100%. But it's hard. Sometimes those who show contempt for me cause me great pain, and sometimes I lash back. But I try to ever lash a personal attack. Last Thanksgiving a permanent rift occurred in my family. I was discussing with another member of the family about the "Biden economy," my comment had merely been to question whether at mid-terms we can really call it one president's economy after two years when his policies need a year to pass and another year to implement. My Republican in-law only overheard enough to think I was somehow disparaging the ex-president. He called me a "dumb no-nothing who spent too much reading liberal media, I asked him pointedly, "why am i dumb because I know how to read and you are not dumb because you don't know how to read?"Of course no one heard my careful attempt to not call him dumb, everyone heard only that I did use "dumb". Because he had called me dumb. Well he jumped up and was going to strike me and I managed to pull myself up to let him have a fair blow,. Well it didn't come to that, they carried me out, but since then, at Christmas, and birthdays our kids come and visit, but I am no longer permitted or welcome at any family celebrations. I wept that night, and I still feel the pain of his dislike (which existed before that night) but I don't dislike him, I am sorry I hurt him but can't tell him because he has forbidden anyone to speak my name in his presence. But even the kids and my wife are still angry at me and I am still angry at myself.
Is that an example of what you are saying. Because dislike, it seems to me, only creates pain on all sides.
Why should we think that people have a general right not to be harmed? Being overtly disliked seems like a harm that we have no legitimate complaint about, absent other info. There’s no general right against being harmed emotionally. If you’re in a consequentialist frame of mind, then why not just say “disliking people makes it more likely to hurt their feelings and thereby not maximize utility”? If you’re not, then you need to argue for a right not to be harmed emotionally.
You could try to analogize with physical harm, but I’m not sure that would work well. Emotional harm is much less consistent, especially re something like being disliked.
As an aside, it’s kind of strange to imagine a moral universe in which buying a car instead of saving children’s lives via charity is morally ok but disliking someone is not. I think your worldview described here is too full of morality.
I take it to be in some sense the foundational truth of morality:
*It is impermissible to harm others without a compelling reason.*
But I also take your point about moral creep and swelling obligations. It's something I've written about myself- ethics should be careful not to make unrealistic demands that won't even do that much good if carried out. But I think making an effort to only dislike people with good reason is not so demanding? https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/is-it-bad-to-want-a-badie-why-contra
I suppose it depends on temperament. If someone had a temperament where they were naturally inclined to dislike many, many people I wouldn't want them to beat themselves up over it.
Depending on the car and the reason for it, I think it quite possibly is impermissible to buy a *nice* car in a world where children are starving.
I'm so glad to have an amoralistic worldview. Rather than make people kill their natural instincts, it will likely also make many simply paint the people they dislike as morally wrong, and therefore deserving of it. It's also yet another scruple for depressed people (an ever growing social group) to beat themselves up about.
I think that expressing dislike is important for our development both as individuals and as a society. For example, if your kid was constantly behaving in a way that you disliked, but you kept it to yourself, that would be directly harming your child’s development by cutting them off from natural feedback that wants to be expressed.
Having a low bar to liking someone is definitely useful but if none of us had that negative force, morality would likely not have taken the shape that it has, since it is cultivated through the thorny mess that is human emotion.
Giving someone the benefit of the doubt when there’s not sufficient evidence of not liking them is definitely the way to go though. I suspect our intuitions can be right just as often as our intellect is wrong.
100%. But it's hard. Sometimes those who show contempt for me cause me great pain, and sometimes I lash back. But I try to ever lash a personal attack. Last Thanksgiving a permanent rift occurred in my family. I was discussing with another member of the family about the "Biden economy," my comment had merely been to question whether at mid-terms we can really call it one president's economy after two years when his policies need a year to pass and another year to implement. My Republican in-law only overheard enough to think I was somehow disparaging the ex-president. He called me a "dumb no-nothing who spent too much reading liberal media, I asked him pointedly, "why am i dumb because I know how to read and you are not dumb because you don't know how to read?"Of course no one heard my careful attempt to not call him dumb, everyone heard only that I did use "dumb". Because he had called me dumb. Well he jumped up and was going to strike me and I managed to pull myself up to let him have a fair blow,. Well it didn't come to that, they carried me out, but since then, at Christmas, and birthdays our kids come and visit, but I am no longer permitted or welcome at any family celebrations. I wept that night, and I still feel the pain of his dislike (which existed before that night) but I don't dislike him, I am sorry I hurt him but can't tell him because he has forbidden anyone to speak my name in his presence. But even the kids and my wife are still angry at me and I am still angry at myself.
Is that an example of what you are saying. Because dislike, it seems to me, only creates pain on all sides.
It's a tough and sad thing life, yes I agree, dislike in my experience generally brings pain.
Why should we think that people have a general right not to be harmed? Being overtly disliked seems like a harm that we have no legitimate complaint about, absent other info. There’s no general right against being harmed emotionally. If you’re in a consequentialist frame of mind, then why not just say “disliking people makes it more likely to hurt their feelings and thereby not maximize utility”? If you’re not, then you need to argue for a right not to be harmed emotionally.
You could try to analogize with physical harm, but I’m not sure that would work well. Emotional harm is much less consistent, especially re something like being disliked.
As an aside, it’s kind of strange to imagine a moral universe in which buying a car instead of saving children’s lives via charity is morally ok but disliking someone is not. I think your worldview described here is too full of morality.
I take it to be in some sense the foundational truth of morality:
*It is impermissible to harm others without a compelling reason.*
But I also take your point about moral creep and swelling obligations. It's something I've written about myself- ethics should be careful not to make unrealistic demands that won't even do that much good if carried out. But I think making an effort to only dislike people with good reason is not so demanding? https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/is-it-bad-to-want-a-badie-why-contra
I suppose it depends on temperament. If someone had a temperament where they were naturally inclined to dislike many, many people I wouldn't want them to beat themselves up over it.
Depending on the car and the reason for it, I think it quite possibly is impermissible to buy a *nice* car in a world where children are starving.
I'm so glad to have an amoralistic worldview. Rather than make people kill their natural instincts, it will likely also make many simply paint the people they dislike as morally wrong, and therefore deserving of it. It's also yet another scruple for depressed people (an ever growing social group) to beat themselves up about.
I think that expressing dislike is important for our development both as individuals and as a society. For example, if your kid was constantly behaving in a way that you disliked, but you kept it to yourself, that would be directly harming your child’s development by cutting them off from natural feedback that wants to be expressed.
Having a low bar to liking someone is definitely useful but if none of us had that negative force, morality would likely not have taken the shape that it has, since it is cultivated through the thorny mess that is human emotion.
Giving someone the benefit of the doubt when there’s not sufficient evidence of not liking them is definitely the way to go though. I suspect our intuitions can be right just as often as our intellect is wrong.