100
User voted No.
1 vote
Nov 4, 2015

No.

Like must meet like. If you strike back with physical abuse against verbal abuse, you are escalating the situation unilaterally. Your duty is to deescalate, not escalate, the situation.

Verbal abuse must be taken seriously. So too must all forms of emotional abuse: Gaslighting, fostering codependence, etc. But verbal abuse has important characteristics that make it unlike physical abuse. It is not coercive: One can leave, or put on headphones, or yell back. Of course, in practice, everything from monetary issues to social problems to the presence of children can make doing that much more difficult. But there are still options that are just not present at the time of physical abuse, which is by its very nature coercive. And while physical abuse is relatively unambiguous, both partners often feel like they are being treated capriciously or abusively. This ambiguity and the different memories and experiences both partners have makes it very difficult to justify acting against perceived verbal abuse even with matching verbal abuse, let alone physical abuse.

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67
User voted Yes.
linked reply
3 votes,
Nov 5, 2015

Sometimes all you need to do is hit the bully and he respects you for the rest of his life. Verbal abuse can be much more destructive than physical abuse, and it can lead to suicide. You're exaggerating that hitting someone is never justified. I'm not talking about some brutal beating, but simple punch or push sometimes is the most effective solution. There's also something called honor. Sometimes you have to defend your honor or honor of your family and you can't do it verbally.

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100
User voted No.
2 votes,
Nov 5, 2015

When the "bully" is only using words and you use your fists, you have become the bully. And sometimes all you need to do is humiliate the bully and s/he respects you for the rest of her/his life. Why is it acceptable to escalate in violence when you can't possibly anticipate the outcomes? How is that an acceptable policy, even from a utilitarian perspective?

People trying to defend their "honor" in the abstract are why we have Hatfields and McCoys, Capulets and Montagues, even wars between nations. "Honor" is an overrated concept. It is so easy to hit someone else to make yourself feel good, safe, protected, familial. It's so hard to be peaceful. That's why being peaceful is what adults do and being violent is what children do.

Nothing I'm saying is an absolute rule. But your two rationalizations thus far make it far, far too easy for someone to hit someone out of anger.

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100
User voted Yes.
3 votes,
Nov 7, 2015

"When the "bully" is only using words and you use your fists, you have become the bully." - I disagree. There is a big difference between offence without a reason and offence as a response to offence. It's like saying that someone who shot the burglar in his own house is a murderer.

"Why is it acceptable to escalate in violence when you can't possibly anticipate the outcomes?" - You can't anticipate the outcomes of any actions dealing with a bully. That's life, the risk is always there. Sometimes violence is the only effective way. Not everyone is lucky to live in places when you can just call the authorities and they will solve your problem for you.

"It's so hard to be peaceful." - It's so easy to say that honor is an overrated concept. But it doesn't work like that in real life. I wonder if you would still be that non-violent if someone let's say offended your girlfriend right in your face. And would you still respect yourself. No, sometimes you have to hit the guy. You take some risk, but in exchange you get self-respect, which is priceless.

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0
User voted No.
0 votes,
Nov 7, 2015

The burglar was posing a parallel, unknown threat, and we recognize legally that someone being in your home prevents you from disengaging to go back to that home so by that dint they are threatening your property. Still, ethically I'd argue that one would have a duty to try to resolve the situation without anyone dying. Someone insulting you is not a burglar in your home. It's a jerk. By your reasoning, we should give the death penalty for someone parking illegally: It's a crime, an "offence", correct?

So if you can't anticipate fully that the bully is a threat at all, let alone that if you hit him it might cause him to hurt you or others worse, why is it per se ethical to lash out? Violence's unpredictable nature is exactly why it is mostly unethical.

I have been in those situations and I used my words. But you are actually only proving my point. Everyone is worried about their "respect" and how they look to others over being ethical. That's what drives Hatfield and McCoy feuds, it's what causes war between nations to get ugly. "Honor" is what led Japanese to commit atrocities. "Honor" is part of what led Germans to execute innocents en masse. The idea of "honor" being allowed to trump ethics is so immensely easy and automatic that it leads to horrible outcomes. The very POINT of ethics is that you should act justly ESPECIALLY when it is difficult to do so.

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100
User voted Yes.
3 votes,
Nov 10, 2015

Someone insulting me is a "burglar" that breaks into my mind. That's why I have the right to use violence to defend myself, just like in a real burglar situation. Bullying is often much more damaging than physical offence. No, I don't think we should give death penalty for someone parking illegally and I have no clue where you came up with that.

You said it youself. People fought for honor. People died for honor. Maybe it's not just a stupid concept. I'm not saying that going to war or killing yourself for honor is good, of course not. I'm talking about 1 on 1 situations. Kids have been comitting suicides because of humiliation. If someone tries to humiliate you, you have the right to DEFEND yourself. You have the right to defend your HONOR. Calling police won't give you any of your honor back, it will only humiliate you more. You can deny it, but that's how it works in life, especially when it comes to kids.

Ane one more thing. You say it's easy to use violence. No, it's actually much harder than being non-violent.

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67
User voted No.
3 votes,
Nov 11, 2015

Why is it that the person insulting you, who is using only verbal means to intrude upon you, necessitates a violent attack? If the analogy applies, it would only apply to you intruding back. The logic that you get to use a fist or a bullet when he gets to use words is the logic that you get to break into the burglar's house after he broke into yours and kill him.

No legal system accepts this logic. I am aware of no moral philosopher who would accept this as legitimate. Someone who is insulting you is not coercing you. You can leave. If they prevent you, at that point it becomes criminal harassment and you can use force to leave. If they libel you or slander you, you can seek redress. But the idea that you get to respond with force to someone verbally attacking you is, thankfully, not legally supported.

People have fought and died when they were drunk. They have fought and died over lies, propagandistic misrepresentations of the truth, and misunderstandings. They have fought over a few acres of land. They have fought for dictatorships, for coups, to steal money and artifacts that were not theirs. People fight and die very easily.The fact that people have died over something is no proof of its value, morally and practically.

No, it really isn't easier to be non-violent. When the anger is boiling, you want to use violence. When you have superior weaponry, you can easily do so. Even when you have inferior weaponry, as you've stated, people find it very easy to throw away their lives.

The very fact that we have so much war and have so rarely achieved lasting peace proves that war is much easier than peace. You're like the person who think that demolishing a building is hard because it can be tiring and a little dangerous. But so too is building something, and that also requires intellectual work, careful crafting, and tremendous attention to detail. Smashing something doesn't require attention to detail aside from the detail of doing the most damage.

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100
1 vote,
Jan 27, 2016

The word "non-violent" does not apply to verbal abuse.

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100
User voted No.
1 vote,
Jan 27, 2016

Why? When we talk about "violent communication", we do not mean literal violence. Again, physical violence is coercive while abusive language is not; physical violence can kill a person or cause serious and permanent injury while abusive language does not; physical violence can cause both emotional and physical injury while emotional violence can only cause emotional injury; etc. I am not saying that emotional abuse is at all trivial or acceptable. I am not downplaying the permanent damage that can come about from repeated assaults on someone's self-esteem. But it is simply by every possible metric not in the same category as physical abuse. You have to be very careful with how you define your terms: Defining insults as violence makes sense up to the point that it leads you to conflate two things that are not alike.

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100
1 vote,
Jan 28, 2016

I didn't mean that insults (that was part of another topic on freedom of speech versus the freedom to insult I was writing about, if that's what you mean) are verbal abuse and 'therefore' violent, and 'therefore' on par with physical abuse.

I just noticed this conversation and I tend to see it more like John sees it. I was actually meaning to add that verbal abuse might be called that way because the one being verbally abused is unable to respond - verbally.

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0
User voted No.
0 votes,
Jan 28, 2016

But you don't have to respond to verbal abuse. You can leave. If you can't, that is a problem that should be dealt with, but that's totally orthogonal to verbal abuse. I agree that there are social inequities in verbal power. As a kid, I felt very confused by a lot of social dynamics. As a high schooler and adult, I've learned to tear into people with a lot of volume. As a smart, informed, confident person, I can really hurt people. I recognize that there is tremendous power in that, and I recognize that leaving is sometimes itself humiliating: You don't want to walk out of a restaurant when hanging with your buddies because your friend is tearing into you a bit hard. But that option remains, and growing up means learning to deal with it. There is no world in which an adult will not have to figure out for themselves what social dynamics they want to stay in and what ones they don't. When someone beats you up, on the other hand, there is no adaptation to that: You get damaged and you try to survive. People who want to defend hitting people back for insults are rarely people who have much understanding of what it is like to be in a physically abusive relationship structure.

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100
2 votes,
Jan 28, 2016

You make a good point. In my experience though, the physical part comes when trying to leave, because the other wants to be 'heard'.

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100
User voted No.
1 vote,
Jan 28, 2016

Yes, but then THAT part is the part that one can reply to. I, on the other hand, have seen and been on the receiving end of a lot of verbal abuse and emotional abuse that involved no physical harm.

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Load more (1) in reply to Fred BC's post (But you don't have to respond to verbal abuse. You can leave. If you can't, that is a problem that should be dealt with, but that's totally orthogonal to verbal abuse. I agree that there are social in...)
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