"Beyond Good and Evil"

[e-bow]

Think about what is really preventing people from killing eachother today. Really think about it, and even though we are brainwashed to think killing is wrong we would still do it if we thought we could get away with it because its in our instincts.

I still remain unconvinced on the matter of killing as a natural behavior. How is it exactly more natural than not killing? Both occur in a natural setting. Both are equally opportune behavior traits available to an evolving species. But it seems that to say "it is in our instincts" renders the behavior permenant (more "real"?) and to some extent better than the other choice. Are we sneaking in values while playing a fashionable role as a post-darwinian survivalist, using the "objective" clarity of naturalist philosophy? Oh, how I love the little inserts: cells, ecological, procreation, survival! But not so free of value. Slight-of-hand is only effective when used against the unschooled in magic.

Perhaps the "brainwashed" are simply developing a new instinct? In fact, you would have to agree that all instincts are to some extent wired into our brains, therefore, we are all to some extent "brainwashed". I kind of like the new instinct towards no-harm. It's a move toward being less re-active and more pro-active.

But this is a value judgement. I think that the no-harm principle toward behavior may help our species. It might even override our current wiring and wash out all of the primal filth that has us still too closely related to the great apes.

 

[fadingCaptain]

John,
Lament the loss of a kitten while remaining indifferent/hostile to your fellow humans? That makes tons of sense.

Dr. lou,
I don't think you have the guts to smash in my head. I double dare you!

 

[Xev]

Fenris:

And? Wasn't that viciousness, compared to the lack of it in fat westerners, precisely what I was talking about? Westerners have very little idea of what viciousness and the law of survival actually is. Here in this thread, though, we have some claiming they know all about it, based on their experience of fighting the local street toughs in Sydney or Michigan. You cannot say how well equipped you are to survive in a primitive state when all you have is experience of being tough within these boundaries. You can only compare yourself to other westerners. Kind of like the featherweight champion of the world claiming he's the toughest boxer in history, when he's never come up against anything even remotely like Muhammad Ali.

Uh - what's your point?
If I or Doc had been born into a state of nature, we'd obviously have different experiences. Quite possibly we'd be dead.
But had we survived, it is likely that the disposition I speak of would be simular to our own.

I fail to see how you get from this "claiming to know all about it".

Hmm.. now let's look at this for a second. My "zits" were of concern to me when I was about 14 or 15, at which point you weren't even born. The image of a nappy-clad Xev crawling around the streets with a bottle of Night Train is rather humorous, but... I don't think so.

Comparable age.

Don't try to compare your experiences to mine, Xev. I'll only laugh at you, and your credibility is getting low enough as it is.

No, moron - I can't compare my experiences to yours because neither of us knows the other's experiences. That was my point.
That said, I can make a reasonable claim to be stronger than average. But then - why would either of us care one way or the other what I am like personally?

This coming from you? Credibility bottoming out...

Pardonne?
I may occasionally make snide references to what a person might be like offline, but I do not (like you) prance about saying with certitude that I am "tuffer than so and so" when I don't know so and so. I could be a 25 year old NAVY Seal and I could be a wispy, frail housewife. This is a good reason for keeping things on an intellectual level and not trying to devolve into the unknown personal lives of other posters.

LOL A/S/L?

 

[Fenris Wolf]

Yeah uh.. whatever, Xev.

 

[Xev]

Darn! I thought you were going to continue babbling about how you're John Galt meets Siegfried meets the proto-overman.

It's funny because what you say gnaws at me sometimes. I'm not strong, not nearly so as I'd like to be, but I'm also not weak. Our ability to overcome is almost dictated by what obstacles the enviornment presents.

However, creativity does not flourish unless a certain element of leisure is involved. As it stands we're at a point where the cultures in which creativity is most possible are the cultures in which weakness is most tolerated. This leads to a certain degeneration of taste and artistic output - yet the solution to it eludes me.

 

[Fenris Wolf]

Babbling about... ok. Show me where I said that.

But now that you've decided to be relevant :
"Our ability to overcome is almost dictated by what obstacles the enviornment presents. "
A succint summation of what I've been saying in a roundabout fashion since my first comment in this thread, yes?

Basically, what it boils down to is that I was in a bad mood yesterday and tired of products of our environment saying they'd flourish were things more primitive. It makes me smile... except that smile is not entirely an amused one.

"As it stands we're at a point where the cultures in which creativity is most possible are the cultures in which weakness is most tolerated."
True enough. But now you're delving into a different area entirely.

 

[Xev]

No not really, moron. I can claim to have been creating grand unified theories aplenty in these my posts - in a roundabout fashion.
Saying so don't make it so.
In any case, I haven't been reading whatever your comments post the first are, so I don't know. You're easy enough to pigeonhole anyway.

"It's central that people in a truely "chivalric" age would have left the weakling to perish of exposure. The decadence of industrialized society has bred a creature that romanticizes the brutality of past ages - he will thus claim longing for a more romantic age in which "men were real men and women were real women!" "

Like - grr, rwwl, and all that. You take my comments out of context just so you can interject your brand of pseudo-Hemingway machismo and then you claim that you've been, all along, agreeing with me?

Uh huh.

 

[Fenris Wolf]

Hmm.. it appears that in spite of the fact that for a moment there I thought you were going to be rational, it's not going to happen.

In which case, I'm back to "yeah, whatever." In short - fuck off, little girl.

 

[Xev]

My words are hardly addressed to you in specific. Casting pearls before swine is a sign of good humour - or simple stupidity. In this case it would be the latter. Now that you have latched on:
You might at least be origional.
Perhaps you should go play with fifteen of the nineteen and Wanderer, you can all get into arguments over who has the biggest dick.

The problem is - you don't even have an argument for me to trash. You simply repeat, ad nauseam, that you are enlightened and everyone else disappoints you. Is it incongruous for those who live in modern countries to dispute about the nature of nature? Of course.

I might quote Leo Masoch again:
"As soon as you wish to become natural, you become vulgar"

One ends up with keyboard kampfers trying to hearken back to the glories of heathen ages by simply invoking those glories. How primitive. How manly. How teeeedious.
However, the dispute cannot be avoided. Modernity has led to a substantial undercurrent of discontent, and the degeneration of modern culture is not disputed by many. The problem is, to me and some others, of profound personal and intellectual significance. Hence my question to Dr. Lou Natic. Hence this post.

Don't let all that testosterone short-circuit your keyboard, bub.

 

[15ofthe19]

I just want to be clear on something Xev. You do realize that Ms. Dagny was a fictional character, right? I love her as much as I love Mr. John and his principles, but I try to keep them in the context of a work of fiction.

 

[Totoro]

But just about every animal seems to have a natural ethical code.

Do you mind backing that up with some facts?

But this is because god's rights and wrongs are accepted as real by even the most staunch atheists(thousands of years of religious ancestry is hard to escape)

No, they are not. If they were ingrained into people we wouldn't be buying items made in sweatshops, would we?

If a culture did not demand that it's members reject their natural impulses, law enforcement would be impossible - the social contract would be destroyed and we'd revert to the state of nature (not that anything's really wrong with that)

1) If there were not any objective moral values, how would you act? If you would cease being good, then something is wrong with your moral character...you're saying that without these ontologically-suspect objective values, you would turn serial killer on us. That's not a good thing.

See, that's a common misconception. Those emotions can't be swept under the rug. We still exercise hate on a daily basis - we just do it in a form acceptable to society (also, most people are extremely passive aggressive); note how people who didn't even know of the two towers existance suddenly called for death. An immoral society would only be different in the awys we'd be allowed to express these "cruel" emotions honestly.

talk to a few Vietnam vets and find out how big that gap is, and in that situation it was not only condoned but encouraged. Look at their eyes when they're talking about it. That is when you'll see the discrepancy between words and actual reactions.

So? Varg Vikernes committed murder and thought nothing of it. Same with Jon from Dissection. The reason these veterans have problems with it is because for 18 years or so society ground it into their head "don't do this! this is evil - no matter what!", etc... and they truly believed it. Then they went to Vietnam. Upon arriving, they the horrendous mental conflict of the ideal world you thought you lived in, you want to live in, colliding with the real world. Contrast these Veterans with people who rid them selves of society's morals - ie, the Unabomber, Vikernes, etc., who aren't traumatised by the incident.

 

[Xev]

Totoro:

No, they are not. If they were ingrained into people we wouldn't be buying items made in sweatshops, would we?

True.
The dilemna is avoided for people because they do not see the product being made. Milgram showed that the so-called "golden rule" only works when one is in rather close proximity to the victim - and even then it is easily ignored.

So? Varg Vikernes committed murder and thought nothing of it. Same with Jon from Dissection. The reason these veterans have problems with it is because for 18 years or so society ground it into their head "don't do this! this is evil - no matter what!", etc... and they truly believed it.

A good point.
Yet how many other soldiers kill on command and think nothing of it?
Vikernes could be argued as a sociopath. I don't think the label would be appropriate, but from the standpoint of his society he is simply an evil Nazi.

And yet the evil Nazis themselves consisted of thousands of Germans who were, in all liklihood, rather decent people. These rather decent people sent other rather decent people to thier deaths, and felt very little remorse about it.

One need not reach the calibre of a Vikernes to kill without remorse.

 

[Fenris Wolf]

Thats assuming of course that Varg wasn't simply saying that he thought nothing of it. Does anyone happen to know exactly what he was thinking, or were we simply taking his word for it? How do you know he wasn't traumatised - because he said so? Hero worship in various forms has strange effects on objectivity, yes?

Personally, I'd like to see an ekg readout on the brain of any of these people who say they feel nothing as they commit the act. You're both assuming these soldiers who "kill and think nothing of it" have always done so, when the probability is that it was a learned disassociation rather than natural for them.

 

[Xev]

Do you want to shut up or should I show you interviews with the concentration camp administrators who felt no real guilt over what they participated in?
Read Milgram or Arendt.
The act does not register as "immoral" because the perpetrator is not directly responsible for it - he presses a button, he napalms a Vietnamese village. He shuffles paperwork, thousands of Jews go to their deaths. For a soldier, the situation is further complicated by the fact that he has undergone extensive training in which he is conditioned to obey without questioning and to feel like a simple instrument.

 

[Fenris Wolf]

I'm talking about your comments on Vikernes, not indirect killing. They are two separate things.

Felt no real guilt at what stage, Xev? You completely missed the point, again. That first victim they sent into a gas chamber - did they feel nothing at that point? The first time a soldier pulls a trigger and watches an enemy fall? You have proof they felt nothing, regardless of training (which might soften the emotional response but not negate it) or do you just have more words?

Concentration camp administrators sent thousands to their deaths. What they wrote after the war is irrelevant. By the time anyone got around to interviewing them they'd be emotionally conditioned to what they were doing.

 

[Xev]

I made no comments on Vikernes beyond that one need not be of his breed to kill without remorse. Go back and read my post.

Nor did I refer to those who actually watched their victims die. My entire point, you retarded slut, is that "morality" depends on proximity.

Now are you going to say anything relevent or at least amuse us with the pathos of your machismo and the quasi-sexual pleasure you take in yammering about the nasty ways in which young women can be humiliated in whatever third-world country you feign acquaintance with?
Drat, you're just going to keep contributing pseudo-Randian verbiage.

 

[Dr Lou Natic]

Do you mind backing that up with some facts?

I don't go into the economics forum saying "do you have any proof that the yen is worth that much?" because I don't know how much the yen is worth, I'll leave it to the experts.
Sorry i'm just sick of people saying this to me, like "dolphins communicate with clicks and whistles" "hmmm I don't know :bugeye: can you show your source?" why don't you just fucking know these things? jesus ...
You know how there are ways animals tend to interact with eachother? Like its not just chaotic random mayhem? When a wolf displays submission the dominant wolf will stop attacking? How baboons won't attack other baboons that are holding babies? How sharks take turns in feeding? Ants bring food back to the colony rather than just eating it themselves?
Even how male lions kill the offspring of their fallen rivals, THAT is the right thing to do in lion society. That is a part of the lions ethical code.
A code of behaviour the species naturally understands. This is an ethcal code. Unless there is some definition that says ethics need to be fake.
Its the same as our ethical code except natural, real. Agreed upon rather than forced upon and happily obeyed by all. We would have one. But it would conflict drastically with the false '10 commandments' and jesus teachings to such an extent most people would just say we were behaving immorally and unethically.
Ironically they are the ones behaving immorally by supressing the real ethical code.

No, they are not. If they were ingrained into people we wouldn't be buying items made in sweatshops, would we?

You thinking it is wrong to buy items made in sweatshops is how it is ingrained. Ofcourse, your natural instincts know better so you do it anyway. You feel bad afterwards because you have an ingrained shame OF your natural instincts.

 

[Fenris Wolf]

And my comments were in response to that "of his breed" you spoke of. That "of his calibre".

I smell hero worship...

 

[Xev]

You have no fucking clue what I meant by either term so why don't you do something fitting your intellectual abilities and wank off over a war movie?
Those who know what Vikernes did have a hard time seeing him as heroic. He resonates with one - this does not make him a hero.
Unless you want to amuse me by opining on the mid-nineties black metal scene.

 

[Fenris Wolf]

Cyberpolitics? Interesting. Indulge me, Xev. Show us all where I've engaged in cyberpolitics.

Now if only I could find some "betters" to annoy, today might become interesting.