The Harm Principle: How to live your life the way you want to

John Stuart Mill argues the case for being able to live your life the way you want to. Narrated by Harry Shearer. Scripted by Nigel Warburton.

This project is made in partnership with The Open University and the animations were created by Cognitive

[jonashermans]

"Censorship is the enemy of progress." Great quote!

[alyssam]

The narrator sounds like Principal Skinner from the Simpsons

[VivekYadavBlogger]

This is so beautiful and explained so well. I love these videos. Please don't stop creating such videos.

[Catalistic]

This reminds me to the Diogenes and Alexander story, where when he was approached by Alexander when he was relaxing in the sunlight in the morning and asked if there was any favour he might do for him. Diogenes replied, "Yes, stand out of my sunlight". Alexander then declared, "If I were not Alexander, then I should wish to be Diogenes", to which Diogenes replied, "If I were not Diogenes, I should also wish to be Diogenes."

[SBbj]

The 'dead dogma' 1:25 made me pause the video and applaud this person's creativity

[dlc]

People should be inoculated, at an early age, against 'damaging speech'.

"It's only words", "Sticks and stones" etc. What happened to the ability to call bullsnot on a stupid opinion? There's a difference between respecting someone's right to an opinion and respect FOR that opinion.

[MrSidney]

Wisehouse Publishing Your most benign speech can be the height of offense for someone else. being too subjective, offensive speech should not be a reason for restricting anyone 's freedom. Anyone can claim offense or psychological damage from a given speech. what is almost impossible for anyone to do is prove that their feelings have been hurt without themselves hurting other people's feelings.
You probably heard it before, offense is not given, it's taken. The potential to get ones feelings hurt by someone else 's speech is the small price one pays in order to avail of the overwhelming benefits of freedom of speech.

[jonashermans]

Offense isn't given, it is taken. And as for 'psychological harm', anything can be harmful to anyone.

[gemamartinezcorrales]

Ms Perry will be happy u did ur work (it’s Gema btw)

[LuLu-fxit]

Indeed, everybldy has different visions of what is harming or not. So people who defend "let me do what I want" are in fact imposing/dictating their will to others and sometimes harming them. Their supposed freedom = their dictatorship on others.

[ianhruday]

Mil isn't my favorite but this is somewhat over simplified. He does make exceptions for some forms of intervention. One case is the so called damaged bridge example. So he claims that you are justified in interfering if you have good reason to believe that someone is unknowingly self-harming. But this interference cannot persist once the person has been made aware of the facts. Mil's principle also prevents someone from selling themselves into slavery. It is also unclear from "On Liberty" weather this principle was derived from Mil's Utilitarianism, or whether it is in conflict with it. Mil, clearly values autonomy and authenticity, but it is unclear if he was claiming that these things were intrinsically valuable or if they were instrumentally valuable.

[nounacceptables]

"If I don't harm anyone..."

....so let's agree on what is, harm?...
??

[Mirsab]

But no one can proof if this is the right way to go about things right, since it's corrigible and baseless. Hence IMO the harm principal shouldn't be taken as the absolute truth.

[isaiahthomas]

You are a part of a society. A society is simply the product of those who compose it. So, if everyone was taking part in irresponsible behavior, even if it doesn't cause direct harm to anyone else, society would have to suffer the consequences. Therefore, in a way, it causes harm

[spacecorpse]

i liked the video so much i watched it twice

[Donteatacowman]

This sounds very in line with what I hear from my peers nowadays. Getting on the "speech can harm others" bandwagon seems to be a polar extreme into censorship and limiting the exchange of free ideas. So on the face of it, I don't disagree with JSM here. Maybe part of a counterargument I could make is that, although something may be MORALLY fine, it can still be a bad idea. Bringing up paternalism is also a little iffy because why, based only on this worldview, would children need to be protected from anything not-harmful at all? And if censorship for kids is ok, you can probably justify expansion to censorship for anyone you please--I guess I'm specifically thinking of the human rights abuses faced by people w developmental disabilities who have historically been viewed as having a child's mental capacity (although that is not actually true). Also, to default to the stereotypical abortion debate--pro-lifers may be following the harm principle because they want minimized harm to the parent but no harm to the infant; versus pro-choicers are following the harm principle by protecting the parent from harm, since a fetus is not an infant and does not need to be protected. So, going by the harm principle, who gets to decide what is sufficiently harmful? So maybe the issue with the Harm Principle isn't that it's wrong - it's that it is too malleable and can be used to justify almost any action, if you're wiling to do enough backflips to redefine "harm." But, at the same time, having a justification for what the video calls "eccentric" or "alternative lifestyles" seems like an important first step toward recognizing marginalized groups' right to be themselves.

[AhJodie]

Was the man in that drawing uncircumcised? How delightfully free of censorship!

[larrygraham]

I have yet to understand why people get off on controlling others. Would loved to have had a beer with Mill

[sab_ginesi]

This is really interesting because my first thought in response to this was how Mill's 'No Harm Principle' essentially works against itself since, by him merely suggesting that people do as they please without harming others, may harm someone in the process to here. To be blunt, I don't think it's very possible to do anything without harming someone in the process one way or another - unless there is a fine line between real harm and just wishful ignorance?

[spacecorpse]

in short live your life the way you want talk the way you want but be careful of what you say but say what you want.