There's this adage we as a society have adopted and like to remind each other in many moral discussions:

People can do what they want as long as they don't harm anyone.

On its surface, it sounds like a sensible point, but I've lately been getting a wrong feeling about it. With your indulgence (or without it, as I write what I want in my blog) I would like to explore this feeling in some depth today.

It seems sensible, right?

The first half of the sentence is indisputably sensible: people should have the freedom to do what they want in their life. Sure, this may come with some nuance, which we'll cover in a moment, but for now we're taking a pro-freedom stance on the topic. We, as individuals, don't want to have our freedoms cut by other powers, so first and foremost this is an affirmation that we have the freedom to do as we please. Additionally, we're also granting this freedom to the rest of us, as it would be unfair to do otherwise. In short, we're treating each others as equals (or at least equal in the capacity of acting by or own volition).

But there's some nuance, there's always some nuance. People can't actually do what they want, right? What if they mean harm to their fellows? That would bring suffering to others, and we can't have that. No, people can do what they want... as long as they don't harm anyone. Again, it sounds sensible enough: we're humbling ourselves by addressing some rough edges in our position and we're positively defending this weakness by taking an anti-suffering stance.

Oh, no. Am I really about to criticize a moral position that asserts everyone's right to be free and prevents them from getting in harm's way? As exposed, it looks like an irrefutable position, but bear with me. With some effort, I will try to convince you that it's not as morally high as it appears to be.

We need to define harm

I don't mean to go on a Jordan Peterson tangent defining every word until you're too exhausted to notice that words don't mean anything any more. Also, fuck that guy. Still, let's agree on a simple definition from Webster's Dictionary:

n. 1. Injury; hurt; damage; detriment; misfortune.
   2. That which causes injury, damage, or loss.

v. t. 1. To hurt; to injure; to damage; to wrong

Nothing out of the ordinary. We all know that harm is an objectively bad thing (see Bertrand Russell's "The Elements of Ethics") that we wish to prevent from happening to anyone. However, we need to pay attention to who's defining what's harmful to whom.

If I am hurting someone, it would be unfair of me to deny my actions as harmful. As it would be the other person who's experiencing the harm, my actions are harmful insofar they are perceived as such by their receptor. As an example, if I made a joke about dead grandmas to someone who's grandma passed away recently, I would be harming them if my words made them recollect their recently deceased grandmother. Even if I didn't mean to hurt anyone, I would have harmed that person and it would be my responsibility to apologise.

What if it was the other way around? Maybe it was my grandmother who died recently and the other person the one who made the joke. Then, in theory, I am the one in control of the perception of the joke as harmful. I say "in theory" because this control is never full and sometimes doesn't even exist. In any case, I might take the joke as funny and prevent harm from coming my way.

But what if the person in the receptor position is not so charitable? They may decide that seemingly innocuous actions are actually harmful to them. Usually, you'll hear this express as another, similar adage:

Your freedom ends when the other's starts.

There are lots of other things I don't like about this, like the representation of freedoms as areas of effect in a closed plane that paints them as a competition for resources in a zero-sum game. But I digress; the point I want to make is that the definition of what's harmful to someone or where their freedom starts (yuck) is very personal and can be hijacked by bad actors. I knew a person who had a most liberal position on ethics and would pride themselves on saying that "people can do as they please so long as they don't disturb me". But, I kept thinking, what's disturbing to them?

We can all agree that murder is, by definition, harmful. As such, we don't wish anyone to be murdered and if we believe they deserve death we'll call it retribution or something less problematic. However, this person could decide to be harmed by the sight of two men holding hands in the street. Imagine that!!! In that case, I wouldn't consider it correct for them to denounce the hand-holding couple for violating their right to be undisturbed. What's more, such intervention would most likely bring serious consequences to both men's well-being.

It looks clear, then, that this perception of harm can be abused by bad actors. But a questions remains: to what extent can they abuse it to harm others?

What if we decide that Alice hurts Bob?

Let's say Alice and Bob are in a relationship. They live a life we don't fully understand (most likely because they encrypt their personal communications so we can't eavesdrop on them) and go by their day like the rest of us. Their lifestyle is not what we would call traditional nor what other people would call conventional, but they seem fine with each other.

That, however, is our perception of the couple. What if other people actually mean harm to them but want to cause it while claiming good faith? They would just need to define something that Alice does as harmful to Bob or vice versa. Or maybe it's not even Alice who's harming Bob, it's both of them undermining the morals standards of our sacred society with that travesty they call a relationship. I'm pretty sure you know what kind of bad actor I'm referring to.

The point is that as long as they don't harm anyone is broad enough to facilitate this kind of behaviour. What's more dangerous is that we usually express this idea when we're talking about other people's lives that we don't understand. We want to keep a façade of good faith and will of understanding, but inside we're judging those we don't comprehend enough with our own moral compass. If it's out own morals we're following, then we're also in power to choose a fitting punishment for their wrongdoings. We're giving ourselves permission to be the tyrants of those we fear by virtue of ignorance.

Even if we're acting in good faith, who are we to decide what's right or wrong in other people's private relationships? Not just as lovers, but in any capacity. And why should we decide for them which behaviours harm each other or others? Once we become the judges of other people's morality, we are but one inch away to becoming their executioners.

But reality is still nuanced

I believe that, even though we don't mean bad when we share the titular adage, its advice is, at best, misguided. People should be free to do what they want and it's true that we don't wish anyone harm, but these two ideas shouldn't go in tandem.

What we usually want to express in these situations is that people have an obligation to take responsibility for their actions, which is an undeniably sensible stance. Just as freedom of speech comes with responsibility for one's words, freedom of performance should come with responsibility for one's actions. We could very well take that responsibility and say that people are free to do what they want, but we now know that our interlocutors will attempt plant the wrong "but" banner, so when push comes to shove we will need to come up with a new one.

"As long as they don't hurt anyone" works because it's so simple. Unfortunately, life is not simple, which should have hinted from the beginning that we were swimming in muddy waters. As such, we need our position to be even more nuanced than the original. We also need to remove us as judges of their lives, which means giving them full agency over their actions and consequences.

In essence, we should acknowledge that harm is not always objective and that we humans are flawed beings. We should also keep in mind that we have the power to overcome those flaws and it's not our mistakes that define us, but what we do when we detect them. And finally, we should also build a firm wall around the wronger and the wronged to prevent outsiders from imposing their own morals into their relationship, as they alone are in full capacity to resolve their personal quarrels.

Even so, the next time you're discussing the lifestyle of people who you don't fully understand, you can just stay quiet and learn. You don't need to have a take at the ready for every topic, much less those that you know little about. Still, if the need arises to take a stance, you can take the high ground and assert from the beginning that...

People can do what they want and when they make a mistake they should take responsibility, just as we all do.