Given that there exist moralizers who propose that everyone ought to have to follow a certain set of values, you can either:
A) accept their authority and adopt their moral schema, or B) reject their authority.
There are no other options. All other possibilities are subsumed by one of these two, in one way or another.
> A) accept their authority and adopt their moral schema, or B) reject their authority. There are no other options. All other possibilities are subsumed by one of these two, in one way or another.
Maybe you need to Google "False Dichotomy?"
I will then either accept that you are correct and admit that I was wrong, or else show how the additional options you propose are actually subsumed into one of the two options that I've named above.
I can agree, for example, that certain forms of expression can make some people uncomfortable and exclude them from participation, yet not agree with the proposed dictate that all professional groups must now shun anyone who has ever defended such forms of expression. However, if the context of tolerance is expanded beyond such a narrow formulation, then my conclusion is that those forms of expression should also be defended and we should refrain from punishing the actors retroactively. (Even as we ask people to refrain from them in certain contexts.)
You can expand such a discussion into emotional, psychological, and historical realms, as well as those of personal experience. It's always possible to expand the context of a discussion, since it's impossible for a person to understand every context at once.
I did this once with my ex-girlfriend's right-wing Christian mom. She was willing to listen to the plight of a previous ex-girlfriend's family and it changed her outlook. I've also seen it happen with a homophobic woman from rural Oklahoma who became best friends with a gay activist man.
It doesn't mean you have to agree on everything, but there is an exercise of self-awareness around the ease with which one human can "dehumanize" another in their own mind. Civil society is generally better served by civic discourse and less well served by shunning and actions usually shown to "the enemy." In fact, the root of social injustice is generally the propensity of people to do this in their minds. ("othering")
I hope that is a good demonstration.
Your existence is dependent on ancestral inheritance (instincts, emotions, genetics etc) and your identity is dependent upon the relative social interactions with others. We are naturally, subconsciously affected by the way others in our environment act. Our minds are a codependent network, affected by all of the thoughts and actions of those who came before us.
You are currently using a language that you did not independently invent, for example, and so many of your thoughts are constrained to the limitations of that language.
>B) or are they merely cogs in some vast social machine, constrainted to operate in their private lives and businesses according to the arbitrary dictates of some self-appointed group of sermonizing moralists?
There are many subconscious social constraints, much of which evolved to enable the survival of the species, but it is possible to break free of them, especially when those constraints end up being contrary to survival.