LIVE WITHOUT HARMING! STOP NORMALIZING CERTAIN ABUSES

Every society has injustices that are forbidden, but other wrongs that are normalized; some outrages are condemned and others allowed. Some types of filth are thrown in the trash, but others are placed on a shelf as if they were a vase or a decorative figurine. For example, Jews found the child human sacrifices practiced by the Canaanites cruel. However, they considered it right to stone to death a son who disobeyed his father, since that is what the Old Testament commands; the disobedient son was labeled as “someone it is acceptable to victimize”.

Read LIVE WITHOUT HARM: Let us avoid labels that are a blank cheque to cause harm

Spanish conquerors in the Americas considered the mass human sacrifices of the Aztecs and Mayans ruthless and uncivilized, but not the act of setting their killer dogs on homosexual Indigenous people to tear them apart, or burning at the stake natives or converted Jews who did not follow Catholic doctrine and ritual to the letter.

And British imperialists were not very different: in India they were horrified by the Hindu Sati ceremony, in which living widows were burned at the stake. Yet at the same time, in Africa they had normalized the use of whipping as an everyday practice to achieve the productivity they wanted from Black people on their plantations—to the point that they debated how many lashes to give and on which parts of the body, but not the fact of giving them. They also considered it acceptable that, in the metropolis, those who rebelled against the authorities were dragged by horses from prison to the place of public execution. And once there, they were hanged until they were ALMOST dead, then their genitals were cut off, their entrails torn out WHILE THEY WERE STILL ALIVE, and finally their head and other parts of their body were cut off.

And even today, this double standard persists: some abuses are fought, while others are allowed. Thus, in many countries with a majority of traditionalist Christians or Muslims, theft is prohibited, but the kidnapping of innocent homosexuals to imprison them is considered lawful.

HOW TO LIVE WITHOUT HARM?: Let us be impartial and not apply double standards

LET US NOT HARM the LGTBI+ community

Or in many countries with a majority Muslim religion, murder is punishable, but the stigmatization (within the family, circles of friends, and at every level) and civil death of those whose only “crime” is having openly left Islam—whom they call apostates—is socially encouraged. And as if that were not enough, this normalization of injustice is reinforced by laws that annul their marriages, deprive them of their children, inheritances, and property, and in some fundamentalist countries, even their lives.

Another example in countries with a traditionalist Christian majority is banning rape, yet seeing it as natural to ruin the life of a 15-year-old girl who has become pregnant and has had an abortion of a fetus that still has no nervous system and therefore does not feel. She has caused no suffering to anyone, given that the fetus is still a non-sentient living being, like a plant; yet society causes her profound psychological and existential harm by keeping her imprisoned for many years—in many countries under appalling conditions—where she may be abused.

Even in the most civilized Western countries (or the least uncivilized, depending on how you look at it), many atrocities, such as torture, are rejected. However, others are socially and legally accepted, such as the kidnapping, imprisonment in cages, exploitation, and mistreatment of non-human sentient beings in factory farms and laboratories. This is especially true if it is for a “good cause,” such as doing it for our children and loved ones.

LET US NOT HARM non-human animals!

FOR A WORLD WITHOUT HARM: Let us reject narratives that justify evil

Another example is the cruelty of putting people in prison for years—with the moral harm that entails—and forcing them to live alongside psychopaths, when they have caused no suffering to anyone and have simply breached tax, labor, or urban-planning regulations. Or when they have performed euthanasia for someone who requested it, causing no harm at all—quite the opposite, as it ended their patient’s suffering.

THE ART OF LIVING WITHOUT HARM: Avoid prison whenever possible

The same can be said about the normalization of bombing, killing, and destroying the homes of residents of territories that have decided to become independent because an overwhelming majority wants it—as has happened in Donbas at the hands of Ukraine and with the complicity of the West. Or, on a much smaller scale, in Catalonia, where police officers beat innocents whose only “crime” was voting in a referendum that the vast majority of that region wanted.

In the end, a crime is always a crime, no matter how socially accepted and legalized it may be—just as excrement is always excrement, even if someone decides to turn it into a divinity.

All these kinds of social normalization have to do with the herd instinct, gregariousness, and the desire to preserve simply for the sake of preserving that are so typical of human beings. But above all, it is related to each individual’s level of negative selfishness and innate sense of justice. All of these are different faces of the same polyhedron.

Therefore, the more psychopathic, egocentric, herd-following, tribal, and traditionalist a person is, the more they normalize the wrongdoing accepted by their society. And the more just, principled, noble, mentally independent, open-minded, and reformist a person is, the more they seek to put an end to that normalization.

LET US BUILD A BETTER WORLD!: Reform society

Because of this mental cage, which has a strong component of amorality, it is common for human beings to see clearly the evil of injustices typical of other cultures, but not those that are normalized in our own. LET US OPEN THE CAGE NOW AND GET OUT OF IT!

AND LET US BE CIVILIZED! We see humans of the past as ignorant and archaic because they had practices that were normal to them, but barbaric to us. But in the future, they will probably see us in the same way for the very same reason.

What can we do to achieve the de-normalization of all kinds of abuses?:

1. Raise awareness among adults by sharing, persuading, and educating. This can even include applying social pressure.

2. Educate children and adolescents, since they are like a book that is partly blank, and what we write in it will likely remain.

AVOID HARM! Share and persuade so that they do not cause harm

AVOID HARMING! Educate children in the ethics of kindness

Thank you for doing so to build a more decent world to live in,