Katatori-kun said:
Johnny Impact said:
OP didn't ask whether it was legal.
True, but
you called it a crime.
Crime existed before there were laws. The very first time one caveman slapped another and stole his meat, there was no written code drafted by stuffy legislators. There was only the notion of right and wrong.
For a crime to exist, all we need is a victim, a perpetrator, and some sort of unfair loss inflicted by one upon the other. The victim is the one being cheated on, who was treated unfairly. The perpetrator is the one doing the cheating, who took unfair advantage of another. The loss in trust, dignity, time, happiness etc might be intangible but it is no less real.
That's all criteria satisfied. Cheating is a crime, a violation in terms of morality rather than legal technicality.
It's equivalent to defrauding a person of everything they own,
This implies you think a person in a relationship
owns the other person.
No, people do not own each other. I'm trying to establish equivalent loss for an intangible. Inevitably there will be some inaccuracy.
Try the notion of a treasure map. Get your tools and your sense of adventure, the map says, and proceed to the X. There you will find what you seek. So you hitch up your britches and get going. You invest deeply of yourself to reach that point. After much time and toil, the old wooden chest is ready to be opened. And what do you find inside but a note saying "Haha, fuck you, it was all for nothing, I lied to you the whole time." Is that the ending you're looking for? Do you feel at that point as if the guy who set the whole thing up has done right by you?
Or we could use sexual harassment as an example. Here we have two people who should get along, extending, if not friendship, then at least the
quid pro quo attitude most humans have towards one another. Except one of them is taking what isn't offered, abusing trust, abusing authority, taking advantage of meek complacency, and so forth. There isn't any notion of fairness towards the victim. There isn't any
quo or
quid. There is only callous greed: "I want this, I'm taking it, ha ha, you can't stop me." Theft of dignity, theft of personal space, emotional damage -- however you categorize it, it is very much an intangible, and very much illegal. This is a crime on both moral and legal grounds.
You can apply the same sort of logic to relationships: I love you, and I give you the right to love me in return, or at least cordially decline my love. I do NOT explicitly or implicitly give you the right to sink a pickaxe into my heart by pretending to love me while you fuck some other guy behind my back.
Don't people in relationships have some claim on each other? Don't they deserve
anything for their devotion? Love is uncommon. Trust is hard. Honesty is practically extinct. The reason for that is way too many of us just take advantage of anyone "foolish" enough to employ them. When we extend these things, we should get something other than spat on.
My opinion is if you don't think that's pretty bad, your morals are loose.
I never claimed cheating wasn't bad.
If I wished to, I could say you claimed exactly that. I could easily twist your statement that people don't own each other. If humans have no claim upon one another, as you say, doesn't that mean you believe there is no requirement to be decent, or repay trust in kind? We can just do whatever we want, without consequence, because hey, you don't own me.
Obviously that isn't what you meant. There's this little thing called sticking to the spirit of the argument.