The philosophy of minding your own business

I'd like to run an un-official poll right here. If you agree with the following statements, please respond positively to this thread.



- My rights end where yours begin, yours end where mine begin
- What I do that doesn't harm myself or others, isn't up for review by others
- I do not have the right to judge others for their actions that do not harm others
- We would all be better off if we tried to live with this credo

Even better yet, on second thought, just flag this thread if you agree with this credo.....

reply to post by zeroBelief


Its a credo i have lived by since i was a kid

I used to say no physical harm but as i grew physically and emotionally i realised that emotional harm is as bad as physical harm - indeed can be worse.

Give the environment a set of rights so I can look forward to a place for my grandchildren to live and I might agree.

Install laws of profiteering that severely causes damage to our future food supply and I might be even more apt to agree.

As it stands, I do not agree. We all have rights but those who exploit their rights most often cause problems with other's rights further on down the line.

- My rights end where yours begin, yours end where mine begin

I agree although some who agree may quibble on how to define this. For example, how far out do a person's rights extend? Most policy issues socially come down to one side claiming that their side doesn't affect the other side at all, but the other side would be a gross violation of their rights to implement.

- I do not have the right to judge others for their actions that do not harm others

No one but God has the right to ultimately judge a person in their entirety. However, we do absolutely have the right to judge things for ourselves. For example, a recovering addict is perfectly justified in cutting off all his old addict buddies because hanging around them while they are using is too risky. He might not be able to resist the temptation to start using again, so even if their habits are technically not harming anyone else ... it would be wise to judge them not the best companions and avoid them. Wouldn't that be a wise judgment on his part?

[judge]- We would all be better off if we tried to live with this credo

To some degree this is true.

Although I am not a fan of this guy.

I agree with this statement and try to live by it.

zeroBelief
I'd like to run an un-official poll right here. If you agree with the following statements, please respond positively to this thread.



- My rights end where yours begin, yours end where mine begin
- What I do that doesn't harm myself or others, isn't up for review by others
- I do not have the right to judge others for their actions that do not harm others
- We would all be better off if we tried to live with this credo

This is a hard one zeroBelief!

It feels like I may be intruding upon a topic that is none of my business!


Give rise to an egalitarian state!

''What others think of you - is none of your business''

Although we all have the right to judge. Without judgement, we have little else.

reply to post by zeroBelief


Name something you can do that won't have any kind of negative effect on anyone else. I can only think of a couple, but I'm interested in what you might come up with.

zeroBelief
I'd like to run an un-official poll right here. If you agree with the following statements, please respond positively to this thread.



- My rights end where yours begin, yours end where mine begin
- What I do that doesn't harm myself or others, isn't up for review by others
- I do not have the right to judge others for their actions that do not harm others
- We would all be better off if we tried to live with this credo

Hmm, generally I'd agree with all that. But lets take voters as an example. Their behavior is not only acceptable in polite society, they all seem to think their personal judgments are "in my best interests" even after their choices have been proven to be sleeping with the enemy.

Now if my dearly beloved is sleeping with every tom dick and harry, betty sue and mary, I can divorce my former dearly beloved and get on with my life. It doesn't exactly work out that way with a brainless voter's judgment, at least I haven't yet figured out a way to divorce John McCain.

reply to post by ketsuko


Funny, I had the same problem with that first one. Just doesn't read right for some reason.

The others, yes, I wish more people lived by them.

zeroBelief
I'd like to run an un-official poll right here. If you agree with the following statements, please respond positively to this thread.



- My rights end where yours begin, yours end where mine begin
- What I do that doesn't harm myself or others, isn't up for review by others
- I do not have the right to judge others for their actions that do not harm others
- We would all be better off if we tried to live with this credo

Let me just say, you ever run for presidency and use THIS as your program, well then I might just start voting again...

reply to post by MadHatter364


He'd have to promise to get rid of a huge chunk of the alphabet and lot of other stuff first.

zeroBelief
I'd like to run an un-official poll right here. If you agree with the following statements, please respond positively to this thread.



- My rights end where yours begin, yours end where mine begin

Just because you have a legal right, doesn't mean you're morally or ethically okay in my book.

- What I do that doesn't harm myself or others, isn't up for review by others

It most certainly is. Are you counting harm in directness, only, or indirectly as well?

- I do not have the right to judge others for their actions that do not harm others

How are you qualifying "right" under this context? Also, how do you know in absolute that these actions are not harming others?

- We would all be better off if we tried to live with this credo

Nope. I disagree. You wanna live outside of civilization, then yes, but as is, there are opinions outside of your own that include judgments which are necessary for the good of the community.

Not "judging" is only something a severely retarded person could even be capable of doing.

Everyone judges. What you're saying is, allow me to be absolutely, else I will use this copout of "don't judge".

I'd agree with all the statements in principle, although they're not clearly defined.
For example, what do we mean by "judge"?
This could mean anything from tolerate to shunning, and even violent sanctions, confrontations or insults.

Then we also have to define "rights".

For example, there's been a series called "Come Dine With Me" in South Africa where guests rate each other for dinner parties.

I've seen it twice now that there's a Muslim who doesn't drink alcohol, which is fine because the other hosts always have non-alcoholic drinks.
People also go out of their way to find Halaal meat for them.

However, when it comes to the Muslims' turn to host, they will accept the wine the guests bring as a gift (some of the guests are unsure at first, and only discover the situation when they arrive).

Then, they absolutely refuse to allow their guests to drink wine!
The one "Muslim" host wasn't even a strict Muslim, and she kept talking aloud to some New Age entity called "Michael".
Here the guests offered to drink their own wine that they brought, but she still refused, because it would somehow render her glasses unclean.
One guest even offered to drink out of the bottle, but this was ignored.

The other politically correct guests kept commenting on how "rude" he was to request his own wine!

I thought that is so typical of how one culture can dominate another these days, and expect all kinds of special food, while not giving an inch to anybody else.

I would have taken my bottle of wine (which she shouldn't have accepted in the first place) right back from her mantle-piece and called a taxi on the spot.
If you can't tolerate my culture, I feel nothing for you or your shenanigans either.

Suffice it to say she didn't win (no surprises there).

I'd be fine with catering for everyone and there needs, but it's downright rude if they won't cater to mine.

But is that right?
Shouldn't her culture trump my enjoyment of wine, because it might be her "religion"?
I don't think so.
It's my body and I choose what goes into it and when, and I won't tell her what to do with her body.
Maybe in my home we don't tolerate Halaal meat, and then she can also call a taxi and bugger right off.

ketsuko
reply to post by MadHatter364

 

He'd have to promise to get rid of a huge chunk of the alphabet and lot of other stuff first.

...what?

reply to post by zeroBelief


If you lived alone on a little island that wasn't claimed by anyone (countries included), then you could have your perfect world.
Barring that in some fashion you would have companionship in some form if living elsewhere. Perhaps that companionship would include other living, breathing, farting bodies with opinions and direct influences over your life, or maybe they would be more remote, stuck away in a stuffy office somewhere going through files or picking tomatoes for your table in some foreign country. Undoubtedly, where ever you decided to set foot in this world you would have some interaction with other humans. You would have to appreciate those folks because you would have needs of them in large and small ways. You would need the check that comes from the paperwork you filled out earlier, you would need the tomatoes, or maybe you would need that troublesome tooth pulled. You would have to conform to what they wanted from you. To a large or small extent, that would take some of the local currency, be it sweat of your brow or a physical currency of something you had to trade providing that they were willing to deal with you.

I suppose you could disappear into a deep forest somewhere, run naked through the trees and eat grubs, but few go to that extreme. A nice cave always sounded nice to me, but even with that there is always a community out there that has its standard by which you must conform to some extent to its expectations of a human being.

Many of us like to bitch about the world around us, but we shrug and tend to find our individuals ways of coping. And that is what life is about whether in the woods alone or in line at the supermarket with one of those farting people in front of you.

I hope you find peace. I recommend a serious contemplation about taking up some form of meditation. You can find relief there.

Words to live by!

reply to post by johnb


Emotional harm is a personal choice that you have made yourself. You can't blame others for that, it is a choice you make to be emotional harmed/offended just as you could have made the choice to not be harmed.
Op great thread, agree with you , apart from judging people. All depends what you do with that judgment.

rickymouse
Give the environment a set of rights so I can look forward to a place for my grandchildren to live and I might agree.

Install laws of profiteering that severely causes damage to our future food supply and I might be even more apt to agree.

As it stands, I do not agree. We all have rights but those who exploit their rights most often cause problems with other's rights further on down the line.

Well, obviously there are things that have to be looked at beyond simply my personal rights vs your personal rights. One might also say that we all have the personal right to clean and abundant land, as well as to food.

My father honestly said to me once "Your rights extend as far as your arm...so long as your arm doesn't overlap someone else's reach". I've *tried* to live with that in mind ever since.

I think if everyone tried to live this way, we'd have a pretty decent chance at a better world.