Philosophical Questions: Harm
Jun. 21st, 2025 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithPeople have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.
How far should governments go to prevent its citizens from causing harm to themselves?
A government ought to prevent people from harming others, but it is not the government's business if people choose to harm themselves. Humans have free will. They may choose to do things which other see as harmful, but they enjoy or find useful. It is particularly egregious when the government tries to take away a coping method without offering a better alternative or changing situations so that it is not needed. It adds insult to injury when the government rails about one thing being dangerous while forcing another dangerous thing on people.
How far should governments go to prevent its citizens from causing harm to themselves?
A government ought to prevent people from harming others, but it is not the government's business if people choose to harm themselves. Humans have free will. They may choose to do things which other see as harmful, but they enjoy or find useful. It is particularly egregious when the government tries to take away a coping method without offering a better alternative or changing situations so that it is not needed. It adds insult to injury when the government rails about one thing being dangerous while forcing another dangerous thing on people.
Thoughts
Date: 2025-06-23 08:44 am (UTC)So the livestock doesn't escape. They rely on intimidation, punishing relatives, or punishing people who made the attempt but did not succeed.
>> But many states now have "assisted suicide" laws, for someone who is already dying of a painful and eventually fatal disease, to be "put out of their suffering".<<
Better than nothing, but it still impedes the free passage of a soul into and out of incarnation. You don't have a right not to be in pain. People can put you through any amount of torture, and it's not legal to escape unless an illness will already kill you very soon. It doesn't cover dementia, a leading reason why people wish to abandon a body, nor nonfatal chronic diseases that make living an utter misery. So people do what they've always done when they run out of cope: they just break the law.
>>And given how many states in the US have legalized cannabis, without there being epidemics of crime in those states, I think we've learned that there ARE sane, relatively harmless ways of giving your brain a bit of a vacation.<<
No shit.