> I wouldn't be poor in the first place!
> I wouldn't be sick in the first place!
> I wouldn't be in their shoes in the first place!
What an argument.
For example, I'm of the (extremely unpopular) opinion that we're too hard on sex criminals. The framework the US has put together doesn't just not help reformation, but in many ways encourages recidivism by limiting employment and housing options. But what's the right choice? Am I right because I'm backed by dozens of studies by social scientists? Or is the local parent mob right to "protect their children" by keeping laws on the books that keep sex offenders in the fringes of community? If a child molester gets off on a technicality, is the victim's father who murders him a hero or a villain?
What about other crimes? In China you can go to jail for 10 days without prosecution for possessing pot. Here in NJ I can smoke a blunt on my front lawn as a police parade goes by and I'm fine. Who is right?
IDK, I'm just rambling at this point. This whole debate is so stupid and circular and hypocritical and fluid on all sides.
This isn't talking about "forgiving" at all, in fact. i think the only person who can "forgive" someone who has done harm is the person they have done harm to, that's not even in the capacity of anyone else to do, is it?
This is, by the way, very related to "abolish prisons/policing" stuff.
When someone has done grave harm, and the recommended response is to try to keep anyone else from employing, doing business with, or even socializing with them -- what is the goal, what do you expect to accomplish? Preventing them from doing further harm? Repairing the harm done to those who had harm done to them? Making it less likely others will do harm? Just pure vengeance? Which of these are accomplished, how well, by this technique? What kind of community or society is creating, knowing that we will all do harm and all have harm done to us?
Nowadays we know this is dumb and causes tons of unwanted harassment. People changed and made the world a better place, which was great. Then we went back and started prosecuting people for doing what they were told they were supposed to be doing at the time. This is why we have grandfather clauses in the law.
The difference between Sexual Harassment and Flirting is if the other person is into it.
To quote Cardinal Richelieu, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
This behavior really has nothing to do with the nature of the crime at hand; it's been used to discriminate against people by race, by gender, by interest, by religion - by just about anything. Giving human beings the ability to arbitrarily punish other humans, without recourse, is obscenely dangerous.
