A Quick Peek Into The Future Of Ethics Regarding "Consent".

CONSENT. 

There are many obvious things we can say about the concept of consent. 

Let's start with an overview.
 

Basic and common concepts about consent:

Consider:

--
--


Now, let's talk about some non-obvious forms of consent and violations of consent. 

Picture someone riding a loud motorcycle

through subdivisions;
- where any number of
children with ear aches
and
sleep-deprived parents who work the night shift
could be trying to catch up on sleep.

Now, that has that peace been stolen from them.

We have now forced an aggressive amount of noise
down their non-consenting ear-holes. 

We have forced them to experience something they were not wanting.

We have now caused them consequences in their lives.
 Physical pain,
further sleep-deprivation, 
and dramatic loss of peace.

They might quickly recover from it.
Or they might not.

That child or parent might not get back to sleep today, as a result.

In turn, any child or adult could experience a surge  (or resurgence) of mental-illness, or a loss of emotion-regulation.

Before they have time to recover from those consequences, a parent might turn back to a substance they've recently broken free of. 

Or they might lose their temper and say/do something they'll regret.

It could cost them a job or a relationship.

It could manifest in a new traumatic memory for someone close to them;
- with potential consequences to their life-path trajectory.

Consider, similarly, 
 American fireworks.

They disrupt human sleep,
and traumatize veterans with PTSD,
and traumatize domestic pets
for weeks-on-end until the "festivities" finally fizzle out for the year.

Additional examples:

People wearing chemical-based perfumes/colognes are making the same types of decisions;
knowing that many people in our society have severe physical reactions to those violations of consent. 

[Pandemic examples retracted; for various reasons]

==
It's a spectrum.
==

Not all violations of consent are equal;
neither in seriousness
nor obviousness. 

With that in mind, ...

A lesser obvious example
would be:

Pain Empathy (Link).

More specifically:
anything which is entirely optional personal indulgences 
but which might also
trigger an empathic pain reflex in others. 

I can think of a few examples. 
But it has come to my attention that I run a high risk of offending people if I share specifics. 

 If someone sometimes does a thing 
which may be on the list of things that cause me to experience a sharp spike in Pain Empathy,  ...

That person might start to feel uncomfortable around me, if I ever mention those specific things that bother me.  
I'd rather avoid that.
 So I won't get into any examples here. 

Instead, I'm content with merely mentioning that this is one possible way 
in which we could cause moments of suffering for someone else 
merely by doing something to ourselves that "looks like it would hurt". 

This, then, could become a issue of violating other people's right to consent, without even realizing it;
- because we'd be literally causing someone else to feel physical pain. 
--- 

Now,
to be fair, 
I myself
have accidentally caused pain to others. 

I have also made some very asshole-choices in my past. 

That doesn't make assholery into a social demographic. 
 It's a type of behavior and attitude; 
not a people-type. 


In any event, ... 

Eventually,
humanity (if it still exists) will evolve into further generational awareness of:
 how us knuckle-draggers from the 2020s still thought it was ok to violate other people's sensory-boundaries and other health/body rights
without consent.

I'm not saying we should "ban" people from being either:
a.) unintentionally harmful 
or
b.) intentionally-selfish-assholes. 

I am merely noticing that we, as a people,
still have a lot of growing to do.