Subject:
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Re: Frog
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 9 Feb 1999 14:31:43 GMT
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Reply-To:
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c576653@(antispam)cclabs.missouri.edu
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Viewed:
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739 times
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Tim McSweeney wrote:
>
> > I think all societies have certain underlying morals that can be considered
> > absolute given that all societies share them. Certain things have to be
> > wrong or the society would fall apart. Most important among them might be
> > the prohibition against killing someone in your in group. Out group, • maybe,
> > but not in group. Running around killing people aimlessly has to be wrong,
> > or the society that thinks it right would go extinct.
>
> Not true, Our own society until recently practiced capital punishment, If
> this isn't sanctioned killing in-Group then I don't know what is.
My society practices capital punishment right now. But, I don't think
that it is sanctioned killing in-Group. The government must
sufficiently demonize a person or group before they can be legally
terminated. Whether it's someone accused of killing two little girls -
where the prosecutor must sufficiently vilify the defendant in the minds
of the jury, or a group of people like the Branch Davidians who had to
be called a 'cult' and lies about machine guns had to be dredged up and
spurious hearsay claims of their detractors had to be transmitted to the
public and their residence had to be called a 'compound' before the
public was pretty OK with public servants killing most members of this
off-beat religious sect. My circuitous point is that those people are
cast out of the group in order to make it OK to kill them.
> I agree that in our society Killing people is considered wrong, but I still
> think that is a learned Value.
>
> You yourself would seem to be a good example of the case where a learned
> moral is so deeply ingrained that it appears to the user to be an absolute
> truth.
I don't think that's what he expressed. I think that he's suggesting
that we evolved with a propensity to find killing wrong because if we
hadn't, we wouldn't evolved to a societal level...we would have been
overly nondiscriminatory in our predation.
> Voluntary assisted Euthanasia would be another example of killing in-group.
Yes, and it's not quite in vogue, is it? I also think that it will be
in the fairly near future, but people on the edge of dying are kind of
out-group also, since they're pretty radically different than those of
us with another 80(000000) years to live.
> Even outright murder can be accepted. Revenge killings, Duels and so on
> have been an accepted part of some societies in the not to distant past.
> The fact that we live in a relatively tame society says nothing about what
> is right or wrong in other societies.
In societies where duels are acceptable, it's not considered murder...or
more to the point, it's not a victimization. Typically, that code of
honor allows for someone to coward out of it without being shot in the
back. (I could be wrong, but it's my impression.)
I think two important terms to define are society (how big or small a
group are we talking about here?) and (in- | out-)group (again, how
large is this group?).
This matter of group size comes right back to my original point too.
The larger your group (in a similar sense) is, the fewer things you can eat.
--
Sincerely,
Christopher L. Weeks
central Missouri, USA
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Frog
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| (...) maybe, (...) Not true, Our own society until recently practiced capital punishment, If this isn't sanctioned killing in-Group then I don't know what is. No-one does anything aimlessly, I don't even brush my teeth without some motive. I agree (...) (26 years ago, 9-Feb-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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