Calling someone rude is a defacto claim that they have an obligation not to be so.
No.
If I say that it’s not in your own self interest to not bang your head against the wall I’m not saying that I forbid you from banging your head against the wall. I’m not creating an obligation for the other person. If the like getting their head hurt they can continue banging their head against the wall and I don’t want to take that freedom away from them.
I follow the moral principle of giving people information about how they are hurting themselves, I’m not forbidding them from hurting themselves.
I have also no problem with someone making an expected utility analysis and finding that being rude is having the most utility to pursue that course of action. In the case of rudeness ends can completely justify means.
Furthermore you ignore a bunch of emotional effects that come along with putting obligations on other people. It makes you feel bad when they don’t follow your dictates. If someone bangs their hand against the wall after I told him that it’s not in his self interest and he continues, I might feel pity but not anger.
Getting rid of shoulds is one of the CBT exercises of identifying distorted thinking that David Burns described in the Feeling Good Handbook. It’s not just about changing around a few words.
You think that Alice should meet Bob and Alice. You feel bad and get angry at Alice. Then you want to be an asshole to Alice but you think you shouldn’t, so you suppress your anger. That’s a strategy you can use to live your life and it can make you depressed.
If you would get rid of the “should’s” in the first place, then you wouldn’t feel bad about the situation.
But of course you are free to bang your head against the wall and suffer. If I want to be cynic I can add that sometimes it needs a lot of suffering till people see that there a different way that doesn’t involve suffering. Maybe a person hasn’t suffered enough from banging their head against the wall and they still need a few rounds till their head hurts enough that they will stop. It’s their issue not mine.
It might be true that most people you interact with want to put an obligation on the other person to change their behavior when they use the word “rude”.
In my case I do separate factual descriptions of behavior from obligations.
Nothing I said in this discussion comes from a place of enforcing some norm.
At skeptic.stackexchange I do engage in telling people to stick to norms and vote for closing of questions that I consider to a norm violation. I’m engaging in this conversation in a different spirit.
I don’t think people who feel a desire to kill another person can go ahead to make a learning experience. With rudeness I don’t have any issue if people who feel that desire act on it and learn their lessons.
People generally distinguish between such cases as “You shoplifted, and now there will be negative consequences” and “You failed to pay protection money to the mob, and now there will negative consequences”. You can say that there is no essential difference between them, and in both cases you feel quite comfortable with telling the person in question that their actions are not in their self interest, but most people accept the idea that there are standards for behavior other than mere self-interest. Furthermore, if you merely intended to state that my behavior would have negative consequences, then you could have said so. There are plenty of behaviors that result in negative consequences, that are not rude. By applying the word “rude” to my behavior, you were asserting some attribute beyond merely negative consequences, and that attribute is generally considered to be a moral one.
No.
If I say that it’s not in your own self interest to not bang your head against the wall I’m not saying that I forbid you from banging your head against the wall. I’m not creating an obligation for the other person. If the like getting their head hurt they can continue banging their head against the wall and I don’t want to take that freedom away from them.
I follow the moral principle of giving people information about how they are hurting themselves, I’m not forbidding them from hurting themselves.
I have also no problem with someone making an expected utility analysis and finding that being rude is having the most utility to pursue that course of action. In the case of rudeness ends can completely justify means.
Furthermore you ignore a bunch of emotional effects that come along with putting obligations on other people. It makes you feel bad when they don’t follow your dictates. If someone bangs their hand against the wall after I told him that it’s not in his self interest and he continues, I might feel pity but not anger.
Getting rid of shoulds is one of the CBT exercises of identifying distorted thinking that David Burns described in the Feeling Good Handbook. It’s not just about changing around a few words.
You think that Alice should meet Bob and Alice. You feel bad and get angry at Alice. Then you want to be an asshole to Alice but you think you shouldn’t, so you suppress your anger. That’s a strategy you can use to live your life and it can make you depressed.
If you would get rid of the “should’s” in the first place, then you wouldn’t feel bad about the situation. But of course you are free to bang your head against the wall and suffer. If I want to be cynic I can add that sometimes it needs a lot of suffering till people see that there a different way that doesn’t involve suffering. Maybe a person hasn’t suffered enough from banging their head against the wall and they still need a few rounds till their head hurts enough that they will stop. It’s their issue not mine.
“Is” and “Is, defacto” aren’t the same thing. Two things can be different, yet for practical purposes be the same.
It might be true that most people you interact with want to put an obligation on the other person to change their behavior when they use the word “rude”.
In my case I do separate factual descriptions of behavior from obligations. Nothing I said in this discussion comes from a place of enforcing some norm.
At skeptic.stackexchange I do engage in telling people to stick to norms and vote for closing of questions that I consider to a norm violation. I’m engaging in this conversation in a different spirit.
I don’t think people who feel a desire to kill another person can go ahead to make a learning experience. With rudeness I don’t have any issue if people who feel that desire act on it and learn their lessons.
People generally distinguish between such cases as “You shoplifted, and now there will be negative consequences” and “You failed to pay protection money to the mob, and now there will negative consequences”. You can say that there is no essential difference between them, and in both cases you feel quite comfortable with telling the person in question that their actions are not in their self interest, but most people accept the idea that there are standards for behavior other than mere self-interest. Furthermore, if you merely intended to state that my behavior would have negative consequences, then you could have said so. There are plenty of behaviors that result in negative consequences, that are not rude. By applying the word “rude” to my behavior, you were asserting some attribute beyond merely negative consequences, and that attribute is generally considered to be a moral one.