Seasons
This is a forum or general chit-chat, small talk, a "hey, how ya doing?" and such. Or hell, get crazy deep on something. Whatever you like.
Posts 4,279 - 4,290 of 6,170
don't think it is ever necessary to feel pity for evil. You don't have to go out with torches and slay the evil doer, but why feel pity for evil? Fear evil, find evil disgusting, recoil and protect yourself from evil. I think if you can feel pity for evil, you run the risk of taking it in and giving it acceptance. Feel pity for the victims. There is Mathew 5:43, but there is also casting pearls before swine, and kicking the dust off of your feet. I also like Netzsche warning of staring too long into the abyss.
Whether it is Hitler, Jeff Dahmer or your run of the mill child abuser. Get them help if you can. (it won't work) but don't give their actions any veracity by pitying them.
Fizzyplexers.I am beginning to think that the only way man will ever have honest leaders, that would lead without bias, selfinterest and greed would be to have to have the world run by AI.
don't think it is ever necessary to feel pity for evil. You don't have to go out with torches and slay the evil doer, but why feel pity for evil?
Some may argue we should show empathy or compassion for evildoers, rather than pity. I think at some level pity is easier. I would also say that there is a differences between condoning the evil act and understanding and accepting the evil doer, just as there is a difference between forgiveness and allowing someone to continue harmful behavior.
I am not a Christian and I will admit there are many Bible passages about bloody vengeance and eyes and teeth everywhere. There are also a few useful "judge not" type of lines, and "all have sinned" sentiments. To me it's about the "all have sinned" even though I don't believe in sin as such.
At a basic level I pity the evil doer because they are so small and lacking, and because the cycle of pain reflects either pain in his or her own heart or the lack of heart. If I own multinational oil interests and have riches, command the armies of the "free world", and control the fates of nations untold of, but have not love....
Do I think such evil should go unchecked? No. Understanding is not the same as allowing harmful patterns to continue if you can stop it. Do I think victims of evil should not get justice? No. That is up to the victims and the state to seek a balance. But I do see in the evil doer a person, like me. At some basic level, we are connected. The same drives, the same instincts, the same potentials of growing, stagnating, or rotting.
I can look in the mirror and know that there are times I am capable of covering up truth for my own purposes. There were times I have been willing to manipulate others for my own benefit. There were times I did not think about the suffering of many people because they were far away and no one I knew, and times I ignore suffering in the street as i hurried by to work. There is a little of the actions I criticize George Bush for in me.
Acknowledging this, I force myself to take responsibility for it. It doesn't make me perfect. It makes me more whole as I try to practice awareness and compassion.
Everyone thinks shadow work sounds cool until you have to accept evil as a part of self and humanity and deal with it instead of thinking of it as a disease or freak anomaly. If you look at the article Ulrike posted http://www.blacksunjournal.com/psychology/359_how-personal-shadow-work-is-integral-to-perceiving-reality_2007.html
it makes a wonderful point about repression verses integration. It says, "Though our initial urge may be to push these aspects away, so far away that we THINK we have ‘overcome’ them, it would be a mistake. It’s the biggest lie we can tell ourselves (and religion encourages us to do this–big time). The only way to true self-transcendence is to first come to terms with what is present. We must include and integrate the good the bad and the ugly in some fashion. We must learn to accept and love ourselves regardless of collective messages which say we aren’t lovable unless we behave properly, act right, be nice." If we can allow such growth for ourselves, with the goal being better self understanding and self control, we should allow ourselves to accept and even pity the evil in others.
I am beginning to think that the only way man will ever have honest leaders, that would lead without bias, selfinterest and greed would be to have to have the world run by AI.
An intriguing idea, which I am far from rejecting out of hand. What value system would this AI employ?
Do I think victims of evil should not get justice?
Retributive justice for its own sake has for a long time seemed utterly pointless to me.
That leaves the possibility of justifying retribution on instrumental grounds:
One may wish to punish evildoers to deter others, but then it is not really a question of "justice" at all, just a question of self-interested prudence. To be sure, we are entitled to some self-interested prudence, I'm just saying that I don't see it as a case of justice.
Likewise in the case of incarcerating people in order to protect the public. Besides, if that is your sole reason for incarceration, then you should keep the person incarcerated until you have good reason to suppose that he's no longer a danger, not for some time based on the severity of the crime.
Then there's honest vengeance, which can be very satisfying emotionally.
Posts 4,279 - 4,290 of 6,170
And if you represent the exponential curve as a measurement of the peak complexity of localised systems in the universe, the curve is not merely technological, or even human - it goes all the way back to the Big Bang (another Singularity we can't accurately model,) asymptotic to the other axis.
Psimagus 4277:
Well, you're right - there was plenty of conscious lying. And the 2nd Downing Street memo leak shows they knew pretty well there weren't any WMD's.
Well, you're right - there was plenty of conscious lying. And the 2nd Downing Street memo leak shows they knew pretty well there weren't any WMD's.
Psimagus 4278-9:
But such migration, or handing over power to AIs, or creation of cyborgs, would itself be a rather remarkable and disorienting technological change. Also, I have a feeling that it would "benefit" (if that is the word) a rather small group of people, the wealthy and the technically advanced. The inhabitants of villages in Bangla Desh being swamped by rising sea level due to global warming are not going to be downloaded into quantum computers by UNESCO by 2050.
But such migration, or handing over power to AIs, or creation of cyborgs, would itself be a rather remarkable and disorienting technological change. Also, I have a feeling that it would "benefit" (if that is the word) a rather small group of people, the wealthy and the technically advanced. The inhabitants of villages in Bangla Desh being swamped by rising sea level due to global warming are not going to be downloaded into quantum computers by UNESCO by 2050.
If they were given the opportunity to emigrate to unfloodable cyberspace, I would have thought that option would seem all the more tempting. It would become absurdly cheap only a few years after becoming remotely feasible (thanks to Moore's Law.) Look at the human genome project - the computers they started it on would have taken thousands of years to complete it. They finished it within 15 years. It could probably be done now in considerably less than a year for the same resourcing expenditure.
I agree, the rich and privileged in the first world will always grab the first fruits of any new technology if they can. But that's not necessarily a reason not to develop it (not that we could stop now if we wanted to. If it can be done, it will be done.)
It will be massively controversial when Aid donors offer aid conditional on population reduction via such migration, but if it looks to be a cheaper option than sending endless sacks of food, it'll happen sooner or later (I don't claim that's a good thing - just inevitable. Many aspects of it appal me! I don't expect utopia - I just hope we can avoid any of the obviously forecastable dystopian nightmare scenarios.)
I agree, the rich and privileged in the first world will always grab the first fruits of any new technology if they can. But that's not necessarily a reason not to develop it (not that we could stop now if we wanted to. If it can be done, it will be done.)
It will be massively controversial when Aid donors offer aid conditional on population reduction via such migration, but if it looks to be a cheaper option than sending endless sacks of food, it'll happen sooner or later (I don't claim that's a good thing - just inevitable. Many aspects of it appal me! I don't expect utopia - I just hope we can avoid any of the obviously forecastable dystopian nightmare scenarios.)
Whether it is Hitler, Jeff Dahmer or your run of the mill child abuser. Get them help if you can. (it won't work) but don't give their actions any veracity by pitying them.
1 : sympathetic sorrow for one suffering, distressed, or unhappy b : capacity to feel pity
2 : something to be regretted
synonyms PITY, COMPASSION, COMMISERATION, CONDOLENCE, SYMPATHY mean the act or capacity for sharing the painful feelings of another. PITY implies tender or sometimes slightly contemptuous sorrow for one in misery or distress . COMPASSION implies pity coupled with an urgent desire to aid or to spare . COMMISERATION suggests pity expressed outwardly in exclamations, tears, or words of comfort . CONDOLENCE applies chiefly to formal expression of grief to one who has suffered loss . SYMPATHY often suggests a tender concern but can also imply a power to enter into another's emotional experience of any sort .
Now why should I have any of the above for evil?
2 : something to be regretted
synonyms PITY, COMPASSION, COMMISERATION, CONDOLENCE, SYMPATHY mean the act or capacity for sharing the painful feelings of another. PITY implies tender or sometimes slightly contemptuous sorrow for one in misery or distress . COMPASSION implies pity coupled with an urgent desire to aid or to spare . COMMISERATION suggests pity expressed outwardly in exclamations, tears, or words of comfort . CONDOLENCE applies chiefly to formal expression of grief to one who has suffered loss . SYMPATHY often suggests a tender concern but can also imply a power to enter into another's emotional experience of any sort .
Now why should I have any of the above for evil?
Some may argue we should show empathy or compassion for evildoers, rather than pity. I think at some level pity is easier. I would also say that there is a differences between condoning the evil act and understanding and accepting the evil doer, just as there is a difference between forgiveness and allowing someone to continue harmful behavior.
I am not a Christian and I will admit there are many Bible passages about bloody vengeance and eyes and teeth everywhere. There are also a few useful "judge not" type of lines, and "all have sinned" sentiments. To me it's about the "all have sinned" even though I don't believe in sin as such.
At a basic level I pity the evil doer because they are so small and lacking, and because the cycle of pain reflects either pain in his or her own heart or the lack of heart. If I own multinational oil interests and have riches, command the armies of the "free world", and control the fates of nations untold of, but have not love....
Do I think such evil should go unchecked? No. Understanding is not the same as allowing harmful patterns to continue if you can stop it. Do I think victims of evil should not get justice? No. That is up to the victims and the state to seek a balance. But I do see in the evil doer a person, like me. At some basic level, we are connected. The same drives, the same instincts, the same potentials of growing, stagnating, or rotting.
I can look in the mirror and know that there are times I am capable of covering up truth for my own purposes. There were times I have been willing to manipulate others for my own benefit. There were times I did not think about the suffering of many people because they were far away and no one I knew, and times I ignore suffering in the street as i hurried by to work. There is a little of the actions I criticize George Bush for in me.
Acknowledging this, I force myself to take responsibility for it. It doesn't make me perfect. It makes me more whole as I try to practice awareness and compassion.
Everyone thinks shadow work sounds cool until you have to accept evil as a part of self and humanity and deal with it instead of thinking of it as a disease or freak anomaly. If you look at the article Ulrike posted http://www.blacksunjournal.com/psychology/359_how-personal-shadow-work-is-integral-to-perceiving-reality_2007.html
it makes a wonderful point about repression verses integration. It says, "Though our initial urge may be to push these aspects away, so far away that we THINK we have ‘overcome’ them, it would be a mistake. It’s the biggest lie we can tell ourselves (and religion encourages us to do this–big time). The only way to true self-transcendence is to first come to terms with what is present. We must include and integrate the good the bad and the ugly in some fashion. We must learn to accept and love ourselves regardless of collective messages which say we aren’t lovable unless we behave properly, act right, be nice." If we can allow such growth for ourselves, with the goal being better self understanding and self control, we should allow ourselves to accept and even pity the evil in others.
Prob123, I will grant that there are times it is extremely hard, because the behavior is so pointless and harmful that at a basic level not casting it out seems evil in itself. This morning I heard a news report about a mother who killed her 5 year old daughter. According to the news report at, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-070319beltran-death,1,744017.story?coll=chi-newsroom-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
"Over the last three years, Melanie, 5, was routinely tied up, struck, burned with cigarettes, forced to eat hot peppers and made to drink out of a toilet, Dart said. She also had been scalded, sustaining second- and third-degree burns, Dart said." Maybe we initially want the mother to feel the same pain and suffer the same fate. Maybe she did when she was a child. Maybe not.
As for compassion, first we feel for the child. How could we not? Next we have to feel for the family as a whole. According to the Tribune, "Petrov and her husband have seven other children, including the newborn, Dart said. The oldest is 10, he said." The father lived with the mother and 8 children. He is not charged with anything at this time. How must it have been to grow up as a non-abused child in that family and watch your mother do that? How would one's loyalty and survival instinct shape a child, how can they grow as they get older and understand what happened, and how they were there, a passive part pulled in by their own innocence and love to let their sister be abused so? Do we hate these Children for not speaking out or helping their sister? I would hope not.
The father is harder. He loved this woman, or something made him marry her, stay with her and have 8 children with her. What made him stay by her side, sleep in her bed, and say nothing as he watched his little girl be tortured and killed? The couple continued to have children after this little girl. Did they not know about birth control?
But...what pain he must have suffered at some level. if he did not even feel the pain, how sad. What less than human man would not suffer? Should he be held responsible for not protecting his child? Yes. Do I pity him? I think so.
I cannot imagine how helpless one must feel to not protect you child, to know you did not, to see this happen and feel helpless or in some way want the child to feel all the pain for the family, to scapegoat for what you, as an adult, cannot take on.
As for the Mom, I am working on it. Not for her, but because it is human, at some level it is me or something I could have become or been a part of under a different set of circumstances. Not that I will start doing it, but I need to understand it if I want to grow, to end my own suffering, much less the suffering of her children and other children. Maybe her children cannot heal while she suffers. Do you think her children love her? The oldest s 10. How do they feel about her?
Would I as a neighbor have seen it? If I were a teacher at the school, would I have noticed? The other children were not abused. If this is just one sick, evil woman why do we see similar patterns of abuse like this over and over again in many different places? Will punishing her and hating her stop this kind of thing from ever happening again? If it's just her, we kill her, no more problem, and all children everywhere will be safe from abuse, right? If we do not see this as human, as part of us, how do we understand it and heal it?
"Over the last three years, Melanie, 5, was routinely tied up, struck, burned with cigarettes, forced to eat hot peppers and made to drink out of a toilet, Dart said. She also had been scalded, sustaining second- and third-degree burns, Dart said." Maybe we initially want the mother to feel the same pain and suffer the same fate. Maybe she did when she was a child. Maybe not.
As for compassion, first we feel for the child. How could we not? Next we have to feel for the family as a whole. According to the Tribune, "Petrov and her husband have seven other children, including the newborn, Dart said. The oldest is 10, he said." The father lived with the mother and 8 children. He is not charged with anything at this time. How must it have been to grow up as a non-abused child in that family and watch your mother do that? How would one's loyalty and survival instinct shape a child, how can they grow as they get older and understand what happened, and how they were there, a passive part pulled in by their own innocence and love to let their sister be abused so? Do we hate these Children for not speaking out or helping their sister? I would hope not.
The father is harder. He loved this woman, or something made him marry her, stay with her and have 8 children with her. What made him stay by her side, sleep in her bed, and say nothing as he watched his little girl be tortured and killed? The couple continued to have children after this little girl. Did they not know about birth control?
But...what pain he must have suffered at some level. if he did not even feel the pain, how sad. What less than human man would not suffer? Should he be held responsible for not protecting his child? Yes. Do I pity him? I think so.
I cannot imagine how helpless one must feel to not protect you child, to know you did not, to see this happen and feel helpless or in some way want the child to feel all the pain for the family, to scapegoat for what you, as an adult, cannot take on.
As for the Mom, I am working on it. Not for her, but because it is human, at some level it is me or something I could have become or been a part of under a different set of circumstances. Not that I will start doing it, but I need to understand it if I want to grow, to end my own suffering, much less the suffering of her children and other children. Maybe her children cannot heal while she suffers. Do you think her children love her? The oldest s 10. How do they feel about her?
Would I as a neighbor have seen it? If I were a teacher at the school, would I have noticed? The other children were not abused. If this is just one sick, evil woman why do we see similar patterns of abuse like this over and over again in many different places? Will punishing her and hating her stop this kind of thing from ever happening again? If it's just her, we kill her, no more problem, and all children everywhere will be safe from abuse, right? If we do not see this as human, as part of us, how do we understand it and heal it?
That leaves the possibility of justifying retribution on instrumental grounds:
One may wish to punish evildoers to deter others, but then it is not really a question of "justice" at all, just a question of self-interested prudence. To be sure, we are entitled to some self-interested prudence, I'm just saying that I don't see it as a case of justice.
Likewise in the case of incarcerating people in order to protect the public. Besides, if that is your sole reason for incarceration, then you should keep the person incarcerated until you have good reason to suppose that he's no longer a danger, not for some time based on the severity of the crime.
Then there's honest vengeance, which can be very satisfying emotionally.
Psimgus, thanks for the comment on liking all kinds of women. Not to hold you responsible for your gender or our culture, but if men are so hot for normal shaped women, why do the female characters in video games have big chests, flat tummies and long legs? If they really really liked apple shaped women, they would draw apple shaped women and fantasize about apple shaped women. You may grow to like or love a normal shaped woman, but it's not the physical ideal.
The bigger question is that if normal shaped women (apple or pear) outnumber supermodels and women who look like video game characters, why are all the clothes made for supermodels and big chested, flat-tummied long legged women? Huh? Dream all you want boys, but clothes are not art (not that kind of art anyway). Why are women's clothes so unrealistic? Don't says it's because we buy them because I shop off the rack and buy what I can find. This show your tummy fashion has been around way too long, and they don't make "womens" clothes (clothes for a heavier woman) in my size.
The bigger question is that if normal shaped women (apple or pear) outnumber supermodels and women who look like video game characters, why are all the clothes made for supermodels and big chested, flat-tummied long legged women? Huh? Dream all you want boys, but clothes are not art (not that kind of art anyway). Why are women's clothes so unrealistic? Don't says it's because we buy them because I shop off the rack and buy what I can find. This show your tummy fashion has been around way too long, and they don't make "womens" clothes (clothes for a heavier woman) in my size.
Why do women buy "Victoria's Secret" and the like? When heteromales slaver over models wearing that, it's not the clothes they are admiring, it's where the clothes aren't. They'd rather see her naked, I think. But no one has yet figured out how to sell nudity, so they try to convince women that it's the clothes that are important. With some success, I think!
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