First they will say that the thing they don’t want you doing is dangerous to you. When you tell them it isn’t or that you don’t care, they will tell you it is dangerous to others. When you demonstrate that it isn’t dangerous to others, they will tell you that it’s bad for “society.” They will offer exactly no evidence for any of their claims because, in their eyes, moral superiority is its own evidence. But your evidence they will subject to the highest scrutiny before dismissing it out of hand.
(I have probably been guilty of this. Worth keeping in mind.)
Category: Espresso
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2 Responses to Sounds About Right
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I definitely recognise the attitude they’re talking about, but disagree that it’s in anyway new. The Victorian attitudes to sex, the Temperance Movement, hell even Natural Law Theory has shades of this.
People like this have always existed, all that changes is what hey want to stamp out.
CS Lewis, from 1951 (as near as I can determine on the year):
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Already here they’re “repurposed” the tobacco-settlement funds to make ads shaming parents for letting their kids drink soda. I don’t drink soda myself and I find the ads offensive and kinda unsettling. Makes me wonder what “bad-food” they’re gonna go after next.