Harm is a nebulous concept. At its most basic, to harm someone or something can simply mean to “negatively impact” it, which still leaves the concept open to broad interpretation. When dealing with people, we must rely on the subjective evaluation of the transgressed to determine whether they “feel” harmed, at least in less-egregious situations that don’t involve a court of law and a jury of peers.
Of course, this makes sense. The negative impact of an action against an object— cutting down a tree, for example– can be quantified by examining the direct consequences of the action, and then the secondary consequences resulting from the direct consequences, and so on. In this example, cutting a tree may reduce the available habitat for local flora and fauna, remove the vegetation that produces oxygen, eventually destroy the root system that protects against erosion, and perhaps several other consequences. But depending on the biological health of the region, these effects may be incalculably minimal to the broader system; technically there is harm, but practically there is not.
Yet even this objective harm is exceedingly difficult to calculate in the modern age; cutting a single tree may be innocuous, but it quickly becomes tremendously harmful at scale (i.e., ten people each cutting down a tree will likely have a measurable impact, to say nothing of industrial logging removing hundreds and thousands of trees), or when one considers the “ripple effects” of an action (e.g., the carbon footprint of manufacturing a chainsaw, the petrochemicals required to operate it, etc.). For something as simple as buying groceries, one would have to extensively research and consider concerns about ethical labor, animal rights, carbon footprints of transport, packaging waste, nutritional value, bio-patents, supporting small and/or local suppliers, and likely several dozen other things.
By contrast, the negative impact of an action against a person is really rather straightforward… they can simply tell you that your behavior is harmful to them. Whatever is their subjective definition of harm is largely irrelevant; if you and they are both good-faith actors, it should be relatively straightforward to discuss the issue and find a way to eliminate the harm inflicted by your actions.
Now, this can obviously also become more complicated when dealing with people behaving in bad faith– that is, people with unreasonable “sensitivities” to things that are generally regarded as harmless, or people with particular agendas to push a false narrative for personal gain. Of course, every person has their own traumas, thought modalities, and ethical or moral frameworks, and we should make good-faith attempts to respect them and make reasonable accommodations to their needs. But there is undoubtedly a so-called “” that pervades our current society, and even people that are generally well-intentioned will express great offense at perceived slights that, in all likelihood, were not meant by the actor. These are shortcomings that we must collectively work to remedy in society by promoting nuanced, rational dissertation rather than finger-wagging echo chambers.
Nevertheless, these differences in identifying and preventing objective and subjective harm require different approaches, and it is for this reason that the Savior Self promotes separate tenets for each. The third tenet of the Savior Self is Humans should not harm one another, which provides a somewhat definitive denunciation of direct harm against another person because such harm can be easily identified and, therefore, easily avoided. Do not physically or emotionally harm another person/people or their (private or communal) property.
Humans should not harm one another.
Tenet 3 of the Savior Self
The fourth tenet of the Savior Self, Humans should reduce all harm to its practical minimum, is deliberately open to interpretation. As we have discussed, some level of “harm” is implicit in virtually . Attempting to prevent all objective harm is effectively impractical and largely impossible; thus, we encourage each person, affinity group, and other organizational system to contemplate their own definitions of harm and to align their behavior with the ethical thresholds that they find sufficient for harmonious living. Even with such broad interpretation, the Church believes that most people will readily agree on the vast majority of harm-reduction guidelines (as evidenced by our current tolerance for people of other faiths and ideologies), and any differences should be defensible through reasoned, good-faith debate by all parties.
Humans should reduce all harm to its practical minimum.
Tenet 4 of the Savior Self
Harm reduction is, without question, the most important foundational tenet for our social evolution. Ultimately, all human progress has been towards the goal of reducing harm; some of this progress has been misguided and much of it has been coopted by sociopaths that are happy to harm others for their own personal gain. But philosophy, religion, laws, politics, and technology are all ostensibly built upon the goal of reducing human harm, although their practical applications leave a lot to be desired. We must continue to aspire for ever-greater harm reduction– to our fellow humans and ourselves, to other creatures, and to our planet– as our world gets increasingly more complex and populated, because even the smallest actions can amplify and ripple outward to cause significant harm, intended or otherwise.
