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Cruely and Ethics are
all human constructs. I believe Rawls said as much about ethics and
justice. We invent rules of behavior and my view is we can avoid being
cruel to (1) make ourselves feel better and (2) for preventing and keeping
ourselves from harm. In that respect the Golden Rule makes sense. A
similar dictum and I think higher logic was said by the Jewish scholar,
Hilel (not a prescription, but a proscription) not to do unto others what
you would not have others to do unto you. It is in my view a higher logic
because it is the threat of harm that deters those who are sane enough to
be concerned about it. Obviously the religious insane can become
pathological and not care because of the promise of an afterlife.
Maybe we have evolved to where we, some of us, can really feel the pain of
others; both humans and animals? Rawls is a good place to look for answers
on justice and ethics, but I don't think there really are any satisfactory
answers. I'm an atheist and I am convinced that life's purpose is dictated
by essentially two things: reproduce and preserve our lives. The natural
compulsion to preserve life (our own) is an imprint in our nature. We
don't want to hurt anyone because we don't want to be hurt ourselves. I
think that is why soldiers who have the power of life and death can be so
cruel when they have the power and are less afraid of apprisals - as in
Abu Graib (and the straffing and massacre of over a hundred thousand
Iraqis fleeing Kuwait in the first Gulf War - where many were even buried
alive with our tanks after having been mowed down from the air (where our
airplanes did not face any danger except for possible "friendly fire" -
whereas more equal adversaries would be less inclined to do the kind of
harm which they might subject themselves to if not for mutually assured
harm - sort of like the theory behind if you kill my family or try to kill
me, I'll kill you which is why Mutually Assured Destruction worked so well
during the "cold war" until the U.S. became the one super-power -- and
what happened? Bush killed those treaties.
Hank
On Tue, 14 Mar 2006, Charles Stegiel wrote:
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> Progressive News & Views (since 1982)
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>
> Again, satire is impossible on the web. However, let me try it again.
> We inhabit a culture of cruelty. We disguise this culture as
> compassion. It is exactly this false compassion that the satire aims to
> show. Swift suggested fattening Irish babies for the tables of English
> Lords. I, for my part, only say that Rhesus monkey died for your sins.
> Who could imagine putting say a prisoner from death row in the lab at UC
> Davis and shooting them with a high velocity rifle to see how well the
> wounding occurs? Why friend, instead you substitute a non-human primate
> and this is applauded not only as science but as humane. Bah, this is
> humbug. Better that we use the prisoner and admit our barbarism than to
> call ourselves civilized because we torture animals. Of course, thanks
> to the recent changes in the law, we might well be testing humans
> overseas like Rhesus monkeys in the lab. Doubtlessly the cost benfit
> for the science research works out better with jihadists. Moreover, no
> worries about PETA. --- Hank Roth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
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