Proper term for "imposing moral principles onto others" vs "patronising behaviour"

[Slavicbeard]

Proper term for "imposing moral principles onto others" vs "patronising behaviour"

Hello everybody,

I would like to start by saying thank you for allowing me to join a forum in order to improve my language skills.
It´s been quite a while since I practised correct English, my former knowledge is dwindling and I´m in need of little bit of help here.
So please feel free to correct any mistakes in this or the following posts, I´d be very grateful!

Now on to my question, I will give you the context first:
I had an argument with someone over the following statement about making character classes in an online video game:
"Playing the class XY is immoral."

The class is considered to be rather annoying by a rather large part of the gaming community and is often the victim of bad jokes.
The statement above was accompanied by an arguably funny but somewhat silly meme picture and as the argument got heated up, I planned to share my view on that statement.

When answering I meant to say:
I consider the claim that playing the class XY is immoral an act of imposing your own questionable moral principles onto others in order to limit their game choices.

What I answered instead in the heat of the moment:
Claiming that "playing XY is immoral" is patronising nonsense.

I wasn´t sure about the usage of patronising here, as I used a German-English dictionary for the verb bevormunden and the dictionaries offered a number of possible translations:

to act as guardian for
to impose one's will on so.
to domineer over so.
to infantilize so.
to patronize so.

And the list would continue...

What would the proper term or rather statement have been in my situation?
I wonder if condescending behaviour would have been a more accurate description of the message I planned to deliver, but here my language skills hit a very thick wall.

Thanks heeps in advance and best wishes from Berlin!

Michael

 

[Glizdka]

Re: Proper term for "imposing moral principles onto others" vs "patronising behaviour

Not a teacher
------
Hello, Slavicbeard!

Translation is nice if you're looking for a word, and don't know where to start, but I highly recommend looking the word up in proper dictionaries, such as Cambridge Dictionary or Oxford Learner's Dictionary. You can also use Ludwig.guru or Fraze.it to find examples of sentences with these words.

If I understand what you mean, patronize is not the word you're looking for. This word means that, on the surface, it may look like the person is trying to help you and give you advice, but what they're actually doing is showing their superiority over you, treating you like a little child, a rookie, or an idiot, and generally being a prick, as in "After reading what you've written, I don't think your English is good enough to understand the word patronize. It's a very complicated word and I think you shouldn't use it until you improve".

Patronizing behavior is common among teachers, bosses, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, mostly because their day job is talking to people who are less experienced or have less knowledge, and it's easy to get carried away.

There's a good example I know from Big Short (a pretty good movie, by the way), where Michael is trying to convince Lawrence (his superior) that it's worth investing in something risky, but instead of listening to him, Lawrence just tells him to stick with easy things.

The statement above was accompanied by an arguably funny but somewhat silly meme picture and as the argument got heated up.

Can you attach the picture to your post? It might be helpful.

 

[jutfrank]

Re: Proper term for "imposing moral principles onto others" vs "patronising behaviour

I don't quite understand what you want to say. I don't think patronise is a good translation of bevormunden in this context, but then I don't think imposing moral principles onto another is either. You'll have to explain more. Tell us exactly what class XY is and exactly what people are criticising others for. As Glizdka says, the meme will probably be helpful too.