Keeping the Peace

No doubt...providing we had sufficient time to do so. Which would take how long precisely? Oil drives everything and the trouble is that the world could not take any rapid reduction in oil availability without going into free fall. We need a soft landing from oil: a gradual tightening up with some not-too-damaging scares along the way which will allow other possibilities to be developed within an oil-nourished womb.And it's not like oil is the only problem. The world is fast consuming all manner of resources, the unavailability of which would have devastating effects. How we manage to wend our way through dwindling oil problem is only the first of many hurdles mankind faces.The results aren't encouraging thus farThis message has been edited by iano, 09-Feb-2006 11:32 PM

Well they won't be in your system, but they can be in their own and they would not have to be sociopathic. One might look into other cultures where murder was not inherently "wrong". They were able to function and create large and successful civilizations.I myself do not view murder as an absolute moral question to be sure, and questions which are raised are not always connected to ends. All moral systems are arbitrary. They are all subjective. A deontological system may seem more arbitrary to you because it does not have a connection to an end result, which is something that you value. However the value of an end result has the same objective quality as the value of an action... none.I myself find teleological systems a bit more compelling as ends can simply be general things which most people will understand and desire, like happiness.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

Like which? I can think of many cultures that didn't consider some killings to be murder - like ours - but I'm not familiar with any cultures like this.

I took your comments to be about devaluing human life such that killing a person was not inherently a moral issue.As an example, the culture of feudal Japan did not value human life itself. What we would call murder did not actually exist. There were contexts which could make killing another morally wrong or a crime, but the taking of life itself was not an issue. On the contrary, taking life, including one's own was capable of gaining moral worth.But perhaps a better example would be the Yanomamo indians. While some may get upset at the taking of life of someone they value, the taking of life itself was not a moral issue for them... unless it was of gaining moral worth, via prestige.There are more, but these are two nice representative samples.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

good luckYou might want to look at a blog called " The Devil's Excrement" .

As a martial artist and student of the sword I'm fairly familiar with the culture of feudal Japan, and indeed, murder was a crime under the laws of that culture. So you're quite wrong. As I hinted before they did have a different operating distinction about what killings constituted murder and which did not, based on their hierarchy of which persons actually constituted human beings.Killing eta, for instance, was not really murder - because eta were not considered fully human - but a crime more akin to willful destruction of property; a samurai who killed an eta was considered impolite if he did not inform the eta's lord of the killing (and thus incurring the wasted time of having the local constabulary investigate the killing.)Like I said, cultures have differing ideas about what constitutes the unjustified killing of a human being - murder - based on their different ideas about "justification" and "humanity." But none that I'm aware of actually eschew the concept altogether. I don't know about the indians you refer to but certainly the culture of feudal Japan doesn't qualify.

How could I be wrong when I said exactly what you went on to say? I started by stating that I took what you were ORIGINALLY talking about, to be the devaluation of human life itself such that killing was not a moral question.To THAT point, I am quite right. Human life itself meant nothing and killing was NOT a moral question based on life. The moral questions arose based on things like duty and position (class), not whether someone ended a life... even "unjustly". Indeed your description falls apart at some of the highest levels of power. There would essentially have been no "unjust" killings by the Emperor, or those that served him directly.So I stated exactly what I was addressing and I was right. If your entire point was that a person who does not follow social custom regarding what is a "just" or "unjust" killing would be immoral and a sociopath, then I am even more confused.This appears to be another case where ad hoc (or really post hoc) reasoning has caused you to shift what is being discussed over posts, so that an originally incorrect statement is shifted to something that may be right but has no connection to the original position, except similar terminology. As I said you may find people upset by others being killed, or there being criminal concepts due to someone being killed. However, that is different than people or a society holding human life ITSELF valuable, and thus create prohibitions. You should check out the Yanamamo culture as it has even less of a distinction.{Following AbE:
To remind you of what I have been discussing, the following is from your post #34... If you cannot see that this fits feudal sentiment regarding "individuals" in Japan, I am puzzled as to what you meant by the above statement. You did not qualify that "individual" does not have to mean all individuals and only mean "some that you feel are important to you". If the latter is true then your discussion of this in respect to what happened in Iraq is completely mismatched.}This message has been edited by holmes, 02-11-2006 09:28 PM

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

You're equivocating between not having murder as a concept and having different bases for determining which actions are murder. Holmes, I just proved that this is not the case. The killing of some persons was not a moral infraction because these persons weren't considered human.It isn't that human life means nothing, morally, to the feudal Japanese. It's that some lives mean little because they aren't humans.Sociopathy, on the other hand, is typified by the recognition of the humanity of other individuals but the devaluation of their life. Sociopaths don't think their victims aren't humans; they know that they are, and they don't care.This is not the situation you have described in feudal Japan. How you thought you could sneak that transparent equivocation past me is baffling. You stated one position, equivocated it with another, and then substantiated the second as though it proved the first. Never mind that I've never contended the second position. It's the first that I asked you to substantiate, and you didn't.

No I'm not. If you look at what I said I specifically state that they did not have the same concept of murder as we have. I understand the difference between the concepts that you are wanting to make, but it is a shift away from the original point you made.Originally, you did not say you were fine with some individuals being classified as different and so acceptable to be killed. Yet somehow this now seems okay with you? In any case... Ahem, you are discussing only one issue and that is the eta. There was more killing allowed than just that. Anyone beneath one's station could be killed or ordered to kill themselves. It could be at whim. Moral worth could be gained by killing onesself, and moral worth totally lost if one refused to do so when custom demanded it.The tales of Musashi was not of a man cutting through eta. His opponents were not less than men. If they were then his actions would not have been accomplishments. He would have received no fame.The samurai who killed themselves after their master was killed were not less human, and indeed gained stature in their suicide.Feudal Japanese society generally worked under a concept that life itself was illusory and meaningless, duty and perfection being the most important values. I'm tired of your self-posturing. I don't have time to waste on this anymore. If you don't drop the attitude, I'm bowing out. Stick to straight arguments of facts and logic.You started with a position that individual human life should not be thought of as equal to or less than nothing. I was discussing some that do. You have now shifted to some qualifier that it is okay as long as they think some individuals are less than human??? And have ignored the fact that the eta were not the only people able to be killed without criminal charges being brought, and that suicide was not only acceptable it could gain one worth.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)