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It’s rude to stand on someone’s toes.
Personal space is a basic right. This is not too different from freedom from chains.
Each of us asserts our basic right for our personal space, just as each of us owns our own body. Having the that ownership threatened will bring strong reactions. Like this one.
[I’ll write on abortion at some point.]
Walking down the street, how would you feel to have someone follow you? Or stand in your way intentionally? Or push you? Or hit you? You can see the impact someone else can have on you.
The reverse is true. You should see the impact you have on other people. How would someone else feel if you followed them, stood in their way, pushed the or hit them? They would feel the same way you would feel.
Each of us has an vast impact on our surroundings. This idea is far too broad to elucidate here. [And I’ll write more on that later.] I began with the simple example of our personal space.
I can bring up smell as another example. But this idea applies to each of our senses. When someone or something encroaches on one or more of our senses, it is exactly the same as standing on your toes.
Anyone encroaching on your senses is invading the sovereignty of your senses. They take away from your basic freedoms, forcing you to experience what they want.
How do you feel about brainwashing? I’m horrified by the notion. I wouldn’t want to be brainwashed, but how should we feel about brainwashing someone else? For their own good? What if they couldn’t tell? It’s still wrong. No discussion.
[I’ll have future writings on both child raising and culture.]
Forcing someone to think what you want is wrong. Forcing someone to experience senses you want is similarly wrong.
Brainwashing, shoving, stinking, shouting. Any and every way a person encroaches on someone’s personal world must be considered.
We can’t realistically walk around wearing earplugs. Headphones and music have become commonplace outside. Much of the time a person is only listening to the same selection of music, put on repeat. They listen to familiar music, looped over and over day after day. They aren’t listening to the music, they’re drowning out all the outside audio influences.
When you listen to music, and the speakers are in the middle of the room, if you can hear the music on one side of the room then you can hear it equally loudly on the other side. Simple.
When your music is loud enough to hear in one room on one side of the house, it’s loud enough to hear in a room on the opposite side of the house.
If you turn your music loud enough, then it bleeds through the entire house, invading the sense of hearing of others. The same applies if you stomp up and down stairs, slam doors or TALK LOUDLY.
When you yell, you force everyone to hear you. We cannot turn off our ears. Perhaps we can choose to not listen (somehow), but that does not blunt the annoyance of being yelled “at”.
When you whistle, you forcing everyone to hear you. You’re invading their sense of hearing. Don’t fucking whistle. Asshole.
It can be argued that these ideas don’t apply in the same way when we’re in public. We all share the space, and need to have some reasonable freedom. Fine, but when at home it’s not unreasonable for a person to want to have greater sovereignty over their senses.
It’s rude to force me to hear you.
Don’t stand on my toes.
