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[NullForceOmega]

Force I would definitely grant you, but it is more appropriate to call it economic or social pressure than violence, as you cannot inflict a physical attack on a concept.

[SalmonGod]

And... poisoning isn't willful physical harm?  If I inject a knife into your body, it's violent, but if I inject a poison into your body, it isn't?  I know you guys think your definitions are grounded in being more straightforward than mine, but they're actually really confusing to me.

[Bauglir]

I, too, am confused by the notion of poison being non-violent. I guess it doesn't have the same visceral thrill as bashing somebody's face in with a cinder block, but I cannot think of a meaningful distinction other than the particular emotional response I experience, and that's typically a piss-poor basis for trying to establish a productive dialogue.

[Grim Portent]

Poisoning doesn't generally involve any physical contact between poisoner and victim.

Injecting anything into someone unwillingly is violent. Pouring some powder into their food or drink is nonviolent. The method determines if it's a violent act, not the outcome.

[Bauglir]

The method determines if it's a violent act, not the outcome.

I don't really buy this. If you poison somebody, it doesn't matter to me if the poison gets there through a needle while somebody sleeps, or through food they later eat. And it doesn't make sense to to me to say that violence requires an opportunity to struggle. It seems to me much more a matter of intent; explicit malice or willful negligence, coupled with the outcome.

Would it be safe to say, though, that we both regard these things as more or less equal evils, even if we feel compelled to use different words?

Perhaps this difference in perspective is why I disagree with so many people on other notions, such as what constitutes sexual violence.

[SalmonGod]

Even if we agreed the word violence is not technically correct, I would like the words that are used to evoke a similar expression if the acts are morally equivalent.  And it is endlessly frustrating to me that the majority of people really do refuse to see things like executive business decisions to create pollution that results in much death and suffering as equivalent to physically assaulting someone.  I think a large part of the reason these subjects aren't taken more seriously is because the language isn't there.

[NullForceOmega]

Use the term assault then, as the actions you describe are certainly an assault, but are definitively not violent.  And evoking moral outrage is a damn poor way to convey information, just sayin'.

[SalmonGod]

That's... grammatically difficult.

Anyway, evoking moral outrage isn't about conveying information.  The information has been conveyed broadly and clearly since I was a little kid.  It's about getting people to care.  Plenty of people (I don't know if I'd say a majority but still plenty) understand that the environment is crumbling, or (to keep this from becoming a further de-rail into environmental debate) the economy is working against them.  But they don't properly digest the idea that these aren't things that are just happening, they are things that are inflicted upon them by willful actions.  That's why I think that thinking about it in terms of violence is useful.  Or rather... assaultenance... I guess...

[NullForceOmega]

The problem with trying to evoke moral outrage is that it is polarizing, and that has a long and short term-detrimental effect on your cause.  Ultimately the only way you can convince people that there is something wrong is by doing everything in your power to ensure the facts are brought to light, and let people feel however they want about it.  If enough people agree with you and push for change then it occurs.  If you just try to whip people into a frenzy with provocative language then you don't have a force for change, you have a mindless mob.

[SalmonGod]

Simple agreement isn't enough.  You don't get people to put forth sacrifice of material, time, or effort, without inspiring some conviction...

Hell, that's how civil disobedience works.  It triggers moral outrage among fence-sitters and bystanders at a spectacle of oppression.

[penguinofhonor]

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[Grim Portent]

Simple agreement isn't enough.  You don't get people to put forth sacrifice of material, time, or effort, without inspiring some conviction...

Hell, that's how civil disobedience works.  It triggers moral outrage among fence-sitters and bystanders at a spectacle of oppression.

The best way to stir up outrage about pollution and similar issues is to do things like the babyteeth radiation measurement that helped put a stop to the US testing nuclear weapons near population centers.

The proper presentation of the right information can be downright shocking to people while using little to no sensationalist methods. If you tell people that a company not using proper filters gives their child a 300% increase in [insert chemical here] compared to the average concentration X years ago it generally startles them. Similarly with warnings about likelihood of becoming homeless increasing, losing jobs, losing employment benefits, just accurately telling people the truth without letting it get filtered through partisan political bias can be very helpful.

[penguinofhonor]

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[Grim Portent]

How is selectively using the most shocking data somehow better than stretching the definition of a word? You're still manipulating information to evoke an emotional reaction. They are both sensationalist methods. Neither are particularly deceptive, but both paint a biased picture.

I feel like the main strike against stretching a definition is "it's my pet peeve." Which isn't a real criticism.

You don't need to selectively use data, the general trend in most of it is shocking anyway when it comes to matters like pollution and economics. It's not like I'm suggesting the use of data acquired from experiments involving exposing rats to concentrations of a food additive 500 times higher than a human would encounter in a year (I hate those experiments, they give the scientific community a bad name. )

If I wanted to encourage people to sit up and start thinking about their economy I'd simply show them information about average income, average savings, expenditures and so on, adjusted for inflation of course, compared to several periods in the past and contrasted with the same figures for the highest earners in their country across the same period.

I also struggle to see how something like a chart showing how the number of homeless people has changed over the years, as a portion of the population, could be called selective.

[Frumple]

If I wanted to encourage people to sit up and start thinking about their economy I'd simply show them information about average income, average savings, expenditures and so on, adjusted for inflation of course, compared to several periods in the past and contrasted with the same figures for the highest earners in their country across the same period.

I guess the thing you're missing is that people are doing just that -- have been doing that, for literal decades now -- and it's not working. Great swathes of the american public are exposed to that information regularly. It's barely influencing them. As SG notes, there's a difference between having the data and actually caring to do something about it (even if that "something" is just acknowledging there's a problem), and just the data, no matter how troublesome, is only rarely enough to motivate the latter.