what makes someone a jerk?

Eh??? Are you a yooper???

What is a yooper? You mean a canadian?

No. When I was younger than I am now, and different re views, back in catholic school, we had a very cute priest show up to instruct us on I don't remember what but something to do quite vaguely with sexuality and mortal sin. He tended to say both eh? and what? a lot. So cute, makes me wonder in retrospect re his life story. Well, anyway, it took me a while not to put eh and what into sentences.

I have no idea what this fool is on about now, however, some people refer to those who come from Michigan's upper peninsula as "Yoopers." The upper peninsula is often called the UP, so its denizens are often called Yoopers.

Correct... And people who live under the bridge are refered to as Trolls... How is that for Canny???...

Eh! is a common expression in God's country... It can have about any range of meaning from hello to WTF... Morning folks... How would you like to wake up in bed with Setanta??? Some kind of nightmare, EH?

scary...
please, lets keep this appropriate...

the stupid little and annoying things that people repeatedly keep on doing

Like; even when you ask them not to??? I hate that...

those people are worse than jerks. they are BULLIES!!!

Not all jerks are bullies, but all jerks are ignorant... Just as knowledge is virtue, ignorance is vice... People do evil out of ignorance...

It would be cool to be a primitive sometimes and act like a primitive always and just cut people down who crossed you... Imagine Mrs. Jerk, and baby Jerk waiting supper on Mr. Jerk thinking: I wonder if that SOB said the wrong thing to a real man and got waxed...

You don't believe all evil is done out of ignorance, do you?

Absolutely; but only because I recognize another axium as fact: What goes around, comes around...

In closed societies one cannot do wrong without that wrong eventually injuring every one... If Lincoln mentioned the tendency of prosperity to result in tyranny, than a perfect example of it might be found in Ancient Greece... First, they made their women second class citizens, little more than slaves... Then the wealth they discovered, traded for, or took by force became an element of division... Their division justified oligarchy and fueled war, and even the man who said: Knowledge is Virtue made the argument for the destruction of the democracy, which depended, as it always depends upon an economic as well as political equality...

Do I believe every one seeking to make himself richer and so superior to his neighbor also wished his own destruction and the destruction of his society... Not in the least... What they did they did, and as Oedipus said: Not knowing what they did... They acted out of ignorance which is acting out of hubris... They invited destruction upon their own heads and destroyed their race... Try to remember the picture Gibbon left for us, of a land that so devalued its women that they were exposed and left to die, while the few who lived to adulthood found their charmes more valuable as consorts than they were valued as wives until many homes fell vacant for want of a mate... They had no certain knowledge... So they had no virtue... They saw, as that man from Tamany Hall said: Their chances, so they took 'em... We can see what those people did wrong, but we do the same, and not out of knowledge, but ignorance...


The whole world is a closed system, and all of humanity is one... We cannot kick humanity without humanity feeling the pain... You know as a lover of Animals what terrors are done to them... Where injuries are allowed to animals, the condition of humans is never much better... Can we in certain knowledge accept one and not the other??? To be human we must have some love for humanity and all life... We must act always with sympathy and understanding because then, at least, we will deserve as much...

evil is nothing but a perspective. sometimes, not even that.

So, exactly what kind of ignorance was it that caused Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer to do the evil he did? Ted Bundy? Hitler? There may be instances where evil is done out of ignorance but I believe for the most part, evil is done by choice. I can choose to torture a person or I can choose not to because I know it is evil and wrong. Saying all evil is done out of ignorance sounds like you are taking personal responsibility out of the equation.

those guys kind of go beyond jerkiness...

True, but we aren't talking about jerkiness. We are talking evil and I think those guys are some pretty good examples of it.

...

Oh I see, no deviating from the initial comment made on jerkiness?

well, yes. i just havent really followed the conversation enough, (i had to skim, a bit) so i misunderstood a few things. carry on!

No problem, hamilton.

All choices made out of ignorance, even if they seem to result in good, in reality result in evil... Acting without knowing is the most terribly and potentially destructive characteristic of humanity... Does the fact that Hitler wanted a war, thinking he knew what the outcome would be count not as evil, because from my perspective he acted in ignorance as all people who want war do...

Does the fact that serial killers never know the damage they do count them as evil??? It is that fact that makes them evil... Human beings have two methods to assess all knowledge: by reason, and by emotion... Each alone is not sufficient to give us knowledge...Who is it that kills... Who knows the damage they do, and the pain they cause and does it anyway??? What every single serial killer and most leaders of countries have in coommon is the ability to understand at a rational level what they cannot grasp from an emotional one... To paraphrase Stalin: The death of a person is a tragedy, and the deaths of ten thousand is a statistic... Keeping count is rational behavior... Killing is irrational, usually in that a great wave of emotion is essential to pushing people beyond their moral restraints... For that one who kills without and regret, or sympathy for the one killed, only cold blooded reason can provide justification.. There are some people who are not human and will never be human, who will forever look opon humanity and our struggles, and joys and defeats as if an alien fro some distant planet... The terrors, the horrors, the lonliness, the regrets, and finally the joy of escaping a tortured life must all be mystries beyond understanding to the killer since he revisits his crime with all the remorse of a chemist at a vivisection... The fact that beasts are dumb, and not at all like us does not stop most of us from identifying with them, and giving them pardon.... This sort of knowledge, the most essential, of recognizing your own life and pain in others is forever denied to the killers of humanity... We think of madness as being in the grip of ones emotions, not able to practice rational restraint... The moral person is moral based upon emotions and emotional connectedness... The killers are rational, but ill informed, Able to make a plane and carry it through, but unable to feel the pain they cause which they cannot be said to Know...