hating the individual vs. the organization
So. .I wanted a wider audience. . first I want to past in what I just wrote in facebook notes. . sorry for the repeat for people who will see this again.
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Generally believes that one should dislike the organization (possibly church or government) and not the individual, unless the individual is obviously behind the badness, but what do you do if the individual as part of the organization must at least contribute to the organization through some set monetary amount? Say the organization stands for more than one thing and you really only hate one or two parts of the organization. Is the individual responsible (and possibly deserving to be punished) for every evil the organization does? And what do you do if you are not in the organization and you don't want to support it by giving the individual money but you may need to pay them for some service or object? Think of all of the people that in the world that hate the U.S.. . should they hate *you* because you pay taxes?
where do you/we draw the lines?
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Then I had this conversation with my friend Alisha about it. .
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[14:51] bryanwk77: so then what if you find out that the author you love not just is mormon (cause I can see mormons who have no problem with gay people still wanting to be mormon)
[14:51] bryanwk77: but what do you do if you find out the author is a horrible person
[14:51] bryanwk77: and supports evil of some kind that you find abhorrent or opressive.
[14:51] bryanwk77: can you still enjoy their work?
[14:52] bryanwk77: or doy ou enjoy it by pirating it?
[14:54] alishacoleman80: back
[14:55] bryanwk77: I'm actually really curious about this question. I'll probably crosspost to lj at some point also
[14:55] alishacoleman80: well if you look at it that way then I probably shouldn't pay my taxes because it indirectly supports the murder and rape of Iraqi women
[14:55] alishacoleman80: if you are counting pennies everything you do goes somewhere bad
[14:56] alishacoleman80: authors get pennies on the dollar for their books, the publishers get most of it, and the bookstore chain gets a decent chunk too, and one of those might support gay rights totally cancelling out whatever money goes to the author
[14:57] alishacoleman80: secondly, not all the money that goes to the author goes to the church, so even less of your money makes it to the mormoms
[14:58] alishacoleman80: thirdly, mormoms do other things besides oppressing gays
[14:58] bryanwk77: I know
[14:58] alishacoleman80: they feed the homeless and a lot of other good things for society
[14:58] bryanwk77: hey can you post that to my note on fb?
[14:58] bryanwk77: course the money they fuel our opression could be doing so much more
[14:58] alishacoleman80: so if my 1/10th of a cent does make it to the mormoms I'm going to decide my 1/10th of a cent went towards feeding the homeless
[14:58] bryanwk77: but oh well.
[14:59] bryanwk77:
[14:59] bryanwk77: if you don't want to post there can I copy and paste? maybe if I move it to LJ?
[14:59] alishacoleman80: heck if you shop at walmart you are supporting sweat shops and child labor
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Ultimately I think that I am on the side of practicality. . If you worry about every penny you spend supporting evil. . it becomes more than a full time job.. and might not even be possible to figure out. Living totally green is probably easier.
I'm all for avoiding the obvious cases and boycotting people/organizations in a focused pointed manor, but I think most boycotts even don't work because they are too diffuse and spread out and impossible to control well.
. . so I'm really curious what other people think.
-------------------------
Generally believes that one should dislike the organization (possibly church or government) and not the individual, unless the individual is obviously behind the badness, but what do you do if the individual as part of the organization must at least contribute to the organization through some set monetary amount? Say the organization stands for more than one thing and you really only hate one or two parts of the organization. Is the individual responsible (and possibly deserving to be punished) for every evil the organization does? And what do you do if you are not in the organization and you don't want to support it by giving the individual money but you may need to pay them for some service or object? Think of all of the people that in the world that hate the U.S.. . should they hate *you* because you pay taxes?
where do you/we draw the lines?
-------------------
Then I had this conversation with my friend Alisha about it. .
----------------
[14:51] bryanwk77: so then what if you find out that the author you love not just is mormon (cause I can see mormons who have no problem with gay people still wanting to be mormon)
[14:51] bryanwk77: but what do you do if you find out the author is a horrible person
[14:51] bryanwk77: and supports evil of some kind that you find abhorrent or opressive.
[14:51] bryanwk77: can you still enjoy their work?
[14:52] bryanwk77: or doy ou enjoy it by pirating it?
[14:54] alishacoleman80: back
[14:55] bryanwk77: I'm actually really curious about this question. I'll probably crosspost to lj at some point also
[14:55] alishacoleman80: well if you look at it that way then I probably shouldn't pay my taxes because it indirectly supports the murder and rape of Iraqi women
[14:55] alishacoleman80: if you are counting pennies everything you do goes somewhere bad
[14:56] alishacoleman80: authors get pennies on the dollar for their books, the publishers get most of it, and the bookstore chain gets a decent chunk too, and one of those might support gay rights totally cancelling out whatever money goes to the author
[14:57] alishacoleman80: secondly, not all the money that goes to the author goes to the church, so even less of your money makes it to the mormoms
[14:58] alishacoleman80: thirdly, mormoms do other things besides oppressing gays
[14:58] bryanwk77: I know
[14:58] alishacoleman80: they feed the homeless and a lot of other good things for society
[14:58] bryanwk77: hey can you post that to my note on fb?
[14:58] bryanwk77: course the money they fuel our opression could be doing so much more
[14:58] alishacoleman80: so if my 1/10th of a cent does make it to the mormoms I'm going to decide my 1/10th of a cent went towards feeding the homeless
[14:58] bryanwk77: but oh well.
[14:59] bryanwk77:
[14:59] bryanwk77: if you don't want to post there can I copy and paste? maybe if I move it to LJ?
[14:59] alishacoleman80: heck if you shop at walmart you are supporting sweat shops and child labor
-------------------
Ultimately I think that I am on the side of practicality. . If you worry about every penny you spend supporting evil. . it becomes more than a full time job.. and might not even be possible to figure out. Living totally green is probably easier.
I'm all for avoiding the obvious cases and boycotting people/organizations in a focused pointed manor, but I think most boycotts even don't work because they are too diffuse and spread out and impossible to control well.
. . so I'm really curious what other people think.