It's not a "smear." Besides, you're the one bandying "extreme left" around.
I think if you read "job" to mean "social obligation" or "responsibility," you'll understand that the GP's statement is essentially the Hobbesian one. If you read it to mean "the thing someone pays you to do," you'll get a very silly (and obviously incorrect) argument.
> I think if you read "job" to mean "social obligation" or "responsibility," you'll understand that the GP's statement is essentially the Hobbesian one
Let's read it as "responsibility". No, I don't agree with you on the statement being equivalent to what you wrote earlier. Different people can have different responsibilities in the world. "Making things safe for our most vulnerable individuals" is not a responsibility that belongs to literally every person in the world. It's okay if someone just makes furniture that's safe for the average person, while it has a sharp edge that can hurt a mentally unstable person.
Carpenters try to solve those problems. When it’s their mother or their son. Unless you believe empathy is a political alignment, a sad and confusing world for you.
I never said "no carpenter" tries to solve mental problems for mentally troubled people. I said it's fine if "a carpenter" just focuses on carpentry instead of people. Of course some carpenters can focus on both, that's great. But it's not everybody's job. This is just a factually accurate statement about the world. Every single person on this planet does not have the same job.
I'm not here to promote "right wing" ideology or any other political agenda. I'm stating - as a matter of fact - that different people have different jobs and different responsibilities. I'm also stating - as an opinion - that that's okay.
If you have kids, that's a job. If you have pets, that's a job. If you maintain a social circle, that's a job. If you have a job, that's also a job. I'd argue it's your job to restrain from stabbing random strangers in the street.
Maybe "responsibility" is a better term, or maybe that's too strong too. You're not going to be paid for many of these things or penalized if you don't, but living a life outside of any expectations towards other people does not a healthy society create.
> I'd argue it's your job to restrain from stabbing random strangers in the street.
Sure, I agree with you, we all have a responsibility to restrain ourselves from stabbing random people in the street. Do we all have a responsibility to make the world "safe" for the most vulnerable people amongst us? No. It's great that we have some people working on that, like mental health professionals, or city councilmembers, but every single person does not and should not work on that particular thing.
I'm tired of the activism too. I would love to have less of that and more complex discussion that acknowledges the myriad takes on political organization, political economy, economics, basic ethics, etc. that are out there. Forcing everything into left-vs-right isn't calling out activism, it's turning discussion into ideological conflict.
I think you’re taking the “job” bit too literally. As someone else said, “responsibility” might be a better term. We all act (vote, talk, help, purchase etc) and have the ability to do so in a way which is ethically informed.
You could say it’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure that the important jobs are being done by someone.
Yes, we all have a various moral obligations. Do all of us have a "responsibility" to make the world safe for our most vulnerable individuals? No. A barista will make a hot coffee when asked, knowing it can hurt people who might spill it. A barista does not have a "responsibility" to make only medium-heated coffee. At the same time, there are people in the world who try to make good tradeoffs with regards to coffee temperature (e.g. MacDonalds corporate, or lawmakers setting an upper limit to allowed coffee temp). So at the same time, one person might make an effort to make coffee safe for vulnerable persons, while another person might just have a responsibility to serve coffee at whatever temperature was decided by the other people. Different people can have different responsibilities in the world.
> This is the most extreme left viewpoint I have ever heard in my life.
I hope this is hyperbolic.
>> This is literally everyone's job. It's the whole point of society.
If viewed through a political lense, I can see how you'd interpret it as a left-leaning ideology.
If viewed objectively with the best possible interpretation, I think the statement is factually correct - we banded together, like most pack animals, for mutual security.
