574. The Baseline Of Insignificance
There are billions of people of this globe. I know that they exist as an abstract mass of people, but not as individuals, as long as I have never even heard their individual names. They are insignificant for me personally. This has nothing to do with the ingroup-outgroup instinct. The German stranger living down the street is as insignificant to me as any stranger on another continent.
I perceive all human beings as a kind of prototype, as long as they are not known to me personally as individuals. People visibly and unequivocally engaging in specific behaviors, no matter if for example performing religious rituals or as spectators at a sports event, are a subgroup of the general prototype distinguished by one of more special additional attributes.
The existence of these prototypical humans has only one impact upon myself: They are beings not to be harmed.
Not harming as the baseline of behavior with strangers requires nothing more than distant politeness in the case of superficial haphazard interactions. As long as I keep away from them and it causes no harm, I am free to choose, what to think or say about them.
Their insignificance for me is the baseline. I owe them no proactive beneficial behavior. I do not owe them any respect, because I cannot know, if they as individuals deserve it or not.
Based upon this, it is justified to discreetly ridiculing the weird irrational behaviors of people in Lourdes as explained in entry 573.
There are billions of people of this globe. I know that they exist as an abstract mass of people, but not as individuals, as long as I have never even heard their individual names. They are insignificant for me personally. This has nothing to do with the ingroup-outgroup instinct. The German stranger living down the street is as insignificant to me as any stranger on another continent.
I perceive all human beings as a kind of prototype, as long as they are not known to me personally as individuals. People visibly and unequivocally engaging in specific behaviors, no matter if for example performing religious rituals or as spectators at a sports event, are a subgroup of the general prototype distinguished by one of more special additional attributes.
The existence of these prototypical humans has only one impact upon myself: They are beings not to be harmed.
Not harming as the baseline of behavior with strangers requires nothing more than distant politeness in the case of superficial haphazard interactions. As long as I keep away from them and it causes no harm, I am free to choose, what to think or say about them.
Their insignificance for me is the baseline. I owe them no proactive beneficial behavior. I do not owe them any respect, because I cannot know, if they as individuals deserve it or not.
Based upon this, it is justified to discreetly ridiculing the weird irrational behaviors of people in Lourdes as explained in entry 573.
- It is not harming by propagating prejudice. Laughing at irrational expressions is laughing at something really and publicly displayed. Propagating prejudice would mean to make unfounded detrimental claims by alleged contingencies.
- It is neither interpersonal cowardice not talking behind people's back, because both these behaviors are clearly defined as reproachable under the limiting conditions of concerning people personally known.
Encouraging a person into his face to pray for health and then talk with others behind his back about his foolishness to pray is cowardice.
Being told in confidence about someone's illness and then breaking the trust of telling this to others is talking behind his back.
Sharing the opinion about how expecting to be cured in Lourdes is preposterous and laughing about it is neither of this, because it concerns the public behavior of strangers.
Nobody has any rational reason and even less moral obligation to approach a complete stranger to inform him of the own unfavorable cognitive reaction to his public behavior (unless the interference serves to protect a third party).
The rational reason to approach a stranger would be the intention of mutually beneficial interactions, not to offend him. - The absence of personalization is not the same as depersonalization. As stranger is insignificant but is considered as the prototype of a person entitled to not be harmed, he has just not been known as having an individuality.
Depersonalization is an ingredient in the justification of harming by commodification. Depersonalization is the wilful undoing of a previous personalized contact for the purpose of asymmetrical advantages.
