#rather than discussing like any other (worse) form of harm christianity has been party to in say the global south

[savnofilter]

no nuance november!

a/n: which is basically you have a bunch of opinions and dont explain any of em' and let your followers discuss them (much more suited for tiktok sjsnj). i'll be doing it since it compiles with many topics like fandom, racism, lgbtq+, politics and etc. i highly encourage people to do this simply because why not? feel free to send your own opinions n stuff, i wanna know what my followers think!!

disclaimer!! ⚠️ all of these are broad, not pin pointing certain people or situations. even though these are my opinions these were all in fun and have been collected over the years and will change as time goes on. nothing is sugar-coated so thread carefully. feel free to agree or disagree. :)

warning(s): mentions of racism, p*do micro aggression, fetishizing, toxicity, abuse, politics, labelling, mental health, cancelling, fandoms, ages.

key:

iswis = i said what i said, no explanation to that one.

whe = will happily explain.

stop sexualizing gay/m|m/yaoi relationships. it's not only demonizing to the males, it's also very fetishizing. (iswis)

most times /10 yall root for "feminine men" when you really mean white boys and fetishised asian men on social media. (whe)

bullying someone isnt educating. you either cant cope with the fact people have different opinions from you or you have a struggle with things either always never going your way or the opposite. (iswis)

straight people will never have a say in lgbtq+ issues. stop inserting yourself. (iswis)

white people will never have a say in poc issues. stop inserting yourself. (iswis)

poc will never have a say in black people issues. stop inserting yourself. (vice versa but im black and it happens more often to us lol) (iswis)

using the defense, "but black lives matter, right?" when one black person does something bad isnt facts, youre racist. (iswis)

fandom adults need to stop gatekeeping the target audience (demographics) to animes/shows. (iswis)

poc people can be racist. (whe)

even if a certain site was adult doesnt mean that every adult wants to see your porn. either keep it to yourself or tag properly. (iswis)

saying shit like, "im more xyz than you and im not even xyz" is not only disrespectful but disgusting. just because you believe in a popular opinion of a group does NOT suddenly make you a person in it, get over yourself. (iswis)

dont hate on people for the same things you have done at a young age. (ex: writing fanfic, seggs, etc) (iswis)

blaming a minor/someone mentally unstable for being abused is not only victim blaming, but it enables the notion that people who go those things that they wanted it. (iswis)

going off of that last point, if you do victim blame for situations and been in them yourself you either still havent coped with what you went through and still think it was your fault when it wasnt. (whe)

it's stupid people hate minors for being undeveloped when adults are the reason as to why people get traumas, abused and quite literally are destroying the world right now. (iswis)

gen z is white as fuck. (iswis)

early 2000s kids are equivalent to 90s kids who use to post, "only 90s kids under this" and post something that 2000-5 experienced. (iswis)

dear 2005+ kids, abusing harmful substances and having sex doesnt make you grown. stop it. (iswis)

adults, being able to post porn doesnt make you grown or mature, stop believing that it does. (iswis)

just because it's a coping mechanism doesnt mean it's healthy. (iswis)

avoiding conflict doesnt mean youre mature. if there is an active problem and you know ignoring it will only benefit you and not the actual problem at hand that is selfish. (iswis)

black women generate clout for everyone. when we're hated the person gets patted on the back, someone appreciates black girls they are praised, and people of many groups repeatedly steal from our culture. (iswis)

YES THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING BLACK AND AFRICAN AMERICAN. (whe)

if youre black you do not have to be democrat OR republican, there are many other parties. (whe)

i do not trust either parties, no minority should. (whe)

this 2020 election was not a win for poc people no matter who won. (iswis)

we do not decide whether or not what to do on columbus day. it is up to the natives themselves. (whe)

pointing out other countries (current) faults is not racist. although the issue can be misconstrued, if proper research is done it safe to say it's an educated observation or opinion. (whe)

privilege heavily varies; ex, americans are seen as privileged, while the people who live in it experience a disadvantage because of the societal standards. within the country itself. (whe)

americans, stop saying that america is the worst country and there are other countries who are suffering much worse than we are. yes sometimes it sucks but do not label it as the worst. (iswis + whe)

white people are privileged and will always be until we break the racist issues deep rooted in EVERY community. (iswis)

9/10 when marginalized groups like (women, lgbt) are mostly focused on white people and never address the poc counter parts. using the excuse "well idk much about that" is not good enough and just promotes pseudo-white supremecy. (iswis + whe)

do not use aave. (iswis)

aave is not gen z language, stop calling it that. (iswis)

gay men (white especially) use black women and get praised for the things we do that are called ghetto. (iswis)

yes it is offensive if you touch a black persons hair with or without permission. we are not your pets nor zoo animals. (iswis)

and yes it is offensive if you see a black women with beautiful hair and assume it's fake or ask, "is it yours?" "is it real?" (iswis)

using jailbait as an excuse to lewd minors is just as disgusting. (iswis)

beauty standards for women is rooted from pedophilia. (iswis)

using other pedophilic relationships as an excuse to ship yours is disturbing and you shouldnt be near children at any capacity. (iswis)

everything doesnt need a label. (iswis)

the fact that gangs have been criminalized while mafias havent is racist and feeds the stereotypes that poc are criminals. (iswis)

people are more forgiving to white predators than to poc (neither are good but people let white off the hook more often). (iswis)

if youre okay with your friends being racists, creeps, abusers you are just as bad. (iswis)

although you can like what you like, making dark content shouldnt be as glorified as much as it is. (iswis)

some kinks do deserve to be kink shamed. (iswis)

adults need to be more held accountable when held in situations with minors. (iswis + whe)

everyone perceives the world differently, many people will see the same things you see differently. (iswis)

calling people crazy for questioning the things around them doesnt make them crazy, youre just asleep. (iswis)

the human body can function without a soul. (iswis)

stop disrespecting christianity. you wouldnt do the same with hinduism, islam and etc. (iswis)

the bible was altered by white men and the true meanings have been misconstrued. (iswis + whe)

bullying someone who you THINK is problematic is not excuse to be hateful. youre just scum and feel the need to justify your actions. (iswis)

not everyone has to like you and dont need a reason. (iswis)

just because you dont like someone doesnt mean you have to make a show of it. be mature and move along. (iswis)

yes callouts/cancelling has its place but it's never done right. (iswis)

"cancel culture" wasnt a thing till white people joined in. (iswis)

dont cancel someone for stuff they did years ago. bringing it up is important but not allowing them to understand, reflect, and apologize is not only bullying it defeats the purpose of bringing awareness. (iswis)

big writers need to stop complaining when one fic or a few dont do good. not only does it rub in small writers faces, it shows that if you need people's validation to write you probably shouldnt be writing. some works will be popular and some will flop, get over it. (iswis)

stop witch hunting & crucifying people for shit you have done or your friends have done and going "uwu sorry" when you get caught. (iswis)

90% people believe content creators with bigger audiences. (iswis)

people spontaneously posting, "uwu take care of your mental health" doesnt mean that they actually care. (iswis)

people are always quick to judge people with real mental health such as depression, anxiety, adhd, and etc are always the one to turn and pretend to be exactly what they just mocked. (iswis)

dont have kids if youre not going to take care of them. (iswis)

stop baiting baby otakus (people freshly getting into anime) into watching cp like yarichin bitch club or boku no pico. they are minors, it's not funny, stop it. (iswis)

stop being protective & toxic over anime characters. if they were real they probably wouldnt even like you. (iswis)

just because someone is your friend doesnt mean that they arent toxic or abusive. (iswis)

start believing when people show their true traits. (iswis)

trauma happens in different forms, stop saying something didnt happen because it didnt go the way that has commonly happened or the way it occurred to you. (iswis)

stop saying minors should "know" while also being the loudest to say that our brains arent even developed till 25. (iswis)

the adult age should be raised to 20 years old. (iswis + whe)

tos should be raised to 16 years old. (iswis + whe)

minors take "18+" & "minors dni" out of your bio. (iswis)

yelling at minors for finding the content you freely put out without any care is your fault not theirs. (iswis)

there are plenty of adult sites that are more confined for adults but you guys ignore them because youd rather get popular on writing erotica on a popular social media platform. (iswis)

trying to cancel someone over one mistake and or blowing said things out of proportion is toxic and stupid. (iswis)

if you take someone saying they need to distance themselves for mental health reasons personally and make them feel bad for it youre an actual shitty person. (iswis)

if someone disrespects you, you have the right to say whatever you want in response. (iswis + whe)

stop hypersexualizing everything (adults especially). (iswis)

the excuses of, "they look grown" "i mentally think xyz" "theyre fake" is creepy and weird and yall should come up with a better excuse. (iswis)

yes i do believe minors should be writing for minors only, but i will not give a shit if an adult does if said characters are aged up in every work sfw or not. (iswis)

stop saying teens cant go through traumatic things and cant experience mental illnesses. it just shows that you werent cared for as a child and never get the therapy for it. (iswis)

gen z has a very colonized idea of activism. (iswis)

feminism was never for all women until the rest of us forced ourselves in. and even now it's still an issue whether or not people realize it or not. (iswis)

poc solidarity doesnt exist as much as we try to make it happen. (iswis)

colorism is an issue, and no you will not tell me otherwise. (iswis)

the hot cheeto girl is offensive and demeans black & hispanic culture. (iswis)

stop bashing minors for breathing, just say youre mad youre not young anymore and move on. (iswis)

black men are the white people of black people. (iswis)

there is no reason as to why you anyone would refer to black people as "blacks". nor should you (non-black people) be arguing whether or not to say nigga even with the hard r. (iswis)

if you (pertains to white people) think white privilege doesnt exist but go on to make fun of or ignore minority problems you are the living and breathing example of what we are talking about. (iswis)

loli/shotas are fucking disgusting and people who like it deserve to be tortured for eternity. (iswis)

seriously, stop using theyre "fake" as an excuse. (iswis)

if youre comfortable with being hateful to someone but still consider yourself a nice person because you do the hate minimum to be a decent human, youre either a narcissist or have a god complex. (iswis)

coons have no say in black issues. (iswis)

people need to stop blaming the "home wrecker" for ruining the relationship when it was the s/o's fault as well. there is no home to enter without an owner. (iswis)

stop saying any asian man yo see reminds you of a haikyuu character and or any anime character. it's racist. (iswis)

stop saying any asian person looks like a kpop idol, it's racist. (iswis)

stop downplaying and invalidating when black women go through traumatic things. not only does it promote that we have to be strong and save everyone else's problems, it says that we dont have emotions and cant be a victim which is disgusting. (iswis)

if you say shit like "minors curate your own experience" then go and turn around to say you REFUSE TO TAG YOUR SHIT YOU ARE LITERALLY MAKING THE PROCESS OF CENSORING HARD! (iswis)

white women are just as much of a problem as white men. only difference is sex keeping them apart. (iswis)

stop saying kpop is racist. expecting artists from a different political progression to understand that things can be offensive is bland. (iswis)

people accept boy groups fuck-ups more than they accept girl groups. and most times out of ten, the males are worse. (iswis)

if you engage in nsfw conversation with a minor, it is your fault they responded. (iswis)

anyone can be abused. (iswis)

stop coddling adults and bullying minors. (iswis)

most of you females have internalized misogyny and dont even know it. (iswis)

you can callout issues without having to drag a group of people. same with uplifting. (iswis)

if youre fine with being a sheep unfollow me. (iswis)

seven deadly sins is not a good anime. (iswis)

there is a difference between boku no hero academia fans based on if they call it "bnha" or "mha". (iswis)

ships literally are not serious stop harassing people over ships. (iswis)

do not harass creators of series because they do something with THEIR story. make your own. (iswis)

stop saying horikoshi sexualizes his women too much/mineta is the worst when you guys enjoy shows like one piece, hunter x hunter, naruto and etc. (iswis)

minors often or not are sheeps (heres your sign you dont have to agree with everything other people say). (iswis)

just because minors can be mature doesnt mean that they are adults. stop treating them as such. (iswis)

we should give more voice actors in the asmr (idk what to call it) community more recognition instead of just one. (iswis)

writers are the ones that send hate to other writers. anon hate is so corny and if you do it that goes to show that you are truly a toxic person wearing a fake mask of kindness when youre not on anonymous. (iswis)

stop being mean to smaller writers because they did not have as much luck as you. (iswis)

stop blaming your readers because one story flopped. (iswis)

ignoring someone's shitty actions encourages them to do it more. (iswis)

going to school and getting a job is much harder now than it was before. (iswis)

being an adult doesnt automatically make you mature. just because youre older doesnt mean youre better or you opinion is more valuable. it just shows that you werent heard when you were younger. (iswis)

there should be no reason as to why someone of the age of 18 should be having any romantic relationship with someone who is a minor. (iswis)

hawks is a shitty character. (iswis)

bakudeku isnt toxic. (iswis)

just because bakugo is in a ship, doesnt mean it's toxic. (iswis)

stop shipping male characters together simply because they have screen time together. it's creepy. (iswis)

almost all of 1-a students have ptsd and anything close to the after effects of being traumatized. (iswis)

no, editing characters to be poc is not racist. youre just mad they arent "white" when they never were. theyre asian and come in many colors as well. (iswis)

wanting to only be with a different race to get a mixed baby is fucking disgusting. (iswis)

stop ignoring pedo relationships between older women and younger boys and or with older women in general. (iswis)

males can be abused, stop telling them to suck it up or that they cant go through things. (iswis)

shaming young females about things they cant control is misogynistic and is damaging to their identity and shouldnt be excused. (iswis + whe)

not all females have to shave. (iswis)

what you dont like in someone is the projections you see of yourself on other people that you dont like about yourself. (whe)

popular bl stories extremely misrepresent gay relationships and frankly it's disgusting that theyre boosted as much as they are. (iswis)

jjba isnt ugly, you just watch animes to sexualize the characters. (iswis)

it's shitty that anime and kpop only became cool once white people stated to like it and made it mainstream. go gatekeep family guy or something. (iswis)

if you have been anime fan for a long time you were with bullied/teased for just generally liking it or you were a weirdo who recreated shit from it. (iswis)

weaboo and weeb were bad terms till we made them positive?? literally otaku is the word for it but we use weeb instead lol. (whe)

normalize and promote educating someone without going straight to bullying them. (whe)

haikyuu isnt really a good manga/anime nor is the art style the best but the characters make up for it. (iswis)

stop misusing terms and stop nitpicking definitions to manipulate your narrative. (iswis)

toxic positivity is manipulative and if you have to make it back handed you are not as nice as you like to make it seem. (iswis)

studying a major doesnt mean youre actually good in the subject. (iswis)

normalize people realizing their past mistakes and growing from it. (iswis)

do not self diagnos unless you actually feel like you may have that issue and would like to seek help. mental health is not a personality trait. (iswis)

stop projecting onto people. (iswis)

stop misusing terms and stop nitpicking definitions to fit your narrative. (iswis)

stealing any type of work should not be tolerated. (iswis)

constantly trying to trigger someone to go back to their old ways (being toxic, abusive, addiction, suicidal etc) after changing is toxic and manipulative. (iswis)

if you make jokes about hurting kids and or feel the need speak badly about them i do not want to speak to you. (iswis)

the human brain wasnt developed to understand complex ideas such as death or the universe. (iswis)

we will never truly know what is beyond our skies. (iswis)

thats all, thanks for sifting!

[arcticdementor]

In yet another sign of our tortured political moment, the most meaningful civic discussion currently raging is being waged not by our elected officials, spiritual leaders, novelists or celebrities, but by two writers engaged in what may appear to be an intramural intellectual quibble in niche publications.

It began last week when Sohrab Ahmari, the op-ed editor of the New York Post, took to the journal First Things to point out what he believed was wrong much of American conservatism, a bundle of self-contradictory tics embodied, he argued, by National Review writer and dedicated Never Trumper David French. It didn’t take long for French to jab right back. A host of other pugilists, including New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, soon entered the arena, framing the argument in personal, sometimes quasi-slanderous terms.

…

Even worse, today’s social justice warriors, Ahmari continued, see any dissent from their dogmas as an inherent assault. “They say, in effect: For us to feel fully autonomous, you must positively affirm our sexual choices, our transgression, our power to disfigure our natural bodies and redefine what it means to be human,” Ahmari wrote, “lest your disapprobation make us feel less than fully autonomous.” This means that no real discussion is possible—the only thing a true conservative can do is, in Ahmari’s pithy phrase, “to fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy and enjoying the spoils in the form of a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good.”

…

Almost immediately, French delivered his riposte. Ahmari’s call to arms, he wrote in his response, betrayed a deep misunderstanding of both our national moment and our national character. “America,” French wrote, “will always be a nation of competing worldviews and competing, deeply held values. We can forsake a commitment to liberty and launch the political version of the Battle of Verdun, seeking the ruin of our foes, or we can recommit to our shared citizenship and preserve a space for all American voices, even as we compete against those voices in politics and the marketplace of ideas.”

Which means that civility is not a secondary value but the main event, the measure of most, if not all, things. Bret Stephens agreed: In his column in The New York Times, he called Ahmari—who was born Muslim in Tehran and had found his path to Catholicism—“an ardent convert” and a “would-be theocrat” who, inflamed with dreams of the divine will, had failed to understand that it was precisely the becalmed civilities of “value-neutral liberalism” that has made his brave journey from Tehran to the New York Post possible.

…

You don’t have to be conservative, or particularly religious, to spot a few deep-seated problems with the arguments advanced by French, Stephens, and the rest of the Never Trump cadre. Three fallacies in particular stand out.

The first has to do with the self-branding of the Never Trumpers as champions of civility. From tax cuts to crushing ISIS, from supporting Israel to appointing staunchly ideological justices to the Supreme Court, there’s very little about the 45th president’s policies that ought to make any principled conservative run for the hills. What, then, separates one camp of conservatives, one that supports the president, from another, which vows it never will? Stephens himself attempted an answer in a 2017 column. “Character does count,” he wrote, “and virtue does matter, and Trump’s shortcomings prove it daily.”

To put it briefly, the Never Trump argument is that they should be greatly approved of, while Donald Trump should rightly be scorned, because—while they agree with Trump on most things, politically—they are devoted to virtue, while Trump is uniquely despicable. The proofs of Trump’s singular loathsomeness are many, but if you strip him of all the vices he shares with others who had recently held positions of power—a deeply problematic attitude towards women (see under: Clinton, William Jefferson), shady business dealings (see under: Clinton, Hillary Rodham), a problematic attitude towards the free press (see under: Obama, Barack)—you remain with one ur-narrative, the terrifying folk tale that casts Trump as a nefarious troll dispatched by his paymasters in the Kremlin to set American democracy ablaze.

…

Conspiracy-mongering doesn’t seem like much of a public virtue. Certainly, the Never Trumpers should have known better than to join in the massive publicity campaign around a “dossier” supposedly compiled by a former British intelligence officer rehashing third-hand hearsay and paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. You can still find many faults with Donald Trump’s behavior in and out of office, including some cardinal enough perhaps to merit impeachment, without buying in to some moronic ghost story about an orange-hued traitor who seized the highest office in the land with the help of Vladimir Putin’s social media goons. All that should go without saying, especially for people who ostensibly devote their lives to elevating and enriching the tone of our public discourse.

…

It is true that French took care to sound unfailingly fair, a lone voice for reason in a political reality inflamed by lunatics left and right. The thing he was being reasonable about, however, was an FBI investigation that emerged out of a blatant politically motivated forgery. Now, it’s perfectly plausible that French was carrying on his arguments in good faith, even when overwhelming evidence to the contrary was always there for a slightly more curious or skeptical journalist to discover. What’s disturbing, from the public virtue standpoint, is that French has yet to admit his own failings, which are compounded by his less-than-courageous misrepresentations of what he actually wrote: In his reply to Ahmari, he strongly denied he had promoted the collusion story, a point of view that’s difficult to defend when your byline appears on stories like “There Is Now Evidence That Senior Trump Officials Attempted to Collude with Russia.”

French and the other self-appointed guardians of civility, then, should do us all a favor and drop the civic virtue act. They’re not disinterested guardians of our public institutions; they are actors, working in an industry that rewards them for dressing up in Roman Republican drag and reciting Cicero for the yokels. This is why Bill Kristol, another of the Never Trumpers, could raise money for his vanity website, The Bulwark, and why he could expect his new creation be lauded on CNN as “a conservative site unafraid to take on Trump,” even as the site was staffed by leftist millennials and dutifully followed progressive propaganda lines. Like anyone whose living depends on keeping on the right side of a leftist industry, they understood that there’s only so much you can say if you care about cashing a paycheck—especially when the president and leader of your own party won’t take your phone calls.

…

To tell an Iranian immigrant that he doesn’t understand the way American liberalism works because he ended up on the side of faith rather than on the side of deracinated cosmopolitan universalism isn’t just an impoverished reading of America’s foundations or a blatantly condescending comment; it’s also indicative of a mindset that seeks to immediately equate any disagreement with some inherent and irreparable character flaw.

…

So much for the cocktail party chatter. The larger problem here is that at no point do Stephens, French, et al. deliver a concrete explanation of how they propose conservatism go about opposing, to say nothing of reversing, the new social and moral order that the progressive left has been busily implementing in America for a decade or more. At best, they claim that there’s no real crisis after all.

…

Ahmari, not unlike the zealous left he opposes, has a very distinct idea of where he wants the country to go. He doesn’t want it to end up where objecting to lunatic theories, forged by crackpot academics and defying millennia of lived human experience, gets you called a bigot and fired from your job. He doesn’t want to try and engage in dialogue with people who believe that disagreeing with their opinions causes them some sort of harm and that speech must therefore be regulated by the government or large tech companies. He doesn’t want an America in which color of skin and religious affiliation and sexual preference trump or mute the content of your character. Looking at public schools and private universities, Hollywood and publishing, academia and social media, Ahmari sees the threat posed by progressive doctrine to established American norms and values as entirely real. That he wants to fight it doesn’t make him, as Stephens suggested, a Catholic mullah-in-waiting. It makes him a normal American.

Which is why American Jews, too—whether they identify as liberals or conservatives—would do well to take this squabble seriously. The liberalism that American Jews have defended so ardently, the reason so many of us ended up voting for the left and supporting organizations like the ACLU and cheering on firebrands like Bella Abzug, was geared to secure precisely the values and rights that Ahmari champions, without which it would have been impossible for us to survive, let alone thrive, as immigrants to a white, Christian-majority culture.

A religious minority cannot expect to last very long in a society, like the one the progressive left advocates, that is allergic to tradition and intolerant of dissent. Only in an America that takes faith seriously, that respects and empowers community, and that shudders at any attempt to censor wrong beliefs and incorrect thinking, can Jews hope to thrive.

[eeveelutionsforequality]

I think Nazi punchers (the ones that punch first, those who punch in self-defense are okay), Antifa, Far Left, etc have a lot in common with War on Drugs and the War on Drugs' D.A.R.E program. They think they are doing good, but they end up making things worse and create NEW problems (and barely fix the problems). Is that a good comparison?

That is, in my opinion, one of the best comparisons that I've seen.

There's this mentality that the only way to stop something is with force and intolerance - you see it with "punch a Nazi" stuff, with the anti-drug stuff, with "kill all pedos" stuff, with laws against loli or "obscene" fiction, and so on. People have honestly good intentions, they want to achieve the same ultimate goal that I do - to prevent people from getting hurt - but they approach it in a completely different way than I do. They want to punish and enact retribution against those who've done wrong, or who they perceive as having done wrong, and they want to prevent wrongdoing by force; while I think that rehabilitation and protection (keeping proven dangerous people away from those that they could harm via something akin to prison but run infinitely better), and preventing wrongdoing through education, therapy, discussion, and personal growth, are going to be more effective.

I guess a lot of it comes from a difference in how we view the concepts of good and evil, and how we view people who've committed an act of either themselves. Personally, I'm in the "We probably don't have much, if any, free will, and we definitely don't have the kind or extent of free will that we think we have." - I see everything as having causal factors, even "choice", and I see those factors as things that we can mitigate (I'd recommend reading Free Will by Sam Harris, and watching this video and this video, for more about free will). My goal is to cause less suffering, and retribution is a form of suffering (it's simply one that's deemed noble and against a deserving party), but I don't think that retribution is logical, I think that it's emotional. A lot of people dictate their morality on their emotions (if something feels gross/bad to them, then it is those things, and others should view it as such otherwise they are also gross and bad), and they view good and evil as these definitive, objective facts, and they think that which you do dictates which you deserve - an eye for an eye sorts of mentalities.

I've said before that morality is subjective, and I think that I've been misinterpreted as meaning "Everybody's individual morality is a valid morality." but that's not what I mean, what I mean is closer to "Nobody's is." Morality itself is a "social construct" - it's a good one if implemented correctly, because it can prevent suffering, and we all personally and from experience know that suffering is unpleasant - but it's not a law of physics or something inherent to the universe, and it's far more common for living creatures to exist without even considering things right or wrong. Morality is just something that improves group cohesion, thus improving the chances of survival for a group or individuals within that group, thus ensuring that any genes and socialization that pass on an inclination towards compassion and altruism also survive. But it's no more inherent to the universe than sadness is - it's just a chemical reaction in our brains. We can't judge somebody's morality on which is more valid or more right, but we can judge it on which is more effective at preventing suffering and which is based on better evidence and reasoning - so with the war on drugs, we can cite how ineffective it has been and cite examples of recovered and productive ex-addicts, and use reasoning to explain why compassion and medical care are a better solution than criminalization.

My view is that when you punch somebody or simply say "Drugs are evil!" you don't actually address any of the causal factors, and you definitely don't prevent those causal factors from becoming an issue in others - at most, you simply build a metaphorical three foot wall in their brain with "This is bad." or "You'll get punched if you do this." written on it, and it's just going to take a little more for the causal factors to push them over that new blockade.

But people aren't immaculately controlled by threats of potential retribution against them - otherwise we'd all be Christians for fear of burning in Hell for all eternity, which is literally a greater retribution than anything that could ever be enacted on Earth (a retribution that I don't believe is going to come to pass, on account of the fact that I don't believe in God, but even the slimmest, tiniest, most insignificant percentage of a chance of suffering for all eternity would be enough to say "Fuck it, I'll pray a bit." if we were so easily manipulated with such threats) - we are somewhat swayed by it sometimes, and alongside other forms of manipulation it can be effective, but alone it can't sufficiently oppose a myriad of things pushing in the opposite direction. Humans generally live in the moment, and if they've deemed something appropriate in the moment then they likely won't change their mind just because somebody asserts that it's inappropriate and threatens them - they'll see themselves as a martyr. You have to change their mind on whether the action is appropriate.

I'm not personally against people doing drugs - I think that people should have the right to do as they please to their own bodies - but I think that people should be informed on exactly what those drugs do and the risks of those drugs, so that their choice on what to do to their body is an educated one, and so that they can take into account factors other than the drug itself and keep themselves and others safe (like deciding not to do weed before going into work as a nurse/carer, where people are reliant on you and your reflexes, for example). There are drugs that I think people shouldn't do, situations that I think that you shouldn't do drugs in (if you're a minor, for example), drugs that I think are too risky, harmful, and so on - I argue for or against those things by explaining how the drug impacts somebody, why it's unsafe in certain scenarios, and so on, rather than just saying "It's bad." and expecting that alone to convince them of anything.

It's like I was saying in the necrophilia discussion - just saying "It's gross." is completely ineffective as persuasion, because if you don't think that something is gross then being told that it's gross doesn't change that. If I told you "Roses are gross." you wouldn't suddenly think that roses are gross - it's not persuasive, not an argument, it's just a subjective opinion and it's doing nothing to change anybody's mind, it only appeals to people who already agree with you.

So yeah, I think a lot of these things have the same pitfall - they don't view their "opponent" as a collection of individuals, with reasoning and causal factors, who can in turn be reasoned with. They see "Nazi", and that's all that person is, and they need to stop them - they don't see reasoning with them as a means to stop the Nazi, because (and this is going mostly off the time I got into an argument with a YouTuber about this on Twitter, and spent days getting spammed constantly by people with the "punch Nazis" mindset) they don't believe that the person can change. They believe that it's inevitable that we will be "dragged off to death camps" by these people if we don't show them that we're stronger and that we won't stand for them. It's like the adult version of "Slapping a kid is the only way to get them to listen."

~ Vape