When To Show Mercy

There is never a necessary time for mercy.  Something almost everyone wants and yet almost no one is willing to show in the same way they arrogantly expect it, mercy is inherently undeserved and often used as an excuse to tolerate stupidity while favoring some people over others on baseless grounds.  I myself do delight in showing mercy to fellow rationalists and to the (seemingly) genuinely repentant whenever I can, although I can be far harsher with non-rationalists in person than even the abrasive comments I make about them here testify to.  It is not irrational or immoral for a person to despise mercy, however, though they would be a hypocrite to always withhold it from others and yet demand or expect it when they need it.  Justice is deserved; mercy is not, and non-rationalists cannot deserve to be treated like they are the equals of rationalists.  The unfortunate truth is that irrationalists are common since irrationality is the norm of a person's life until they intentionally flee from it, having relied on logical axioms being true the whole time and yet never actually realizing or rightfully caring about this foundation of all things.

If anything about truth matters, there is indeed a merciful aspect to not structuring every interaction with non-rationalists who have given evidence of their emotionalism (or other error) so that it is not aimed at intimidating and psychologically brutalizing them into, at a minimum, fucking silence for as long as they believe in fallacies or contradictions; this would be emotionally harmful to many non-rationalists, but not only do their subjective feelings and self-esteem not matter in this regard whatsoever, but since all truth is dictated or shaped by the laws of logic and non-rationalists misunderstand or do not care about reason, non-rationalists cannot deserve to be treated otherwise, as if they are intelligent or thoroughly deep or intellectually or morally mature.  That reason is true irrespective of their feelings means the latter by necessity either is meaningless or has value only because it is logically possible or necessary for this to be the case.

Some people do come closer to deserving mercy than others, though, even though of course not a single person could deserve it no matter how minor their sins or how repentant they are.  These are people likely to be very personally impacted by mercy and driven to abandon errors and turn from wrongdoing because they are already rational or repentant without being shown mercy.  The most strategic and significant times to show mercy are always these kinds of situations: when someone is poised to seemingly turn from irrationality and other sin or a rationalist who has made a mistake and yet chooses to not be characterized by their error.  In certain instances, mercy can truly help motivate someone to embrace reason and live for truth and justice, forsaking their assumptions, emotionalism, or apathy about deep matters of reality.

It is just that only the people who act as if they are truly contrite, are willing to change, or are already changing for the better fall into this relatively small group of people for whom mercy will have this motivating impact.  Almost anyone else is more likely to just feign greater rationality or regret for their philosophical mistakes (of which moral mistakes are but one subcategory), only to continue believing or doing the exact same things, or perhaps they will not even understand what the problem is to begin with.  Pretending to want mercy just to appease confrontation would always be an easy way for non-rationalists who at least can seem authentic.  This is why actually talking with and observing them after mercy is shown will reveal to the greatest extent possible given human limitations if they were genuine.

Again, not even the repentant can deserve mercy; they just come closer to deserving it despite it being logically impossible to deserve to not be treated justly, with justice quite literally being what one deserves.  No one could possibly deserve the slightest mercy: not family members, not the superficial, not hypocrites or irrationalists of any kind.  There are plenty of evangelical Christians who will even say that they realize mercy is undeserved, only to then somehow think mercy is owed to every person as if they do deserve it, when they themselves do not even respond to mercy correctly!  They might show mercy to people based on arbitrary emotionalistic criteria that do not match up with the universal ability of fallen humans to accept God's mercy and the universally undeserved nature of mercy.  All mercy is arbitrary in one sense, yes, but people who think mercy is deserved by some and not by others, especially when they put no more thought into this than the minimal introspection it takes to see how they feel about it, have put themselves in a position where they would deserve the contempt of all beings that understand reason.