That sounds like a really unpleasant society, where we can freely torment one another and pat ourselves on the back about how delightfully permissive we are. Paradise may be unattainable, but I certainly hope we can do better than that.
That’s the society we live in already, Alicorn. Almost all behaviors that could potentially annoy others are unconstrained. You can’t call the police to complain that your neighbor’s fashion choices disturb you, you can’t force the people around you to paint their homes the colors you’d prefer, and you can’t force people with accents to be silent in public.
How exactly do you imagine we could make a society in which no one could be annoyed by the behavior of others? We’d have to imprison everyone in a VR world specially tailored for them—and then how would we deal with the people who would be annoyed by being so imprisoned?
“Making the universe be what I want” is not a valid goal for a politics.
That sounds like a really unpleasant society, where we can freely torment one another and pat ourselves on the back about how delightfully permissive we are. Paradise may be unattainable, but I certainly hope we can do better than that.
That’s the society we live in already, Alicorn. Almost all behaviors that could potentially annoy others are unconstrained. You can’t call the police to complain that your neighbor’s fashion choices disturb you, you can’t force the people around you to paint their homes the colors you’d prefer, and you can’t force people with accents to be silent in public.
How exactly do you imagine we could make a society in which no one could be annoyed by the behavior of others? We’d have to imprison everyone in a VR world specially tailored for them—and then how would we deal with the people who would be annoyed by being so imprisoned?
“Making the universe be what I want” is not a valid goal for a politics.
I disagree with your emphasis. Laws impose some important constraints, social norms impose others.
What is a valid goal for a politics?
Yes, but social norms alone don’t permit certain kinds of force. Use of such force for those reasons is often called “vigilante justice”.
Structuring social relations for the goals of survival. Everything proceeds from that.