Hate the sound of people eating when I am not eating.

This debate is becoming very confusing to me.

Though Hope says she regards people eating in public as ‘impolite’, she doesn’t seem to be saying that it’s socially inappropriate on principle, she’s saying that she finds it personally offensive – I don’t see any culturally imposed stereotype... I guess that they're basically being inconsiderate... but it would be hard to 'police' public eating!

If that’s the case, I think it's basically fair to say that it causes her ‘harm’ in terms of her general mental/emotional well-being, and why would anybody else have the right to enjoy food in public any more than Hope has the right to not be made to feel uncomfortable by this act?

The objective difference between harm and etiquette is debateable, given how embroiled humanity and individual identity is within social constructs anyway.

As somebody else says, firstly, what constitutes ‘harm’ and when is ‘harm’ a bad thing?

As a single example, one member of The Flaming Lips attributes managing to quit heroin to being slapped across the face by another member of the band.

Of course, you can go on endless tangents: is somebody quitting heroin a good thing? Is taking heroin harmful? Maybe it doesn’t matter that any given individual does or doesn’t do drugs... what’s a drug anyway?

But aside from that, there are virtually endless examples of when physical intervention is the less harmful route.

People also enjoy sport - enough to participate voluntarily - some of which are very rough.

So society just isn't so simple.

Aside from that, it also seems pretty well established that some people enjoy physical pain - in any number of forms, that we can glorify gruelling hardship for example - and that emotional suffering can be a form of attention-seeking, but just going by the example you’ve given, the debate is still broader than this.

Giving someone a flower typically involves arbitrarily ending the life of a plant – apparently to give a small, fleeting sense of pleasure to somebody (and when this isn’t the only way of doing so).

I'd say that the biological reality of neurological impact from these human interactions is a scientifically demonstrable fact, and I don’t think you can really say we have brains that respond to our environment due to imposed cultural and social conventions (excluding using in the absolutely broadest sense: the fact of our birth I suppose) - even though these conventions might affect our brain development... and probably undoubtedly the subjective inferral of meaning and implication of our surrounding environment.

So I don't see that Hope is conforming to socially imposed cultural stereotypes by saying she finds it repellent when she sees people eat in public – at least not anymore than we can say that anybody is culturally ‘pure’ and entirely socially uninfluenced.

I mean, ultimately, it’s no less conforming to socially imposed cultural stereotypes to regard those who share her view as ‘snobs’... maybe even more so...

So to assume that eating in public is harmless and so presumably, 'normal', 'right' and 'correct' and takes precedent over somebody finding it difficult (or, for that matter, to say that giving somebody a freshly killed plant is ‘nice’) seems to be basically clinging to these notions on principle, as etiquette, isn't it?

In which case - to my mind at least - if anybody is contradicting themselves here, I think it’s Scorpion0x17 - no offence intended.

I do think however – and this is why I posted before about the socially-evolutionary historical context of eating – that to regard people eating in public as indicative of social decline founded upon a personal response to this might be a somewhat unscientific sociological conclusion.

What's civilisation? What's decline? How do we measure and judge these things?

How do we all feel about people reading at the dinner table?

This debate is becoming very confusing to me.

Though Hope says she regards people eating in public as ‘impolite’, she doesn’t seem to be saying that it’s socially inappropriate on principle, she’s saying that she finds it personally offensive – I don’t see any culturally imposed stereotype... I guess that they're basically being inconsiderate... but it would be hard to 'police' public eating!

If that’s the case, I think it's basically fair to say that it causes her ‘harm’ in terms of her general mental/emotional well-being, and why would anybody else have the right to enjoy food in public any more than Hope has the right to not be made to feel uncomfortable by this act?

The objective difference between harm and etiquette is debateable, given how embroiled humanity and individual identity is within social constructs anyway.

As somebody else says, firstly, what constitutes ‘harm’ and when is ‘harm’ a bad thing?

As a single example, one member of The Flaming Lips attributes managing to quit heroin to being slapped across the face by another member of the band.

Of course, you can go on endless tangents: is somebody quitting heroin a good thing? Is taking heroin harmful? Maybe it doesn’t matter that any given individual does or doesn’t do drugs... what’s a drug anyway?

But aside from that, there are virtually endless examples of when physical intervention is the less harmful route.

People also enjoy sport - enough to participate voluntarily - some of which are very rough.

So society just isn't so simple.

Aside from that, it also seems pretty well established that some people enjoy physical pain - in any number of forms, that we can glorify gruelling hardship for example - and that emotional suffering can be a form of attention-seeking, but just going by the example you’ve given, the debate is still broader than this.

Giving someone a flower typically involves arbitrarily ending the life of a plant – apparently to give a small, fleeting sense of pleasure to somebody (and when this isn’t the only way of doing so).

I'd say that the biological reality of neurological impact from these human interactions is a scientifically demonstrable fact, and I don’t think you can really say we have brains that respond to our environment due to imposed cultural and social conventions (excluding using in the absolutely broadest sense: the fact of our birth I suppose) - even though these conventions might affect our brain development... and probably undoubtedly the subjective inferral of meaning and implication of our surrounding environment.

So I don't see that Hope is conforming to socially imposed cultural stereotypes by saying she finds it repellent when she sees people eat in public – at least not anymore than we can say that anybody is culturally ‘pure’ and entirely socially uninfluenced.

I mean, ultimately, it’s no less conforming to socially imposed cultural stereotypes to regard those who share her view as ‘snobs’... maybe even more so...

So to assume that eating in public is harmless and so presumably, 'normal', 'right' and 'correct' and takes precedent over somebody finding it difficult (or, for that matter, to say that giving somebody a freshly killed plant is ‘nice’) seems to be basically clinging to these notions on principle, as etiquette, isn't it?

In which case - to my mind at least - if anybody is contradicting themselves here, I think it’s Scorpion0x17 - no offence intended.

I do think however – and this is why I posted before about the socially-evolutionary historical context of eating – that to regard people eating in public as indicative of social decline founded upon a personal response to this might be a somewhat unscientific sociological conclusion.

What's civilisation? What's decline? How do we measure and judge these things?

How do we all feel about people reading at the dinner table?