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Perhaps it isn't religion that is at fault here but it is even more
insidious than that?
Dr. James Mulick. You are a psychologist. And you study ethics and human
behavior. What would E. Wilson say of this?
I watched the movie, Troy on HBO this weekend. I had seen it before but
HBO ran one of those free weekends so I felt compelled to watch it again.
I was almost mesmerized by the raw intensity of constant war and power
of men to enslave and to simply do bad things to each other.
I was impressed as I had been the first time I watched the movie (when I
viewed it on DVD) with Brad Pitt's fight scenes. He had all the moves;
which were impressive, though likely a director's invention.
I suspect the wining was more about brute force than carefully crafted
fighting and dance like moves that went into it but it certainly was
graceful. But I didn't watch the movie for that. I watched because I am
always intrigued by the mass slaughter which ran on, scene after scene and
my thoughts drifted to Ghengis Khan, the Crusades, the way the Brits
fought in formations, the terrible slaughter of our own civil war - and
other wars - and WWI and WWII and all those battles we see reinacted in
movies and some reinactments for entertainment and to memorialize the
past. Why do we memorialize/celebrate battles this way?
The massacres of Indians and by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, Pol Pot and the
Killing Fields, and on and on.
And as blood thirsty as they were we still kill more from a distance now
with our bombs (and for years afterward from our depleted uranium) and
missiles and that family of 11 killed in November by U.S. troops and other
families and so-called "insurgents" killed by American soldiers. Religion
is certainly a "method" which provides some of the drive for
murder and sometimes even sacrifice because without it the sacrifice
would be contrary to our nature which is to preserve ourselves.
But religion is not the only thing that drives Homo sapiens to
indiscriminately murder. It is power and ego, but it must also be our
nature.
As a species we have been the most successful - if success is a measure of
how we have increased in numbers and how much life we have destroyed in
the process - and we have inhabited every place on this planet.
We have attained the power to finally undo everything and in the process
take the rest of life with us - unless man's nature is subdued. I don't
think it will ever be subdued because it drives us to reproduce and use
other life, even our own species, to do it.
Religion, I said is merely a method. But it is ALSO every bit part of
man's nature to have religion -- and the killing is every bit part of
man's nature for the reasons I have briefly enumerated. They are one and
the same in most respects.
While our closest relatives, chimpanzees also kill indiscriminately (even
for fun it seems, if the conclusions from observing them are correct) and
they have the same nature -- to overpower, subdue, use, kill. I have to
wonder where is the altruism, the empathy and how much apart of human
nature is it to care? If it is unnatural to care then we are in more
trouble than this is an exercise in discussing and wondering about it.
Hank
On Tue, 21 Mar 2006, Charles Stegiel wrote:
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> Progressive News & Views (since 1982)
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> 250,000 Nagaski bomb equivalents have been dropped on
> Iraq in the form of DU munitions. We are continuing
> the war with other weapons as well. Insane behavior
> or simply secular normalacy? After Abu Gharib one
> must suggest that there are many intelligence
> operations overt and covert and their only purpose is
> to escalate war fanaticism.
> The only hope for Mid-East peace is to end the state
> of war. Peace is posible, but not when it is in the
> interest of war mongers in Washington D.C. to continue war.
>
> Charles Stegiel
> Commercial/Residential Financing
> FCF: 680 8th Street #255
> SF, CA. 94103
> 415-863-2200 Ext 23
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