a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by tacocat

What if I'm confident that someone else is a piece of shit and needs to be taken to task for it? Some people don't deserve dignity. This seems like a very murky area to try to nail down a definitive answer.





lil  ·  2095 days ago  ·  link  ·  

When you say "needs to be taken to task for it," what do you mean exactly?

People behave badly. You've been to enough AA type meetings to have heard enough stories about how badly people behave. You've also seen these shitty people try to turn their lives around and make amends. Did that process happen because someone got up on his high horse and "took them to task" for being a shit? Maybe, sometimes. More likely, someone treated them with dignity and cared enough about them to give them enough self-respect to seek help. Maybe they cared enough about themselves to seek help. I don't know.

Maybe he just found his car wrapped around a pole and stumbled home realizing how lucky he was that some kid was not under that pole. Then he realized that he could have lost his job, his girlfriend, and his freedom. Would it have helped at any time if I had taken him to task - or did he need to wrap his car around a pole?

I just have never seen a piece of shit person respond well to someone who felt it was his place to smarten the shithead up.

But hey, if it works, go for it. I assume that your goal would be to let the shithead know how big a shithead he is. I can't see that goal moving anyone in the direction of goodness.

but do argue with me.

Personally, I prefer to surround myself with people who care about my and others' feelings.

I can't bring myself to spend energy on poorly behaving people -- maybe I should. I have some family members in mind right now --

but what would the point be? Their idea of what family means is not mine. I can't change that.

Sigh.

Indeed I have rambled about many things.

I wish better things for you taco.

tacocat  ·  2095 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Sometimes you gotta call bullshit. It's even part of AA culture. "Not cosigning your bullshit" is one of their little witticisms. So is a version of "mind your own business." AA is not a good example because its inherently hypocritical

My point is you can't nail down an answer here because the question is too vague. Simply, someone could look up four dictionary definitions and be done but that's not the answer being begged. Philosophy tends towards questions with no answers if we're going to take seriously the introductory clause of the topic sentence.

Am I supposed to remain civil while the government arrests babies? Hell no. I'm going to take those people to task. And offend some baby arrest apologists in the process. But I'm firm in the conviction that 18 month olds shouldn't be incarcerated. So fuck those people who don't like my tone.

I like philosophical questions to a degree but it's at its core just mental exercise. Or mental masturbation if you want to be cynical. So in the end these discussions just end up being persuasiveness contests when held in forums instead of in the confines of two academics who disagree with each other and snipe back and forth in obscure publications. I'm also probably too generally abrasive to argue a lot of point convincingly. And I'm fine with that.