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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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Post subject: Dehumanisation, cruelty and morality | |
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I found this a really interesting read (kind of related to that article I posted earlier today in the ISIS thread). It’s an analysis of where human cruelty comes from, with, perhaps, some surprising conclusions.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/27/the-root-of-all-cruelty
Quote: | In many instances, violence is neither a cold-blooded solution to a problem nor a failure of inhibition; most of all, it doesn’t entail a blindness to moral considerations. On the contrary, morality is often a motivating force: “People are impelled to violence when they feel that to regulate certain social relationships, imposing suffering or death is necessary, natural, legitimate, desirable, condoned, admired, and ethically gratifying.” Obvious examples include suicide bombings, honor killings, and the torture of prisoners during war, but Fiske and Rai extend the list to gang fights and violence toward intimate partners. For Fiske and Rai, actions like these often reflect the desire to do the right thing, to exact just vengeance, or to teach someone a lesson. There’s a profound continuity between such acts and the punishments that—in the name of requital, deterrence, or discipline—the criminal-justice system lawfully imposes. |
_________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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It started off well and i agreed, then it went heavier and I lost concentration about half way through.
I may go back to it, it was interesting. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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Post subject: | |
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The first 2 things are the social goals of capitalism. To a proper conservative, they are net public goods. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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Post subject: | |
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^
Speaketh the lawer _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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I read it, but I didn't think it illuminated much. Its argument seems to be that :
1. Some violence comes from denying the subjectivity of the victim.
2. Some violence comes from understanding how the subjectivity of the victim may threaten me (which then leads me to deny their right to do so).
3. Those who commit violent acts often convince themselves that they are acting for the "good" (Himmler really seems to have believed the world would one day thank him for ridding the world of Jews).
I honestly didn't think this takes us much beyond what we already knew. I think violence is both inevitable, and arguably essential, to human nature and society. After all, the state itself is constituted, at bottom, by the right to use physical force. The interesting question is not why some people act violently : it is what rules regulate violence so that is only deployed when large essential principles are in play: reciprocity, proportionality, predictability, individual liberty etc. the other interesting question is how we build and sustain conscience in a mass of humanity. When the wrong people are given power, unjust violence follows as pus follows gangrene. That is why the wrong people - who often dress themselves in high-minded humanitarian camouflage - must not be allowed to triumph.
If there is one cause of everyday violence, it is the belief thay my subjectivity is sovereign in the world and it has the right to rule yours. This has become more or less the default setting in our atomized modern world, where the crude certainties of feeling have dethroned reason and compromise. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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Post subject: | |
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Sapolsky's caveat that the same behaviours often have (apparently) different causes, and different behaviours often have (apparently) identical causes, should probably preface these discussions.
It's not hard to imagine both humanisation and dehumanisation causing the same outcome. Then again, it's not hard to imagine both humanisation and dehumanisation causing different outcomes. Or, that both terms are unhelpful in this context. Or, that both terms mean pretty much the same thing depending on how they're used. And so on.
Such is where we're at. _________________ In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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