> Just because someone is an adult, doesn’t mean they will always make correct decisions.
It is impossible for you to substitute your definition of correct for another person’s own when it comes to their body and their life without denying them agency and declaring yourself their superior, and in the process violating their rights to self-determination.
If they are harming no one but themselves, you have no moral basis to deny them their freedom to do so, unless you deem yourself competent to be their parent or guardian simply on the basis of that single decision of theirs, which is not reasonable by any stretch of the imagination.
> People need to be protected from themselves sometimes.
The only protection that most people want is protection from people who think this way about their lives, myself included.
That’s why society as a whole makes that decision about what they consider correct and what they consider incorrect through laws and ethical standards. Unless you are in a dictatorship, laws and ethical standards are representative of the majority.
“Society as a whole” cannot decide anything, as “society” is an abstraction, and a leaky one at that.
If an individual can’t decide for another, no assemblage of individuals can legitimately claim that authority either.
I certainly don’t want to live in a place where it takes hundreds of years for the majority to finally decide that, for example, racial minorities really do deserve equal protection under the law (or a hundred years to reach the point where it is not legal to enslave them).
Ultimately the law of the land is might makes right. In a democracy that tends to lie with masses of people (sometimes counter balanced by protective laws), in other instances it tends to rest in the hands of the few.
Ultimately power has to rest somewhere. If it's nowhere then someone will come and take it.
The modern alternative isn't some panacea. It's the corporation and the indifference of rights so long as it doesn't negatively impact the bottom line.
It is impossible for you to substitute your definition of correct for another person’s own when it comes to their body and their life without denying them agency and declaring yourself their superior, and in the process violating their rights to self-determination.
If they are harming no one but themselves, you have no moral basis to deny them their freedom to do so, unless you deem yourself competent to be their parent or guardian simply on the basis of that single decision of theirs, which is not reasonable by any stretch of the imagination.
> People need to be protected from themselves sometimes.
The only protection that most people want is protection from people who think this way about their lives, myself included.