http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ors-Chinese-mother-bit-breastfeeding-him.html You know what this is really a result of? Our larger and more complex brains that get further out of touch with even sane instincts. Animals dont abuse their children like humans do. No, humans are capable of much more hateful perversions of cruelty and they are blessed with the ability to harm much more. I dont need to hear cold rationalizations about nature. Ive heard it all before and it doesnt justify it! I hate this place. I hate how nature runs constantly on predator/prey. I hate how it pits life against life making enemies of us all. I hate the suffering and pain. I hate this universe. The older i get, the more i realize what a terrible universe we exist in. I also dont believe in God to save myself from utter hatred and contempt of such a motherfuker sadistic monster to create or design such a place.
Heh, then you have all this pollution wrecking havoc on our bodies and minds even electromagnetic radiation. This strange dichotomy between inanimate and organic that is rather strange and tends to be toxic as well as fake. Then you have further increase likelihood of mental illness with the larger forebrain with its ability to craft all types of machinations which is increasingly dangerous. And society becomes more structured artificially getting us further and creating/compounding stress with its unnatural roles where there is further breakdown and confusion of bonds and family. Heck, even mothers cant be mothers anymore with all the stress of trying to attain some vain level of artificial status in society of achievement that the world deemed is to be someone important or worthy citizen leaving children in daycare. For some odd and insane reason; money, power, materialism and vanity is touted as all-important at the expense of real substance, care or meaning. Everything faster, quicker, more, more, ego, ego!! The path to nothing but illusions of happiness. Nurturing and the basic real reasons for living are minimized or not deemed important. What a fuckin stupid sick world. As ive noted before, this universe is really not conducive to life. Its rare and random for a reason. We understand death but we dont note is as an indication this universe isnt designed to support it for long. It favors inanimate and the evidence is glaring and preponderous. It could care less if it violates life in any way, shape or form.
It doesn't. You are fixating on particularly showy examples and ignoring the more quiet operation of the world.
Yeah... it is what it is... an a part of that nature is an anticipation of somethin beter just around the corner which pushes us forward... until we die or wish we was dead.!!! I thank it takes a healthy dose of one or more of ignerence/stoopidity/insanity/fear to truly bow down to such a real or emagined monster.!!!
What?? Predation and abuse is going on all around you. Just because you dont see it or you're safe doesnt mean its not happening. Quiet operation of the world?? Wtf? Stick to the physics and science section if thats the only way you reason or see the world.
You know what else is telling but not surprising is that the 'authorities' deemed she has no mental illness so therefore the child was sent back to her. Now thats a lot of crazy in that reasoning but it is just something how corrupt people are the ones so greedily intent to be in charge or have undue power while the sane ones are pleading otherwise and wondering wtf of their decisions.
Look in that baby's eyes. I see pain, confusion, loneliness and even maybe will come to believe he deserves it. Poor baby.
I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, I'm saying that it isn't everything. You've shown a predilection for only paying attention to the stuff that it put in front of your face, correct or not. The world is not only what is shown to you; sometimes, you have to go looking.
Part the First Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Perhaps, but did you notice the photo of the uncle? Two questions arise in my Western mind: (1) Where is he hanging out? (2) Why? The amount of trash suggests some degree of poverty. It is also known that poverty can have deleterious effects on all manner of living function, including aspects of parenthood as well as specific behaviors like crisis reaction and response. Beyond that, I would have to know more about the mother's psychopathology both generally and in the particular moment. As it is, poverty might boost certain potentials, or it could simply be coincidental. To wit, if it starts with the bite and the mother responds with a sense of indignance―e.g., "How dare you!"―what happens next? Poverty can contribute to, or at least coincide with, general classes of negative outcomes: Neighbours have pleaded with the local government to take the baby away, but they have said that they will not. Apparently, they said that there was no confirmation the mother was suffering from a mental illness and said, regardless, the baby still has two guardians in the form of his two uncles. Mental illness remains a relatively closed topic in modern China, and neither medication nor modern psychiatric treatment is widely used. (Daily Mail↱) And here we have whispers of societal taboo interfering with rumors of mental illness. Is poverty a real consideration here, or is this a potential result of the priorities within Chinese society? And from there things only look practically hopeless, compared to existentially hopeless. It's one thing to identify the problem, but quite another, as anyone enduring psychological or psychiatric dysfunction can tell you, to figure out how to get enough people onboard with the necessary change. To wit, we have an election process afoot in the U.S. Of mental health considerations in general, we'll make more progress under Sanders than Clinton, under Clinton than any of the Republican candidates. But where is mental health, really, on the list of priorities? We might think it should be fairly prominent, since our need to protect easy access to machines designed to kill people contributes to a sudden willingness to "liberalize" our outlook on crime in order to classify a staggering amount of human damage as the produce of mental illness. But what, realistically, can we expect for progress regarding mental health considerations? Incremental at best. The suffering can lament; we can hear and find them treatment. But just like crime, if that person is still immersed in contributing factors, the problem will continue to assert itself. Send a depressed person to treatment, for instance. Thirty days or six months or whenever later, that person is feeling better, except it's right back into the same behavioral environment that lent so much to the problem in the first place. Not only do we Americans need to figure out a functional mental health infrastructure, we also need to get a whole lot of Americans onboard with the fact that changing the way, say, one's son or daughter behaves, also requires changing one's own behavior. And this is a society in which we purport to at least try to deal with mental health issues; over my lifetime, the subject has emerged from the shadows and at least has a seat at the table even if very few are paying attention to what it tells us. Thinking back a few decades, when mental health was whispered quietly and fearfully, while it is true I can't tell you what it feels like to live in Chinese society, that's a lot of people they need to get onboard not only with the sort of changes other societies are finding difficult, but also simply acknowledging the fact of the problem. Horrifying remains a word in play. But the proposition of civilized society can be unstable. In my lifetime, the ways of nature and the law of the jungle have been invoked to justify diverse iterations of cruelty in my society, yet the whole point of civilizaiton is that we are attempting to create some manner of order out of chaos―a bulwark against the dispassionate, blind chaos of the living Universe. The less of basic civilization we find present, the more we can expect individual humans to behave like animals. In this case, for instance, is the question of predation one considering cruel calculation, or insensate circumstantial response? It is easier for me to comprehend educational, circumstantial, and mental health disruptions leading to such outcomes than deliberate predation. That is, the mother's response was no more calculated than the infant's bite. We can certainly be repulsed by the proposition of such factors leading to this outcome; I would even suggest we ought to be. But, as I sometimes say of various morbidities, this is going to happen. And therein lies a conundrum. How much of this eventuality is absolutely necessary according to the crawling chaos of nature? There are certain aspcets of your expressed regard for these outcomes of nature that bring to mind Camus' proposition of the Absurd. More directly, one can aruge it sounds like you're staring directly at the Absurd, and experiencing the expected response. It is revolting; it is disgusting; there is no proper lexicon to circumscribe its ugliness. But therein lies the twist: Sisyphus is happy. One of the essential components of Sisyphus' purported happiness is the difference between changing what one cannot accept, and accepting what one cannot change. By the telling of his sad tale, Sisyphus lacks control over certain aspects of his existential condition, which we in turn are generally expected to find miserable. Of all the things the gods could invent, eternal futility is what they came up with. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness. "I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men. All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. there is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that silent pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. (Camus↱) For us the question is whether or not Sisyphus can discover a means of asserting influence, or perhaps whether he is capable of recognizing that device. His acceptance, at least, assuages the ache of futility. In the larger human endeavor, though, how much of what we perceive as beyond our control actually is? This is a difficult question to answer. ____________________ Notes: Image note: Ergo Proxy― When an autoreiv's software becomes infected with the cogito virus, self-awareness occurs; the first manifest symptom of cogito infection is seen when the android falls to its knees, as if in prayer, experiencing the full weight of existential horror. ―End Part I―
Part the Second Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Then again, Camus' Myth of Sisyphus is a multivalent kick in the parts. Originating as an argument against perceived existential hopelessness leading to suicide, Albert Camus appears to have, at the very least, accomplished the feat; it is a powerful, meticulous work. But the slender tome, ironically, is one of the most miserable you might ever encounter, because learning this answer is what it is, but does not seem to do much, at least in the short term, to help one feel better about the horrifying spectacle that is our existence. Effectively, it sets a higher standard for surrender. Michael Jackson can sing of the man in the mirror; Roger Waters can appeal to each small candle. We are for the time being left to bargain with the horrors we perceive; there will, it seems, always be sacrificial lambs. The count and the reasons are the only aspects we really have any say over, and that really does place the burden on each and every one of us as individuals, and all of us together. None of this means I might propose a solution; we fall back to futility. Somewhere in between, though, change flickers, hope shines. It helps us feel better if we let it. In witchcraft, you approach the tree reverently, tell it you need the bough. And after you cut the bough, you thank the tree. Maybe the tree hears and understands; we cannot confirm this, nor at this point even reasonably assert it. Nonetheless, the ritualized reverence does, in fact, help people feel better. But how, exactly do we thank the sacrificial lambs? To do so now means we are thanking those we have not yet lain upon the altar. And how, exactly, do we look them in the eye, tell them we need this, and thank them for their sacrifice? If the purpose of life is the propogation of life generally, and species particularly―the only explanation I've yet found that starts to account for anything―then yes, there is a greater good unto which we sacrifice these people, and even bits and pieces of ourselves. A practical example: We will never, as long as our genetic lineage includes sexual organs, get rid of the crime of rape. It will never go away completely. But none of that says anything to justify any proposition that what we see in our society today is necessary. That is, nature will always provide at least someone to undertake these acts we call rape, but that will be an extremely low number if left simply to brain structure and pathology. The human factors, the outcomes of our will, cause incalculably greater damage. The rapists of this mythical utopia are fashioned neurologically, and according to the psychiatric results thereof. What, though, of the psyhcological? And that's the thing. Whether it's the young rapist on a college campus who apparently doesn't know the act is wrong―or is not socially equipped to comprehend why such actions are wrong―or perhaps the domestically violent who can't control a temper owing to basic neurotic conflicts derived from life expereience, these factors are not so far out of reach for individual and soceital influence. Unlike Nature itself, human nature is not a fundamental component of our futility. And it's also true that when we try to follow these notions all the way to a mother stabbing the hell out of a baby with a pair of scissors just because the baby behaves like a baby, it's not much for comfort. Working up the ladder from the act itself, though, futility asserts itself in a blunt and practical manner: Can I change the circumstances in China? No. Will I still hear these awful tales from around the world, and even from my own society? Yes. Can I live with that specific fact? Yes, but .... Wait: Can I live with that specific fact? Yes. Great, I can tell myself that I can live with me. Now, what's the but? But the fact that it's happening? Right. That's the problem. So what do I do? It's not quite futility, but it feels like it most days. When it's in front of you in the moment in life, you deal with it. When you see it afar, you say something. Because it's one thing for the individual to reorganize their own priorities, and perhaps that person will gain an assertion of understanding, and a context of comfort along the way. But how to communicate that to others? How to make it important enough? How do we, for lack of any more dignified a term, sell others on an idea? And it really is a crass notion, but my community―homosexuals, in this case―just experienced one of the craziest social revolutions in recorded history. It is true that certain aspects of other people's lives also became more sympathetically apparent to me during and resulting from this period. Some of that is specifically because of the issues; most of it is because the period runs from the end of my teens on into middle age, when these are things I'm supposed to be learning, anyway. But I look at my daughter. Or my mother. Or any woman I know. And consider a matter of priorities, whether it's street harassment ("How's a guy supposed to meet girls, then?") or just the everyday slings and arrows of being bitches, cunts, too fat, too skinny, wearing too much makeup, not wearing enough―as John Lennon put it, "Woman is the nigger of the world." And in this society where people are so busy trying to keep a roof over their heads, keep the lights on, keep food on the table, and keep hope alive for tomorrow, it's often too much to ask that they at least read the damn voter's guide before forgetting to go to the polls. When the human rights discourse rises, we experience astonishing resistance even to the idea of making a small but important effort to not be part of the problem. Listen to people push back against the humanity of women. Or dark skin. Or whatever religion over there. But a certain range of feminist complaint illustrates nearly perfectly. Because it's true that for many of us it doesn't sink in until it's our daughter, or our mother, or our best friend. And even then, we need some genuinely unsettling kick where it hurts most before we start dealing with it. Because I can't tell you what proportion of the men I know―"not quite all of them" is about as close as I can manage, with no specific scale for what that means―will still find ways to justify what seems small and insignificant to them. It's astounding. I've known men to start forgetting their own lives in order to pretend there is no problem to address. Nor is it just men; I can't even get my own mother to stop using the word "ladylike". And it is agonizing some days to hear guys going on as they do, and this isn't even the filthy stuff. I mean, consider the question of female TV presenters, or the reliable bias against female public speakers and authority. We all chuckled some weeks ago when Marco Rubio got a mild dose over wearing boots with a ridiculous drop, something like three and three-quarters inches. Then again, historically speaking, shorter politicians fare worse. Compared to the bit in Australia where the male presenter wore the same suit on the air for over a year and nobody noticed, the whole time the show receiving vociferous criticism of his female co-presenter's fashion sense, yeah, we all chuckled when it was Rubio's turn; he still has no idea what it's like. But, you know, in the end, asking people to make an effort to put aside this simple prejudice expressed in this particular way, and simply regard women as human beings, is asking too damn much. And compared to that, yes, changing the circumstances that contribute so greatly to what happened in China seems incredibly futile. But that's the thing; either Sisyphus is happy, or else we denounce him because pushing a goddamn rock up a goddamn hill for no reason on through eternity is just plain lazy. At the same time, though, each one of us is the only person who can do anything about it. That our influence does not equal omnipotence does not, in turn, equal futility. Then again, neither does that mean it doesn't feel like futility. Still, every day each person waits is that much longer before we find a way through, and that many more lambs to the altar. Nor can we expect, barring tremendous and radical technological innovation, that humanity overcome these aspects of its miserable condition during our lifetimes; there is a lot we can accomplish, but I do not expect to live long enough. Give me two hundred years, probably. Another hundred, maybe. And that's part of the feeling of futility, as well; this horror transcends us in every way―we will never, having known it, escape it during our lifetimes. Do these prospects fail to comfort? Is that question an understatement? I'm not certain, but I think that is how it is supposed to be; if our purpose in living is life and species, yes, it becomes a fundamental component of our raison d'être to check our priorities, and find some way to start dealing with the interconnectedness of all our human misery. And there are some long, dark hours of the soul in which that is, in truth, enough. Marx once defined his living passion as, "To fight". Depending on how we define that, he might seem to have a point. And this myth is imprinted in our human history. It is part of DNA of civilized human society. Metaphorically, at least. And, you know, depending on how we define that, it can be argued a literal truth as well. It is not necessarily a comfortable sense of purpose, but it is also one that makes sense, and would seem to be the one we have: You are supposed to feel that horror; and yes, you are supposed to fight back. ―Fin―
Works Cited (#9-10) Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. 1942. NYU.edu. 15 March 2016. http://bit.ly/1Ux1vSP Daily Mail Reporter. "Baby stabbed 90 times with scissors by his Chinese mother after he bit her as she was breastfeeding him". Daily Mail. 11 July 2013. DailyMail.co.uk. 15 March 2016. http://dailym.ai/1nMeRxF
um bottlenose dolphins kill their babies quite frequently. the idea that animals don't abuse their young is hogwash.
How so? No. They (animals) usually just kill them. And sometimes eat them. It's actually quite common. Yes. And so are animals. Some animals torture and beat their young before killing them outright. Others do not. Why do you think that only humans are capable of such actions? No one is suggesting it should be justified. Where there is life, there will inevitably be some form of pain and suffering on this planet. Well, what humans define as suffering, that is. Have you considered that perhaps she was suffering from post-partum psychosis, for example? Or that the mother was mentally ill to begin with and in a country and society where such conditions are hidden or rarely discussed or even treated, that she may not have been in control to begin with?
Babies are amazingly resilient. Assuming that child gets someone more caring and trustworthy as a parent (like the two uncles who are currently caring for him) he'll likely do fine.
You justify anything. Show me the prevalence of abuse that animals inflict on their offspring. They are not that detached from their instincts as humans are capable of which goes awry. Some but not to the extent humans do. The larger forebrain does contribute to increase likelihood of greater unnatural detachment. How do animals torture or abuse their young in comparison to the prevalence of humans and their ability to detach? Animals dont sell their children, belittle and mistreat them, torture them in most sadistic ways, they dont expect children to parent them or themselves as all kinds of twisted things go wrong etc. Humans have committed far worse atrocity against their own children. I guess i must use an analogy you may understand. A computerized and electronic appliance has greater chance of malfunction or going awry and glitchy than a manual one. Human brains but especially with more complex and demanding societies and artificial or arbitrary imposed roles can create further stress and confusion of basic bonds or become further detached from them. So the prevalence of women far more likely to be out of touch with nurturing instincts or it becoming further buried should not that surprising. You are very dishonest if you equate the level of child abuse or even prevalence to what humans do. Its far worse and animals dont engage in unnaturally severe corporal punishment on their offspring as a rule where humans can and often do. Dishonestly nitpick and wrangle around it all you want. Apparently, you have some need to justify everything in life is equal so all the loose ends tie up.
I don't believe I am justifying anything. I provided you with two links in my previous post. Did you not click on them and read them? I would have thought the opposite were the case. That it is the development of the larger forebrain that allowed for the increase in attachment in evolutionary terms. Have you ever read "Hormones, Brain and Behavior, Five-Volume Set"? It is available online. Scroll down to page 330 of the first volume. Well, the section about the 'evolutionary basis of bonding' starts from page 229. Animals reject and kill their young on a fairly regular basis. I provided links to this in my previous post. We like to think ourselves being better than animals, but we are still animals. Rejection, torturing one's young and killing our offspring is a repulsive crime and the legal, scientific and medical community have moved in great strides to overcome it. But it still happens. Not as often as in the animal kingdom, but it still happens. We have evolved enough to punish people who commit such horrific crimes, but we still need to work on the cause. We now know that human mothers can suffer from severe depression after having a child and sometimes, it becomes a form of psychosis, which can result in attacks that we have seen in the article you linked. The woman needed and needs help. However not every society is open to discussing maternal mental health, nor are they open to recognising it when these issues arise. In some societies, it is deemed something to be ashamed of, to be hidden. We like to assume that every woman will see her child and want to do everything she can to protect it from harm. But if she suffers from depression and it borders on psychosis, we find it difficult to understand. Not every woman will bond with her child and women who suffer from post natal psychosis can harm or kill her child. To prevent it, we need to be able to discuss the problem and try to solve it without shaming the mother, because doing so will result in more women and men not coming forward to seek the help they desperately need. In Western countries, more help is available. In other countries, such help may not be so freely available, as was the case in the OP. From the article you linked in your OP: Mental illness remains a relatively closed topic in modern China, and neither medication nor modern psychiatric treatment is widely used. An analysis of mental health issues in four Chinese provinces, published in 2009 in the British medical journal The Lancet, estimated that 91 per cent of the 173million Chinese adults that were believed to suffer mental problems never receive professional help. The woman needed help. None was provided for her. No one is trying to justify the horrific crime she committed. But we need to recognise the problem that exists and provide help to prevent such crimes from happening. The child should have been removed from her care. It was not. No more and no less than what animals do to their own offspring. As I noted above, we are still animals and mental illness plays a huge role in such crimes being committed. As several people have pointed out already in this thread, we are not the only species that do this. It doesn't make it right or just. It just happens. And it happens more often in societies where mental health issues and poverty connected to these issues is prevalent. There is tremendous pressure on women when they have a child. There is an expectation that she will immediately bond and love her child. That is not always the case. I still remember feeling abject terror that I wouldn't love my son the moment I saw him after he was born. Because all the literature kept discussing this mystical maternal bond. What they failed to note was that not every woman immediately feels that bond with her child. That it can take time to grow and nurture. Depression can and does affect this. Doctors in the West are now better trained to recognise the signs. But as I noted above, not every society is open to discussing or even treating the problem. I still remember when I had my first child and it was in the first two weeks of his being born, and he was screaming constantly, I had had no sleep in days and he was having issues latching on properly, my breasts were sore and cracked to the point where they were bleeding and I felt such despair that I was failing as a parent that I locked myself outside after putting my son down on a rug on the floor as he screamed his head off after being fed, changed and he refused to go to sleep.. I watched him through the glass doors and I just cried and cried. I could not stop. And I rang a breastfeeding helpline while sitting outside and the midwife on the other end of the phone told me to just let him cry and kept me on the phone for 30+ minutes until I had calmed down and she talked me out my utter despair of feeling I had failed as a mother. Not every society or community has this kind of help. It was she who told me that the "maternal bond" is not automatic and what I was feeling was perfectly normal and natural. I didn't want to harm my son in any way. I just wanted to run away and sleep, to be honest. I was exhausted, I was in pain and I was at the point of cracking. I felt ashamed that I had let my son down by not carrying him around 24/7 and for allowing him to cry. It's not a matter of being out of touch with maternal instincts. It's that society imposes rules and expectations that are nearly impossible to meet half the time. From how she is meant to feel, to how she should not let the baby cry, to how she feeds the baby to even how she looks after giving birth. Maternal instincts are not instant, birch. Most women have to learn to be mothers. To expect that it automatically kicks in and to expect that she can cope with everything and anything is ridiculous and only helps put more pressure on parents. That isn't how it works in real life. The expectation that she will immediately bond and have maternal instincts is what is absolutely artificial and damaging in the long run. So what do you do? What can society do in general to prevent such crimes? The first is to provide better mental health care. The second is to have systems in place that check on the welfare of the children and remove them at the first sign of problems. This does not always happen. And children will be harmed and killed when the system fails. And people need to start reporting signs of abuse to the authorities instead of 'minding their own business'. Most importantly, society's expectations and the habit of hiding or refusing to acknowledge the problem needs to change. It isn't just the mother who failed this child in the OP. It is society in general in refusing to acknowledge the problem. No birch. I grew up and learned from life's experiences to allow me to understand things better than you do. You are trying to treat it like it is a blanket problem. It isn't. Each person is different and has personality traits and some have mental health issues for which little to no help is available. And when that continues, more children will be harmed. It's the system and the community that failed that child and his mother.
I thought the article itself was lacking in information, such as a real motive. Yes, that is some screwed up stuff. And yes, in other countries I believe some actions would have been taken.
Some animals eat their young. The only difference between we and the animals is, perhaps, we use tools rather than our teeth.
