results in better outcomes, and part of this whole thought exercise is compassion, because a lot of the things that fell under the morality question once I became an adult, and fully broke away from the Catholic church were things like drug use, abortion, homosexuality, and kink. Are any of these things moral? I had to make that framework myself.

It was a patchwork quilt of thoughts from other people, some of whom I realized listening to set me back quite a bit on this front. Eventually I surrounded myself with compassionate people, and found my way to where I am now.

Drug use is morally neutral. The only person it directly harms is you, though addiction does set you up to be harmful to others.

Homosexuality is morally neutral. Great, even. Loving those who you want to love is beautiful, regardless of who each of you are.

Kink is morally neutral. It’s fun, I dabble, I used to be more into it than I am now. More a matter of being goddam tired all the time.

I’ve talked about abortion in detail. It’s morally neutral. It’s a rough choice to make, and my heart goes out to those who’ve had to make it, especially in this climate.

We like to think that words don’t matter. “Sticks, and stones,” they say, not remembering how much those words can hurt. Maybe not knowing in the first place.

Most of the time words are morally neutral. Sometimes words are said that hurt people.

I was never hit by an adult growing up, but the words they’ve said have left wounds that I still have to dress 9-25 years later. The proper channels are the ones doing it to you, and you can’t really remove yourself from a situation like that when you’re 5.

I’ve never believed the “Sticks, and stones” hypothesis.

“Does this do more harm than it does good?”

I won’t be sharing that opinion for a while, if ever. I’m still not sure if I should press it some more before I decide that it’s how I truly feel.