There are authors who can make you laugh. There are authors who can make you think. Then there are authors that can make you do both. I think Mark Twain is in the last class.
In Mysterious Stranger, he does this so well. The character Satan, ably represented by Philip Traum, cautions against misuse of the word brutal. He insists, and you would agree, that the things treated under this heading no brute has been found guilty. He suggests we respect the higher animals.
The things were classify inhuman too are wrongly classified. Only humans are capable of them. Think rape, slavery, torture, war, exploitation all very human. It is our nature to do these things. We find them abhorrent, that I admit, but it is in our nature to do them. No lion kills another out of malice or kills a zebra because it can. And he says we are capable of these abuse because of the moral sense – the judge of good and bad.
He writes
No brute ever does a cruel thing, that is the monopoly of those with the Moral sense. When a brute inflicts pain he does it innocently; it is not wrong; for him there is no such thing as wrong. And he does not inflict pain for the pleasure of inflicting it, only man does that. Inspired by that mongrel Moral Sense of his! A sense whose function is to distinguish between right and wrong, with liberty to choose which of them he will do. Now what advantage can he get out of that? He is always choosing and in nine cases out of ten, he prefers the wrong.
I think, here
There shouldn’t be any wrong; and without the Moral Sense there couldn’t be any. And yet he is such an unreasoning creature that he is not able to perceive that the Moral Sense degrades him to the bottom layer of the animated beings and is a shameful possession
he took a lot of liberty with facts. Would we be better off without the moral sense? Would we find slavery abhorrent or it would be as natural as marrying off a nine-year old?
Is Mark Twain right [ the Moral Sense again] in defending the brutes? Should we find a word to replace brutal in our description of cruelty to one another. No other animal, I think, treat their fellows as we do. And whatever we describe inhumane, acts very human, can we find a more proper word for them?
This brings to mind the issue of whether human persons are naturally good or bad or whether these traits are learned. Jean Jacques Rousseau, I think, argued that we are naturally good. Another philosopher, I can’t recall claimed we are not good and are in need of salvation but the one I agree with is we are not any of the above. It is our actions that should be judged. If I dispatch the president and his cabinet, do I become a bad person or a person guilty of murder?
And while talking about murder, if in a revolution, we kill the president, his family and cohorts, no one gets arrested, why should I be, if I do it on my own for the public weal?
Perhaps we could replace the word brutal with the word typical. “Sam’s behavior was totally typical as he helped raid a village, rape women, and kill kids, all in the name of his god. Very typical, indeed, for a human.”
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Hahaha Jeff. I don’t know if I want to laugh about this or cry but it is so typically human to raid a village killing everything that walks. It is even in the bible 🙂
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Well, if it’s in the bible, it can’t be bad.
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How could it be, and the bible is the source of all goodness?
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It is because it says it is.
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Didn’t Rousseau argue we were naturally pretty bad? In observing the human condition, he acknowledged that all the arts and sciences, even eloquence, he noted, are not born of some core goodness, a wellhead from which only virtue, beauty and grace flow, but are instead the products of our ambition, hatred, falsehood, pride, superstition, and flattery.
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That wasn’t Rousseau, it was Trump in a debate with Cruz.
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That reply was meant for you… Veles, evidently, is close.
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Having tea with him right now.
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Veles loves you John. Always doing your bidding
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He loves nothing but mischief.
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And mischief is your middle name. You are in your element when making a fool of CS or he does that without outside help
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Someone has to do it
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Hahaha.
That is being mean to Cruz and god talks directly to him
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I found this on the net
I think he said something to the effect that art, philosophy were a result of baseness or something along those lines.
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I got that original quote (almost quote) from an earlier post of yours. It’s from Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). Social Contract & Discourses. 1913, A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences, Second Part
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Oh yes. I recall. I will look for it to refresh my memory
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Not sure if he was implying men are inherently bad, but at least our actions are shaped by our vices.
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I think he thought men were naturally good. All corruption came as a result of living in society
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We shall no-longer refer to he as “Cruz,” but his true name, Lucifer 😉
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Correction, “That son of a bitch, Lucifer.”
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You left out miserable son of a bitch
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Jeff, what is it with your countrymen and women
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/indiana-governor-bans-boy_b_9790626.html
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We’re an embarrassment. Shit like this shows the arrogant, defiant, narcissistic, ignorance of a large chunk of the US population and far too many of its leaders.
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Who comes up with such a crazy law. What happens if I wear purple? Do they stop shops from selling purple to boys?
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“The governor knows a ‘gay color’ when he sees it,” Strait said.”
I’m sure he does.
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Indeed.
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How does he plan to implement it
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Good question.
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I remember when I was in 6th grade. I was wearing a dress at school that my grandmother had made. It was about 1/2 inch shorter than school dress code regulation, which neither of us realized. The principle spotted me in the school hallway, grabbed my arm and pretty much dragged me to his office. He pulled out the tape measure. Then he slut shamed me and said if this happened again, I would be suspended. I was 11 years old.
Who knows how he will implement it, but I’m sure there will be shaming involved, and perhaps detention or suspension.
Forensic psychologist, Karen Franklin states:
“The potential of being ostracized as homosexual, regardless of actual sexual attractions and behaviors, puts pressure on all people to conform to a narrow standard of appropriate gender behavior, thereby maintaining and reinforcing our society’s hierarchical gender structure.”
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What the eff!
You know, V, I think the only difference between the US of A and my neck of woods is money. Nothing else. The thinking isn’t any different
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Mak, I couldn’t agree more.
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I think, you beat us. Look at this 👇
http://m.nydailynews.com/news/crime/churchgoer-killed-fight-seat-sunday-service-article-1.2618098?utm_content=bufferfe489&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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Just a sign of things to come.
As you know, our governor signed a bill allowing people to have guns in their possession in church and at any church related event — and without a permit so long as it’s in a holster or purse.
Here’s the governor signing the bill. On his desk is his gun on top of his bible.
Welcome to my world.
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There would be outrage in my village if such a thing happened in a church.
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It’s surreal. So much corruption, secrecy, and antisocial behavior prevalent in conservative Christian environments.
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Catholic school, eh?
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Actually, it was a public school in a very Catholic town in St. Mary’s country, MD. Boys didn’t have a strict dress code except for hair length. They could wear shorts. Girls weren’t even allowed to wear pants, much less shorts.
I was in Catholic school during 5th grade, and was sent home because I forgot to wear a slip/camisole under my white uniform blouse.
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I went to Catholic school for 13 years. Everyone had to wear uniforms. Supposedly it made everyone the same. The effect of this experience is that I now have sexual fantasies about women in Catholic school uniforms. Not what the good nuns and priests had in mind when they designed the uniforms. Can you say, BACKFIRE BABY!!!
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LOL — it seems to be a rather popular fantasy in porn, too.
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Really? I hadn’t noticed. 🙂
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A little sarcasm there? 😉
“The schoolgirl uniform fetish is common in both Japanese and Western pornography, prostitution, and other forms of adult entertainment, making it one of the most widespread clothing-oriented fetishes worldwide.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_fetishism
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My deviation from this fetish is I like women, not girls. I also like Jewish women who can recite passages from the Torah, but that’s a story for another day. 😀
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So, you like Jewish women in girls uniforms calling you lord, eh?
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Nope. Just Jewish WOMEN quoting the Torah and, perhaps, dressed as cops. Nothing remotely about me is “lordly” nor would anything about such a scenario interest me in the slightest.
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Ok, Inspiredbythedivine1. 😀
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$Amen$
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In primary school we all had uniforms but I don’t recall a skirt length for girls
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Alas….”Satire” on Huffpost Comedy.
I fell for it.
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American politics and laws are walking satires. Just listen to Trump talk. “Surely,” you say to yourself, “this MUST be a joke!” But, then, you sadly realize it isn’t.
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When I first started sharing articles on FB where lawmakers in Mississippi had proposed an anti-gay bill that would also allow state government, businesses, bankers, realtors, renters, pharmacies, physicians, counselors, adoption agencies, etc., to deny goods and services, housing, land, employment, etc., to anyone who had had or were having sex out of wedlock, deny marriage licenses to people who’ve been divorced, etc. — people thought it was satire. It wasn’t.
Now it’s reality. The new law will also allow government agencies and employers to dictate what women can and cannot wear, i.e., no pants or jewelry.
So while the article may be satire, it’s certainly believable, considering what conservative Christian lawmakers are doing to turn this country into a theocracy..
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Sadly, completely believable.
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Maybe the whole country should be called United Church of America. Problem solved. Whether it will be Southern Baptist or Lutheran will be decided by nukes
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Haha. Maybe Drumpf is having fun. He doesn’t want to be president
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Satanists were not impressed
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The senator from NY (King) said on CNN yesterday that it was an insult to Lucifer to call Cruz that.
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I think you too would agree with the senator. What light does Cruz bring?
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Of course chimpanzee’s do murder, they do commit genocide, rape, and fight among other groups of chimpanzees. So I think we ought to be careful exactly what we say is uniquely human. And if there is no free will, as many neuroscientists and people like Sam Harris suggest, perhaps we are simply more animal than we’d like to believe. Perhaps our moral sense of right and wrong is only in the after math. A way to justify our behavior. Michael Shermer in the Believing Brain makes a very convincing argument that we rationalize to support our beliefs and justify our actions. That being said, maybe our moral sense is actually the only thing that allows us to improve and to find better ways of achieving our ends without having to resort to violence. It is, in the end self-defeating and our biggest evolutionary advantage is our ability to cooperate. And you get more lasting cooperation through empathy and good will over force and coercion. I am not sure I’ve settled any particular answers, I’m just not convinced that we are so unique in our behavior that we aren’t in the end just wild animals. A primate with a slightly higher level of consciousness and intelligence, but a primate just the same. Sam Harris believes that consciousness gives us the illusion of choice and that we are not consciously choosing between right and wrong in the way we think we are.
I guess I feel there is a certain level of conceit, when we start listing even our worst qualities as something that is expressly unique to humans. I think we’d do a lot better to accepting that we are only slightly more evolved chimps and that we can’t get our hopes too high. The fact that we can improve at all is a reason to have hope above all else. Maybe that’s the only truly uniquely human trait. Blind optimism. 🙂
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Hi Swarn.
I am glad you raise the case of the chimps.
Now, all Mark Twain is arguing, and I agree, that the chimp is not cruel. I have not seen or read of chimps gang raping another and stabbing it in the stomach, nor forcing mother to watch the rape of daughter and then forcing father to rape daughter or lose his life. This, my friend, is uniquely human. And I can cite several examples.
We would like to tell ourselves there is hope, but I think this is a case of burying heads in the sand. Consider this; almost all countries are increasing their military stockpiles. Bigger armies. Are these geared towards a peaceful future or is it preparation for conflict?
I think I agree with the neuroscientists on freewill or lack of it.
We are animals, maybe, when you really think about it, crude than our nearest relation.
We pride ourselves with various feats and think ourselves great, but I think it is all a chasing after the wind.
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What about cats playing with their prey? Or is that just blind instinctual behavior.
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That’s just cats being cats. There is nothing in it not catlike. 😀
I think it is a difficult question. Do they ever let the prey go after playing with them? Or end their misery quickly?
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Sorry for the late response, I am sure you are past this response. I just want to say that you should look at some of the things that chimpanzees are capable of. We look at such behavior as humans and we say oh that’s still just animal behavior, there is no malice. Why should we assume ourselves any different?
I’m not saying we can’t be a bit more creative about how we go about things, but there is no reason to believe that the atrocities we commit, at least within the mind of the people that commit them that they are not acting with any less purpose and conviction that what they are doing isn’t the thing they must do. That it’s necessary and perhaps even righteous. So regardless of how horrible it is, at it’s root, the purpose is no different than the reason why a chimp would commit horrible acts on another chimp.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/09/18/chimpanzees-are-natural-born-killers-study-says-and-they-prefer-mob-violence/
Another article states: “The battle of the sexes is supercharged in the chimpanzee world. Males charge at females, rip out their hair and kick, slap or beat them. Males often kill the babies of rivals to increase the availability of females to mate again.”
http://www.livescience.com/48743-aggressive-chimps-reproduce-more.html
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It’s never late here my friend.
You know I agree with you that chimps do all these.
My contention is if it is animal behaviour and we are animals, why call those done by humans inhuman or brutal? Maybe they are just typically human as our good friend, inspired, put it.
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I guess I misinterpreted your assertions. My apologies. I agree with you. I am big into evolutionary psychology and I know that field can sometimes get a bad rap but I do think there is value in looking at behavior and thinking through that evolutionary lens for one very important reason: the recognition that the brain is an organ that evolved with the rest of us and is not some separate entity. Once one admits that the brain is an evolved physical organ I think we can understand behavior better. It doesn’t mean that all behavior is permissible but it does mean we have a hope of understanding where our motivations come from. I think separating the mind and body leads to concepts of good and evil, free will, and a conceit that places humanity on too high a pedestal to which we most certainly cannot live up to.
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>>> “It is our actions that should be judged. If I dispatch the president and his cabinet, do I become a bad person or a person guilty of murder?”
You’ve hit the nail on the head, Noel. We humans are obsessed with the concept of “good” and “evil” (exacerbated by religion, I assert), and this makes it difficult for us to focus on individual behaviors (which range from very constructive to very destructive).
Rousseau, and the contrasting philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, got caught up in this false good-versus-bad dichotomy. However, both surprisingly reached a similar conclusion in the end – albeit from opposite philosophical directions. From: http://www.academia.edu/3531858/The_State_of_Nature_Thomas_Hobbes_and_Jean_Jacques_Rousseau
“All in all, it is worth examining Hobbes’ and Rousseau’s views about natural state of man because it provides an insight into the legitimacy and basis of social contract as well as the formation of political societies. The first difference between their views is that while Hobbes considers man’s natural state as miserable, Rousseau sees it as a good and delightful condition. Secondly, whereas Hobbes regards the formation of political societies as a need for stability, peace and order by getting rid of natural state, Rousseau considers it a need arising out of growing population and changing life conditions. Finally, for Hobbes, social contract is a great necessity for society, because it is a guarantee for peace, order and self-protection,whereas for Rousseau it meant to be inequality in society. As a result of these, one can conclude that natural state of man needs to be analyzed for the sake of understanding the essence of political societies and the meaning of social contract.”
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Humans make for good study subjects, don’t you agree.
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“And while talking about murder, if in a revolution, we kill the president, his family and cohorts, no one gets arrested, why should I be, if I do it on my own for the public weal?”
Probably because it’s hard to make arrests when you’re outnumbered.
“Civilization: a thin veneer over barbarianism.” ~John M. Shanahan
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Ah, so the trick is to ensure there are many of us
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