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by Elinvynia 1315 days ago
Speech can literally drive people to suicide. If you don't see this as violence just because no fist hit a person, then you are very naive.

See: how the entire world treats minorities every single day.

3 comments

A world where we can guarantee no non-voluntary _physical_ violence is a better home for rational thought and human flourishing than today's or even a world in which we could somehow prevent speech that might lead to suicide. I can't see a way of enforcing those limits without some kind of judgement. The distinction between physical violence and speech is basically unambiguous. The distinction between acceptable and unacceptable speech is ambiguous, subjective, variable, and very likely to be abused. It leads to a police state, IMO. No state that is serious about freedom has hate speech laws, for example, even though there is much hateful speech, and it should be avoided. Just not with (physical) violence. Rather, freedom of association (including freedom of separation / non-association) and more speech.
That's the really neat thing about Stoicism - you can just choose to not let things affect you.
Spoken like someone who has never experienced physical violence. I have and have seen far worse done to others. There is no comparison, not even close. Calling speech violence offends and minimizes the experience of those who have experienced violence.