I acknowledge that slippery slope argument has some validity, but what I haven’t seen so far is a good criterion of where to apply it.
I feel confident being upset at people who draw swastikas where they expect Jews to see them, or burn crosses outside the houses of black people. Although one can make all the same arguments (“if we embolden the blacks and Jews by giving in now, then they’ll start demanding more and more rights until we have to believe as they do”) I still think doing either of those actions is wrong.
Drawing Mohammed seems designed to harass Muslims in the same way that drawing swastikas seems designed to harass Jews. So where is the critical difference that makes one necessary and the other abhorrent?
“I feel confident being upset at people who draw swastikas where they expect Jews to see them, or burn crosses outside the houses of black people.”
The vileness of the swastika doesn’t come form the subjective reactions of Jews who see it. A swastika is an implicit call to genocide. I think you are far too hung up on what are relatively insignificant subjective consequences, to the point of ignoring the overarching political significance of the acts in question. (Such microscopy is indeed Dr. Hanson’s method.) Depending on context drawing a picture of Mohammed can be (among other things) a call to persecution of persons professing Islam, an objection to Islamic censorship, or serve some purely artistic purpose, each having consequences that far outweighs “offensiveness.”
Indeed, one of the more relevant similarities between pain and offense is that both are warning signs. Pain is a warning that something may damage you, but if you are experiencing pain from nondamaging events, you are better off reinterpreting the stimulus. For instance, walking barefoot on rocky terrain is often interpreted as painful by those who typically walk shod, but after multiple exposures the sensation is processed differently. Similarly, offense has a component of “things may turn bad” in addition to the signalling described elsewhere in this discussion. The fact that people take offense primarily tells us/them that something is going on; whether that thing is significant, good, or bad requires us to look farther than the fact that offense was taken.
For instance, walking barefoot on rocky terrain is often interpreted as painful by those who typically walk shod, but after multiple exposures the sensation is processed differently.
Is the sensation still the same after multiple exposures, or have the feet become more calloused and/or flexible?
If you follow Western cultural norms of wearing shoes all day everyday, by the age of 39 your toes are a pale yellow compared to your fingers. If you then give up wearing shoes, that stimulates the blood circulation in your feet. After a year or
two your toes “pink up” and match the colour of you fingers. I interpret fingers as providing a good reference and conclude that shoe-wearing results in poor circulation in the feet and that going barefoot restores normal levels of circulation.
Trying to make sense of my own experience of the way that the sensation of walking on rough surfaces has changed over the years leads me to this speculation. The body knows that poor circulation is a problem, injuries may be slow to heal or get infected, and has a built-in response: up-regulate the pain receptors to give some behavioural protection to the body part that is at risk due to poor circulation. Take off your shoes and walk on a rough surface and this protection kicks in. It feels painful, encouring you to put your shoes/armour back on.
Continuing the speculation. Give up shoes. Circulation improves up to normal. Lagging this, pain receptors get down regulated back to normal. The stimulus provided by rough surfaces gets reinterpreted as “rough” not “painful”.
I prefer my oxygen-level account over callous and flexibility.
Flexibility is a real issue for some. Your feet have “set” into immobility. When you start going barefoot you get characteristic “physiotherapy” type pains from mobilising stiff tissue. I’ve never liked shoes (I was always barefoot in my own home) and didn’t really have that problem.
Callous thickness is very variable. Also “callous” is not the right word. My experience was that one year in I had developed callous, meaning the hard white skin that you get where your shoes rub. I had problems with the callous cracking. Two years in the skin on the soles of my feet had changed some more and was leathery. Long distances on abrasive surfaces can wear away your skin making your feet tender. The rate of skin growth increases to compensate. But the adaption of the rate of skin growth always lags, so you can end up with thick skin, especially if you abruptly stop walking long distances on abrasive surfaces. My experience was of lots of variation in skin thickness, but a much less variation in the processing of sensation and its change “painful” to “rough”.
both actions are bad, but the right to engage in them is good. I think there is a lot of value in having a permissive rather than prescriptive society. You can condemn them all you want, force the people who make them into lower social status by mocking and insulting them, but you should not be able to stop them through force. If the KKK burn a cross on your lawn, they should be arrested for damage to property. But if they hold a rally where it is their legal right to do so, we should not physically attack them.
They key difference between these actions to me is not the action itself but the context for it. Drawing a Mohammed to piss off a muslim is a dick move by itself. Drawing a Mohammed to show that you stand for a world where you can draw whatever the hell you want and no organization has the right to threaten you with death is another thing entirely.
I’ve been trying to come up with a good way to articulate my thoughts on the topic and this is what I’ve come up with so far. Assuming you value it, freedom is important to defend far above and beyond any particular use of that freedom. I don’t care about Mohammed pictures beyond the fact that I strongly believe people should have the right to draw them. I even don’t like septum piercings, but I would strongly protest any campaign to get them banned. The value of any given insult to human society is negligible, probably even negative, but the value of being allowed to insult is incalculable.
The swastika has been a symbol of peace for millions of Hindus and Buddhists and for the Raelians as well as it is their symbol of infinity in time, their symbol of eternity.
Today, in order to redeem themselves for past horrible discriminations done under a flag wearing this symbol, German authorities are about to discriminate again telling Hindus, Bhuddists, Raelians and all other groups who have been using this symbol for centuries for some of them, that their beliefs are not welcomed in Europe!
Banning cannot solve anything, education is the only way.
I acknowledge that slippery slope argument has some validity, but what I haven’t seen so far is a good criterion of where to apply it.
I feel confident being upset at people who draw swastikas where they expect Jews to see them, or burn crosses outside the houses of black people. Although one can make all the same arguments (“if we embolden the blacks and Jews by giving in now, then they’ll start demanding more and more rights until we have to believe as they do”) I still think doing either of those actions is wrong.
Drawing Mohammed seems designed to harass Muslims in the same way that drawing swastikas seems designed to harass Jews. So where is the critical difference that makes one necessary and the other abhorrent?
“I feel confident being upset at people who draw swastikas where they expect Jews to see them, or burn crosses outside the houses of black people.”
The vileness of the swastika doesn’t come form the subjective reactions of Jews who see it. A swastika is an implicit call to genocide. I think you are far too hung up on what are relatively insignificant subjective consequences, to the point of ignoring the overarching political significance of the acts in question. (Such microscopy is indeed Dr. Hanson’s method.) Depending on context drawing a picture of Mohammed can be (among other things) a call to persecution of persons professing Islam, an objection to Islamic censorship, or serve some purely artistic purpose, each having consequences that far outweighs “offensiveness.”
In a modern European-derived culture.
Indeed, one of the more relevant similarities between pain and offense is that both are warning signs. Pain is a warning that something may damage you, but if you are experiencing pain from nondamaging events, you are better off reinterpreting the stimulus. For instance, walking barefoot on rocky terrain is often interpreted as painful by those who typically walk shod, but after multiple exposures the sensation is processed differently.
Similarly, offense has a component of “things may turn bad” in addition to the signalling described elsewhere in this discussion. The fact that people take offense primarily tells us/them that something is going on; whether that thing is significant, good, or bad requires us to look farther than the fact that offense was taken.
Is the sensation still the same after multiple exposures, or have the feet become more calloused and/or flexible?
I generalise my personal experience as follows.
If you follow Western cultural norms of wearing shoes all day everyday, by the age of 39 your toes are a pale yellow compared to your fingers. If you then give up wearing shoes, that stimulates the blood circulation in your feet. After a year or two your toes “pink up” and match the colour of you fingers. I interpret fingers as providing a good reference and conclude that shoe-wearing results in poor circulation in the feet and that going barefoot restores normal levels of circulation.
Trying to make sense of my own experience of the way that the sensation of walking on rough surfaces has changed over the years leads me to this speculation. The body knows that poor circulation is a problem, injuries may be slow to heal or get infected, and has a built-in response: up-regulate the pain receptors to give some behavioural protection to the body part that is at risk due to poor circulation. Take off your shoes and walk on a rough surface and this protection kicks in. It feels painful, encouring you to put your shoes/armour back on.
Continuing the speculation. Give up shoes. Circulation improves up to normal. Lagging this, pain receptors get down regulated back to normal. The stimulus provided by rough surfaces gets reinterpreted as “rough” not “painful”.
I prefer my oxygen-level account over callous and flexibility.
Flexibility is a real issue for some. Your feet have “set” into immobility. When you start going barefoot you get characteristic “physiotherapy” type pains from mobilising stiff tissue. I’ve never liked shoes (I was always barefoot in my own home) and didn’t really have that problem.
Callous thickness is very variable. Also “callous” is not the right word. My experience was that one year in I had developed callous, meaning the hard white skin that you get where your shoes rub. I had problems with the callous cracking. Two years in the skin on the soles of my feet had changed some more and was leathery. Long distances on abrasive surfaces can wear away your skin making your feet tender. The rate of skin growth increases to compensate. But the adaption of the rate of skin growth always lags, so you can end up with thick skin, especially if you abruptly stop walking long distances on abrasive surfaces. My experience was of lots of variation in skin thickness, but a much less variation in the processing of sensation and its change “painful” to “rough”.
both actions are bad, but the right to engage in them is good. I think there is a lot of value in having a permissive rather than prescriptive society. You can condemn them all you want, force the people who make them into lower social status by mocking and insulting them, but you should not be able to stop them through force. If the KKK burn a cross on your lawn, they should be arrested for damage to property. But if they hold a rally where it is their legal right to do so, we should not physically attack them.
They key difference between these actions to me is not the action itself but the context for it. Drawing a Mohammed to piss off a muslim is a dick move by itself. Drawing a Mohammed to show that you stand for a world where you can draw whatever the hell you want and no organization has the right to threaten you with death is another thing entirely.
I’ve been trying to come up with a good way to articulate my thoughts on the topic and this is what I’ve come up with so far. Assuming you value it, freedom is important to defend far above and beyond any particular use of that freedom. I don’t care about Mohammed pictures beyond the fact that I strongly believe people should have the right to draw them. I even don’t like septum piercings, but I would strongly protest any campaign to get them banned. The value of any given insult to human society is negligible, probably even negative, but the value of being allowed to insult is incalculable.
Hmm:
Heh: proswastika.org