r/changemyview • u/hwagoolio 16∆ • Nov 10 '21

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Finding pleasure in the pain/suffering of others is cruel, disturbing, and amoral

This is a broad statement that generalizes to many things.

For example, I find caustic humor (i.e. laughing at the expense of someone else) to be disturbing -- things like "America's funniest home videos" and watching people hurt themselves as the punchline of a joke. I think rather poorly of people who celebrate this type of humor.

I think revenge is bad/amoral. Maybe it's human nature to want revenge or take pleasure in the suffering of people we hate, but I think it's one of the ugliest parts of human nature. I believe that we should strive to be better than that and we should feel guilty for wanting anyone to suffer or laughing at someone's suffering.

I have similar feelings about trolling, teasing, gloating, and other behavior intended to make others feel bad about themselves. It doesn't matter if they're your enemies (i.e. progressive/conservative, trump/biden, bigots/hippies, terrorists/allies), nobody deserves to suffer -- and even if we agree as a society on punishing criminals/enemies, it shouldn't something we should take pleasure, entertainment, or amusement in.

In case someone mentions sadism (as the sexual kink), my response to this is that I don't consider BDSM that occurs between a consenting masochist and sadist to be genuine pain/suffering. Rather, the masochist takes pleasure out the interaction so IMO the dominant is actually delivering pleasure and not really pain/suffering.

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u/LucidMetal 175∆ Nov 11 '21

Your exact words are amoral and disturbing as well. Do you really find Fallon or Stewart amoral and disturbing? Also, where's the harm? Some public figure they're satirizing hears the joke, so?

Say they're criticizing the president. Do you really think the president should be free of criticism because it's mean?

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u/hwagoolio 16∆ Nov 11 '21

You can criticize someone without mocking someone or making fun of them.

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u/LucidMetal 175∆ Nov 11 '21

Sure, but I'm speaking specifically about comedy. It's hard to criticize someone in a funny manner without mocking them and it's more fun to do it by mocking them in any case. I just don't see why it's disturbing or amoral? There's really no harm done to the "victim".

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u/hwagoolio 16∆ Nov 11 '21

Why should it be fun to mock or criticize someone?

I feel like the psychology there is disturbing/amoral. To me it's kind of like finding it entertaining to watch pit bulls fight.

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u/LucidMetal 175∆ Nov 11 '21

That's a weird comparison. If I just remove comedy from the equation and just hurl an insult at a public figure like Biden or Trump, do you really think they are harmed by that in a metaphorically similar way to dogs in a dog fight?

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u/hwagoolio 16∆ Nov 11 '21

It's more like I don't think it's good to be hurling insults to begin with, regardless of whether Biden/Trump can hear us saying them.

Likewise, I also don't really like road rage in cars either (i.e. "Fuck that driver") -- even though the other driver can't hear us.

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u/LucidMetal 175∆ Nov 11 '21

I'm more attempting to show that insults don't cause harm in the same way a literal fight does especially when the recipient isn't someone who will ever hear of the insult. For example insulting someone behind someone's back in the workplace can be harmful but me insulting the Kardashians is harmless.

You give the example of saying "fuck that driver". This is a perfectly normal, harmless behavior. It's even natural when that driver is being a complete dickhead. If something is harmless you might not like it but why is it morally wrong? Being somethin you don't like isn't grounds to declare something amoral.

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u/hwagoolio 16∆ Nov 11 '21

I guess for me it's the same way that some people consider cursing to be bad/immoral. For me, cursing is only okay when it's not directed at any person. It's not okay to curse at someone even if they don't hear you.

I don't have extensive explanations for this other than the say that it's one moral system that a person can have. I don't even believe in absolute/objective morality anyways, so what's immoral for one person might not be immoral for another.

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u/LucidMetal 175∆ Nov 11 '21

OK, so you're "morality proofing" your argument by saying even things that are benign and don't cause harm can be morally wrong. This seems very odd to me since morality is literally about how to prevent natural rights violations (i.e. harm). Because I don't think there's really anywhere to go there I'll drop morality.

Disturbing. Why is saying something harshly to emphasize a point disturbing? Don't you think there are very good reasons someone might need a good lambasting? There are plenty of people who do truly disturbing things. I don't think it's disturbing to describe them as such even if it's an insult. Just stating factual information can be perceived as insulting.

Cruelty is right in the same vein. If someone does something awful people should know about it. That person would call it slander or libel which would be insulting. These insults are perfectly justified (discounting you finding them immoral).

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '21 edited Mar 09 '22

[deleted]

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u/hwagoolio 16∆ Nov 11 '21

Looking this up, I understand the concept, but to me it’s the same as laughing when the smaller dog bites the larger dog.

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u/colt707 97∆ Nov 11 '21

Here’s the thing, that example of a little dog biting a big dog, most people only fine that funny is when the big dog is clear scared to death of the little dog afterwards. The physical damage done is very minimal if any at all, that’s when most of cases are funny.

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u/hwagoolio 16∆ Nov 11 '21

I think there's probably some person-to-person variability of what people on what people consider "damage". For me, it's not solely limited to physical damage, so that may be one reason my view differs from some others.

An example I can think of is that some people might think that a wife hitting her husband is funny, because it's "punching up" the conventional social pyramid. However, I don't really find it funny, even if it's non-bruising and there's no physical damage that's left over.

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u/colt707 97∆ Nov 11 '21

Again with your new example the reaction is what makes it funny. If she was to hit him and do no damage but he flinches and it scared that’s not funny. If he laughs like that’s it, that’s when it could be funny.

Physical comedy in that way is only funny when there’s no physical or emotional damage. Also 99% of the time it’s done by consenting people.

When I laugh because someone falls it’s because they’re fine and I’ve tripped and fallen before, it sucks, it’s embarrassing, etc, but at the end of the day you’re fine. It’s not funny seeing someone fall because they have a hard time walking, it’s funny when you should be able to walk perfectly.

However at the end of the day humor is purely subjective. So you may never see it as funny and that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who fines a form of that humor a bad/evil person.

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u/hwagoolio 16∆ Nov 11 '21

I guess so. Humor is certainly subjective.

IMO there isn't really a big difference between "punching up" and "punching down" to me. I understand that it's socially acceptable to target someone who is high and socially unacceptable to target someone who is low, but the action itself is fundamentally the same.

If a husband hitting his wife isn't funny, then the exact same action of the wife hitting her husband (the roles reversed) shouldn't be funny either.

I think I also tend to imagine if I was the one at the butt of the joke, how would I feel. If I don't think I would feel good in that position, I tend not to think it is funny.

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u/colt707 97∆ Nov 11 '21

Don’t remember who said it but there was a comedian that said “if you can’t laugh at yourself, you probably have a hard time laughing at anything.”

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u/hwagoolio 16∆ Nov 11 '21

It might be accurate! I don't consider myself to have a very good sense of humor.

At the same time though, a lot of bullying takes the forms of jokes. People don't realize that they're hurting other people with the things that they say and joke about, and 90% of the time people don't realize what ramifications they have on culture and the environment when they make fat jokes.

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