this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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Stupid question, but I’ve been to NYC many times and I’ve always considered Central Park to be one of the only enjoyable parts of the city… am I allowed to enjoy it if it was taken this way?
Nobody should allow you or disallow you. Whether you still can and want to is up to you.
Generally what I and other anarchists find is that none of us can live outside of exploitative structures right now, so it's a matter of being kind and patient with each other and ourselves while weaning ourselves off things one at a time. Which is easier when you replace it with something better.
Eating vegan became a lot easier after helping out in a few community kitchens. Calling out unjust authority became a lot easier after organizing a soft coup of an anarchist book club lead by someone who didn't act anarchist.
In the end, doing right by people only takes sacrifice if society is built wrong, and the best solution to that is to build society right instead. Maybe you can help make NYC a better place, maybe you're glad to make it out of there needing less than a week's rest. And while sacrifice can be worth it if the short term gains are big enough, nobody is going to be helped if you're making yourself miserable.
(Concretely for NYC and every city in the US, a good start would be superblocks. Though Manhattan should probably go car-free and rely entirely on public transit. That way every street can be converted into greenery, and you don't need to go to Central park to sit under a tree and enjoy the sounds of birds and of children playing. Restorative justice for Seneca village probably wouldn't involve sweeping changes to Central Park - the descendants have built lives elsewhere - but that's for the descendants, the people of New York, and for white and black USAmericans in general to reckon with).
Yes. Or you couldn't enjoy the majority of the US, which was taken from indigenous people.
It's not a stupid question at all, it's actually quite a complex one.
I suppose the real meat of the question is it morally wrong to derive pleasure from something where suffering is involved. You didn't personally make the decision to harm people, so you have no responsibility there. You also did not consent to existing as a person, which means you largely have no say about where you find yourself as a human being, the circumstances of which led you to that park.
But conversely you're now burdened with the knowledge, which understandably changes your outlook. By way of utilising the park, you're implicitly condoning it's creation, therefore the suffering. Before you were blameless, now it's a little muddier. You still wouldn't have condoned the actions taken though, which does count for something.
If we're taking "allowed" as a social context, some may find it distasteful. It largely depends on who you talk to. I don't think it should affect your own reasoning much though.
Ultimately what we're left with is a physical space that has a somewhat difficult history. As it stands, no action you do can alter that fact, it will always be that thing, unfortunate as it may be.
Considering all that, on the range of all possible human activity, I think the enjoyment of a park is fairly reasonable behaviour. I don't think you can unlearn the context though, so whether or not you can enjoy it largely depends on your own internal moral workings. In the end, I would recommend going with what your heart, gut, and mind tell you.