The confusion you have towards my suggestion may come because either:
1. You're moving the goal posts
2. You were horribly unclear in your original post
A little from a, a little from b. :lol:
Your first post didn't suggest or speak, at all, about which is more damaging to society if it's CONDONED by society. You simply spoke to which is more damaging to society, seemingly in the context of reality, today.
That's why I'd say Racism is more damaging to society as a whole, today, than rape is.
Condoning was merely a way to demonstrate the damage to society caused by something. We can go a whole lot further though, Racism doesn't create unwanted babies, rape does. Racism on it's own doesn't cause suicides, rape does. There's really no logical way to defend the position that racism damages society more than rape does. None. At all. You'd have to ignore quite of bit of rape's damage to society in order to do it.
When it comes to rape, that issue doesn't permeate into the realm of politics...
Are you
kidding? Rape absolutely permeates into politics. Ask a feminist, any feminist. You
just made a political statement related to rape:
everywhere from the on going back and forth about Obama, to issues of affirmative actions or discriminations laws, to issues with black conservatives, on and on. There have been undoubtably horrible situations involving rape before, but I can't remember any gaining the attention and splitting the public as much as the Zimmerman/Trayvon case did due to the accusations of racism. With Rape, there's an actual system in place to put forward institutionalized penalties for it along with the societal ones...while by and large, for racism, there is no such recourse. Not to mention, racism itself can often lend itself to violence as well as we've seen numerous times.
I'd agree, in terms of which would be more damaging if society CONDONED it...I'd go the other way.
Condoning it merely indicates which one is more damaging to society. If a society condones something, it accepts the
maximum amount of damage possible from that action. Thus, if something is more damaging to society than another, it will be most evident by comparing worst case scenarios. (the more damaged society in teh worst case scenario is the one that condoned the thing that was more damaging to society.
You could also find out which food in more fattening by taking twins and having one of them eat nothing but food a, and the other one eat nothing but food B. The fatter of the two at the end of the expirimant would be the one that ate the more fattening food, presuming that one controlled all other variables.
Same thing here. I didn't more the goal posts, nor was I unclear. You merely did not understand your own position when taken to its logical conclusion.
With all other variables controlled for, we both have agreed that the addition of rape into a society is worse for that society than the addition of racism into a society is (this is achieved in my "condoning" example). Both are bad for th esociety, but the society that had rape added was damaged more.
To your point in terms of Vick and Sterling and dogs / meat...I can understand it. I can't even say I necessarily disagree with it. At the same time, I'll happily take the notion of "hypocrite" on this one. Much like I'd happily take the title of hypocrite for saying that people should be the better man when being insulted and not punch people, but if a guy called my wife a bitch I'd clock him in the jaw. I recognize there are double standards in life that we all tend to hold to SOME degree. For example, people may be far more forgiving of an action of a family member than a friend, and of a friend than a stranger. All for an arbitrary reasons, as ultimately all of those individuals are simply other humans.
It's one thing to be a hypocrite and say "do as I say, not as I do", but it's another thing entirely to pretend Vick is WORSE than you in the process. That's going from hypocrisy to self delusion.
Domesticated companion animals such as dogs and cats that have been bread into that role over the centuries pull a different string on my emotions than a Cow or a Fish; just like my sister pulls a different string than the chick sitting a few cubes back from me at the office. Doing something for the purpose of entertainment as opposed to something relatively essential to life (even if it may not be the only way to get that essential notion) pulls my strings just a little differently. And I don't really feel bad for that fact. I'll take the hypocrite label in that case.
That's a fine justification for having the hypocritical laws. We're not discussing the laws, though. We're actually discussing whether or not Vick is a "worse person" than Sterling simply for having a different arbitrary line than you do.
That's the line where hypocricy becomes self-righteous
delusion. You can acknowledge your hypocrisy here, and that means that you can't truly believe he is a
worse person because you
recognize how arbitrary the line is. Since you realize it's arbitrary, you know that while you abhor the behavior, it's no different than how others might (absolutely do) view your own behaviors. Unless you consider yourself worse than Sterling, you can't really consider Vick
worse than sterling. Feel free to claim you believe that Vick's actions were more disgusting/disturbing/saddening. But when it comes done to who is a
worse person, the racist is always worse than the guy who merely has a different opinion than you do about which animals should be cruelly slaughtered in a wholesale fashion (since you
do believe that some animals should be cruelly slaughtered in a wholesale fashion).
