Taboos aren’t new, they’ve just shifted. Before they were based more on Christian morality but nowadays it’s mostly from a secular multicultural morality.

If someone repeatedly called you a slur you may not break down and cry, though I don’t judge those who do, but wouldn’t you at least stop talking to them? Wouldn’t you tell other people to also stop associating with them? I know I would and that is the social ostracization that I think should be a punishment for offensive behavior.

I don’t see how you can make the case that verbal abuse doesn’t harm people without completely ignoring psychology and mental health. If someone becomes depressed due to harassment are they not harmed? What if they commit suicide, is it purely their fault since they couldn’t toughen up and the bully is absolved as some fucked up form of natural selection?

Even ignoring mental health words can damage your respect which is a valuable resource that is being unjustly taken. If your bosses right hand man keeps making misogynist jokes and using slurs against you and then you get passed over for a promotion because your boss doesn’t take you seriously then those words cost you monetarily. Your level of respect can open or close many doors in your life and having someone degrade that which you may have worked very hard for is harmful.

No, speaking truth to power is an important part of satire and political discourse in general. I haven’t seen the original cartoon but if that’s what it was then I’m all for it, though Muslims are very marginal in France and don’t hold much power.

This was in response to all the people, including a lot in this thread, that also probably haven’t seen the cartoon but want it published everywhere and for us to show more pictures of Muhammed. In that case people are valuing something not because of its message but because it offends and “triggers” people, which is the same rational for some of the worst right wing “comedy”.

Offensiveness can be a means to an end, such as showing the corruption of the powerful, but when it becomes an end unto itself it simply becomes cruelty.

It’s not a slippery slope, it’s an ambiguous gray area which a lot of moral rational debates like this don’t do well with. For example I think we can agree that white people shouldn’t call black people n*gger, but what about negro? There are some people who will do the victim hood Olympics and say calling people black is bad too.

If we follow the free speech absolutist line then we get a bunch of white men demeaning every marginal group with horrific slurs. If we follow the no offense at all costs line then we’re walking around a term for Mexican food because someone said that it’s racist. We need to find some sort of middle ground and that ground is going to be very blurry, socially determined and subjective, and it won’t have any easy hard rules that people desperately search for in stuff like this.

The punishment for leaving this area should just be social ostracization though, not violence or death. There shouldn’t be an assassin’s veto but there also shouldn’t be an asshole get out of jail free card.

This all wasn’t my argument though, I was arguing against the people in this thread saying we should’ve doubled down, published the cartoon in all major publications and done more Mohammad drawings simply to assert free speech. That’s saying that speech is valuable and should be spread simply because its offensive and caused an overreaction which is the same logic as those annoying right wing assholes who say horrible shit to “trigger the libs”. Offensiveness can be a means to an end but when it becomes an end unto itself then it just becomes cruelty.

Obviously it’s horrible to kill people over speech. Cartoons do not justify violence or terrorism.

But we also shouldn’t pretend like speech is necessary or valuable just because it’s offensive or that offending people to the point of violence is noble.

If someone was killed for saying the n word that would be a tragedy and should be condemned. But we shouldn’t all go around yelling the n word just to assert our free speech or pretend like the guy saying the n word was a hero for doing it.

Would your response be the same if an outright racist or transphobic comic was murdered? Would you spread racist and transphobic content to assert your free speech?

Society bends over backwards to not offend Islam out of fear.

Not drawing cartoons is not bending over backwards. If they were trying to get women being veiled, or ban abortions or homosexuality then yeah we should tell them to fuck off. But if they’re just asking to not say a word or draw something that isn’t necessary to political dialog then it’s fair for society to respect that. It should be enforced by being ostracized not killed though.

People shouldn’t be shot for saying the n word but if someone did get shot for saying it we shouldn’t all go around saying the n word because being intentionally offensive is still a dick move. Again not one that should be punished with death.

To be fair, Norway and those states rely heavily on hydro, which is great if you have the geography for it, but it’s not a route that can work for every region.

Excluding hydro renewable sources tend to cost more if you include storage currently, though that premium has been and is coming down.

That’s because games require some engagement/ investment. Even if avatar has a mid plot you can still turn your brain off and enjoy the spectacle. But you’re not going to put mental effort into learning a boss with shitty mechanics to “save the land” you barely care about.