> The older I get, the more I get the sneaking suspicion that statements like "the ends don't justify the means" and "violence is always the wrong answer" are, at best, wildly logically inconsistent in any society at any time, and at worst, designed to ensure only a very few people in power can commit violence.

My experience has been the polar opposite: The older I get, the more I've seen people come to completely incorrect conclusions that justify their decisions to harm others. This ranges from petty things like spreading gossip, to committing theft from people they don't like ("they had it coming!") to actual physical violence.

In every case, zoom out a little bit and it becomes obvious how their little self-created bubble distorted their reality until they believed that doing something wrong was actually the right and justified move.

I think you're reaching too far to try to disprove the statement in a general context. Few people are going to say "violence is always the wrong answer" in response to someone defending themselves against another person trying to murder them, for example. I think these edge cases get too much emphasis in the context of the article, though. They're used as a wedge to open up the possibility that violence can be justified some times, which turns into a wordplay game to stretch the situation to justify violence.

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hn_throwaway_99 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think you have wildly misunderstood my point, given that your statement of "The older I get, the more I've seen people come to completely incorrect conclusions that justify their decisions to harm others" is not the polar opposite of what of I was saying - if anything, it aligns with what I was saying very well.

To rephrase, my point is that phrases like "the ends don't justify the means" and "political violence is never the answer" seem to almost always be applied in very specific contexts, completely ignoring other contexts where many people (I'd say "society at large") are completely OK with the ends justifying the means and political violence.

To use your own sentence, I've seen many people in positions of power "coming to completely incorrect conclusions that justify their decisions to harm others", e.g. why bombing children in their beds is OK.

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Aurornis 4 days ago | parent [-]

> To rephrase, my point is that phrases like "the ends don't justify the means" and "political violence is never the answer" seem to almost always be applied in very specific contexts

That's not what you said. You were talking about society as a whole, not narrow contexts. I'll re-quote your original comment that I was responding to:

> statements like "the ends don't justify the means" and "violence is always the wrong answer" are, at best, wildly logically inconsistent in any society at any time, and at worst, designed to ensure only a very few people in power can commit violence.

I was responding to your "at best, wildly logically inconsistent in any society at any given time" claim.

	▲	hn_throwaway_99 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, society as a whole applies statements like "the ends justify the means" in wildly inconsistent ways, deeming it unacceptable in certain contexts and being completely fine with it in other contexts. I literally said in my original comment "To emphasize as strongly as I possibly can, I am not advocating for more violence. Quite the contrary, I'm advocating for less." Beyond that, I can't help you with your reading comprehension.

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metabagel 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The point of the comment you are replying to is that it's often logically inconsistent for people to say that violence is never the answer, given the amount of violence committed by our military, law enforcement, immigration enforcement, etc. - much of which is deemed acceptable.

	▲	bigbadfeline 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's no inconsistent if the people who oppose violence also oppose the legal forms you enumerated. The comment you're trying to explain is conflating different groups of people and that makes it virtually meaningless.