what makes someone a jerk?

@Fido,

Who do you think you are that you can decide they can never be brought back? I see.............YOU decide they are animals so kill them? From where I sit, that really doesn't make you any better than those you are calling animals. Are you a scientologist by any chance?

1 Reply

@Fido,

Oddly I agree with Arella Mae.

You don't get to define humanness just by the bits you like, naming as unhuman the bits you don't.

It's the whole bundle.

Also, just labelling people like psychopaths as unhuman is a pretty dumb way of thinking. The best bet we have to lessen the number of psychopaths amongst us is to fully understand how they come to be the way they are, and what factors are protective against the development of psychopathy. Generally speaking the labelling of this or that as unhuman is not a something that encourages rational understanding of those aspects of humanity that are harmful.

Where on earth does the witch thing come from by the way?

You think the thousands of women murdered in the witch crazes were witches?

Right there, by the way, in things like witch crazes, is a glaring example of why the kind of thinking you appear to espouse is so unhelpful.

It's also a label that betrays quite profound ignorance about animals, by the way.

1 Reply

@Arella Mae,

Arella Mae wrote:

Who do you think you are that you can decide they can never be brought back? I see.............YOU decide they are animals so kill them? From where I sit, that really doesn't make you any better than those you are calling animals. Are you a scientologist by any chance?

I am just observing what happens, and tell you what distinguishes us from them is that they all decide alone who should live or die... I hope the issue never comes up in my life personally... I have come close to killing for triffles, which is not without some cause, but insignificant cause in the span of time...

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@dlowan,

dlowan wrote:

Oddly I agree with Arella Mae.

You don't get to define humanness just by the bits you like, naming as unhuman the bits you don't.

It's the whole bundle.

Also, just labelling people like psychopaths as unhuman is a pretty dumb way of thinking. The best bet we have to lessen the number of psychopaths amongst us is to fully understand how they come to be the way they are, and what factors are protective against the development of psychopathy. Generally speaking the labelling of this or that as unhuman is not a something that encourages rational understanding of those aspects of humanity that are harmful.

Where on earth does the witch thing come from by the way?

You think the thousands of women murdered in the witch crazes were witches?

Right there, by the way, in things like witch crazes, is a glaring example of why the kind of thinking you appear to espouse is so unhelpful.

It's also a label that betrays quite profound ignorance about animals, by the way.

I do not disagree much with what you say, nor do I disagree with the fact that many thousands were murdered for being witches when it was all about grabbing their land and wealth...A real witch, on the other hand is anyone who invokes the power of nature, or spirits for an evil purpose because whether a person prays for good, or evil they usually follow their prayers with action... I have seen my poor old mother pray for a miracle, and must confess that I helped with that in a scene that was everything but purely medieval...Who knows that her prayers were not answered, and that the crippled were not healed since I was hardly the same after... Yet; she always gave herself an out; Saying: not my will but thine be done... We might characterize all the people of the past as living in an extreme state of irrationality, and can say little more for ourselves... We are more knowledgeable, and more rational, but primarily, our reason is spent in the pursuit of irrational goals... Is nuking some one more rational than fighting to the death and basing victory or defeat upon single combat??? Certainly more reason was involved, and more people die; but is the goal any more reasonable???

It is not simply the psychpathology of individuals who must concern us, but the psychopathology of our whole society and of humanity... All immorality should concern us, and all spiritual malignancy... We should try to understand psychopathology because to do so is to recognize that much of it is chronic and infectious... People are only seldom born evil, but many are made so... Aristotle said that the line between vice and virtue is one that divides all of mankind... That is impossible; to say on one side of the line is one form of humanity, and on the other side, another... There is one humanity, and only an individual can put himself out side the bounds of that humanity...

For our parts we exclude many people for characteristics we have implanted them with... We cannot say there is that much difference between the cop and the criminal, or a thief and a millionaire to justify the exclusion of one and the acceptance of the other... We do this for the very same reason the Greeks once excluded criminals and even tossed the bodies of their executed criminals over the borderline... We do not want to be damned with the damned... We wish to appear innocent in our own estimation which requires us to punish the guilty -when we should be using our energy making the victims whole... We put people in prison when we have made them criminals by accepting wide spread injustice... Prison is just injustice heaped upon injustice, so it does not work, and for that reason law requires more law, and more law requires more law yet... It does not work because we do not demand justice of ourselves and others, stated simply... We need scapegoats because we cannot bear the burden of our own morality and responsibility...

1 Reply

@Fido,

Prison doesn't work? Hmm, let's see. It stopped Ted Bundy from raping and killing any more women. It stopped Gary Ridgeway from raping and killing any more women. It stopped Aileen Wournus from killing any more men and it stopped Jeffrey Dahmer from experiementing on and killing any more young men......................and bank robbers don't rob banks if they are in prison, pedophiles don't molest children if they are in prison, etc., etc., etc. To say prison does not work is incorrect. It works just fine in a alot of cases.

1 Reply

@Arella Mae,

Arella Mae wrote:

Prison doesn't work? Hmm, let's see. It stopped Ted Bundy from raping and killing any more women. It stopped Gary Ridgeway from raping and killing any more women. It stopped Aileen Wournus from killing any more men and it stopped Jeffrey Dahmer from experiementing on and killing any more young men......................and bank robbers don't rob banks if they are in prison, pedophiles don't molest children if they are in prison, etc., etc., etc. To say prison does not work is incorrect. It works just fine in a alot of cases.

Prison, and law enforcement is very expensive and is a growth industry because it is unjust, and it causes gievance... The very act of punishiment injures whole families and improves no one... Look at how many bundy killed before they caught him and could hold him... All the people you mentioned, living on the margins of society, bearing a deep malignancy would not ever have escaped so long as they did in a sane society, but out society is not sane... We have not had the concept of the individual, fully developed, for a thousand years, and it has taken a great deal of time to destroy communities right down to the most basic element: the family...

Back in History, when dooms, and moots, and things used to settle differences and feuds, and in some places yet today in the world, it is the group rather than the individual who is reponsible for his actions... He may act on his own, but seldom does because he knows his whole community will suffer for his actions if they are unjust... People are free within their communities, but constrained outside, acting on their honor...Community is morality... Without morality there is only the threat of law, coercion to make people behave as though moral...

Much is made of Orestes in old Greek Tragedy killing his mother for killing his father who killed her daughter to change the direction of the wind so he could sail his fleet to Troy... No one else could do it... If one of your community needed killing no one but your own would do the deed...Law makes that situation impossible, and it makes communities powerless over their own... We see today where whole groups are still held responsible for their bad element, but they have no power over their own, so that is unfair...

A few blacks are criminals and most of their victims are black as well... The black community universally suffers both from its criminals and from its bad reputation, but it is powerless to rectify the situation... And since there, in the community is where law should reign, and have respect, and morals should guide every action, and it does not formally exist, it can do nothing... Look at what percent of murders in this land are actually solved.... I have heard a figure of from 2 to 3%... We catch the crimes of passion.... We catch the husband or wife that strikes out in anger... We do not catch many of those who act without passion for whom passion is not the furthest thought, but not a thought they are capable of... We do not catch the random acts of blindness that result in death without satisfaction, cause, or remorse...

1 Reply

@Fido,

I can appreciate your stance but I do think it is rather unrealistic. As long as mankind is going to break laws there is a need for punishment. You seem to care more about the "criminal" because the consequences they have to face "injure" them? How many are injured because that ONE criminal rapes and kills a child? There are people out there who could not care less about anything. We've named a few of them. Would you rather of seen them running around in society because we didn't want them to be "injured" because we punished them? Seriously?

2 Replies

@Arella Mae,

Arella Mae wrote:

I can appreciate your stance but I do think it is rather unrealistic. As long as mankind is going to break laws there is a need for punishment. You seem to care more about the "criminal" because the consequences they have to face "injure" them? How many are injured because that ONE criminal rapes and kills a child? There are people out there who could not care less about anything. We've named a few of them. Would you rather of seen them running around in society because we didn't want them to be "injured" because we punished them? Seriously?

We are all injured by society and specifically, by the economy... If I take that injury as the price of making my living though another must take a far greater injury to make his and it is all legal, then I am asking for it, accepting the worse with the bad, thanking God that his fate is not my own... But it is our shared fate, because society should be a whole, and is a closed system... What goes around comes around... I can't prove it, but I know it is true, that when people must suffer legal injustice as injustice should never be, they lose all respect for law... You see it... People cheat on their taxes and think everyone does it because the rich evade taxes they should and could pay... People speed to work because where there is no cop, neither is there speed limits... When law overwhelms itself to protect injustice it has lost the ability to prevent injustice... Law is one step closer to demoralization... What did people do before law... It was not always fair, but the argument for fairness, justice was always there... In Anglo Saxon days a man might have to buy off the sword even if he killed in self defense... When he killed, he took honor from those who lost their kin... This did not mean that he had to die... It meant his whole family would settle his guilt and his debt which they would bear as his kin... What does modern law have to equal the means of the past, when people from both sides would settle all issues with a view to peace even if it meant killing one of their own to make up for the life of another???

We say people have to be punished... I say people have to be stopped from injustice... What is the good of punishing people far beyond equality with the crime when we must pay an outrageous cost to do so??? We say it is to set an example; but most of those who commit crimes cannot benefit from any example, good or bad...People do not not commit crimes because of coercion, or examples; but because they are good and moral...Yet, what law does not forbid, it allows; which is much injustice, and widespread injustice which everywhere takes root destroys morality far and wide...

1 Reply

@Fido,

the point of a punishment is to
1) discourage future rule breaking from that person.
duh...
2) to be fair to those who did not break the rule.
if you see someone not do their job, and be no worse off, would you be pissed?
3) to set an example to others that rule breaking is not a very good idea, and that they would not get away with it.
again, duh...
4) to set in that rule breaker's mind that the action they took was wrong.
kind of like #1

1 Reply

@hamilton,

hamilton wrote:

the point of a punishment is to
1) discourage future rule breaking from that person.
duh...
2) to be fair to those who did not break the rule.
if you see someone not do their job, and be no worse off, would you be pissed?
3) to set an example to others that rule breaking is not a very good idea, and that they would not get away with it.
again, duh...
4) to set in that rule breaker's mind that the action they took was wrong.
kind of like #1

When some one in society injures society it is both the injured and the one who injures.... If we wished we could make almost any one injured by crime whole but the legal system does not even begin to do this... It punishes that percentage of people it catches for an example to those it does not catch, and for those who may never commit a crime... So; the punishment must be out of all bounds with the crime to strike fear in every heart, and this cannot be justice... It cannot be justice to strike terror into the hearts of free people, because if they must fear to commit a crime then they must fear even being charged with a crime, and they must fear police powers to search, and detain, even in the pursuit of legal ends.... If the legal system is free to punish far beyond the damage of the crime, then by what right do the do so??? They have no more right than a strong arm robber plying his trade, of the strong taking from the weak, in one case money, and the other, time and liberty... States, and kingdoms have no more right to commit an injustice than an individual... We can concede to the state the power to do better than ourselves, but no one can delegate a power they do not themselves possess...Together we can accomplish what no person alone could accomplish, but this does not give the right to do bad, to do injustice... We want our prisoners to graduate from prison better men, and instead we make worse... Prisoners can only be taught to live a just life by being treated justly...Receiving injustice at the hands of we the people is demoralizing rather than moral...As much as is possible we should show mercy, and to the extent possible, let the punishment fit the crime without all the extranious costs piled on...Receiving justice is the best deterrent from future activity... Consider rehabilitation, which really means: Restored to Honor... We want those people back in society without a grudge....

To be fair one must give all justice, but in the case of the injured we want to see them made whole, and though the cost is great, we must understand that justice is a gift society gives to itself...It is going to be expensive, but is it cheap now???

To teach to not do wrong we must do right, and when a legal system acting in the name of all the people does wrong, it teaches the doing of injustice...

1 Reply

@Fido,

justice is just another term for revenge. i dont believe in taking revenge. live and let live, i say.

1 Reply

@hamilton,

hamilton wrote:

justice is just another term for revenge. i dont believe in taking revenge. live and let live, i say.

You cannot define justice as revenge.... If two people have a dispute about the justice of a certain price of an object, then justice is the deal they work out that is just for each... In any dispute between two sides, justice for each is justice for the other... The same coin with two sides... It is true of society and criminal as well, that what is justice for the criminal is justice for society... That does not mean either side will like it, but it does mean both sides can accept it... And that is about the extent of what we can say about justice, that it is a form of a relationship... No matter how many examples we produce of justice or injustice we can not define justice better... We know the examples by the moral form, but do not know the moral form better by the examples...The next time you need justice will be like no other you have experienced, and the way you work it out between yourself and the other will be unique in all of time and place...

2 Replies

@Fido,

jus·tice/ˈjəstis/Noun
1. Just behavior or treatment.
2. The quality of being fair and reasonable.

1 Reply

@Fido,

of course it will be. every single moment is unique.

1 Reply

@hamilton,

hamilton wrote:

jus·tice/ˈjəstis/Noun
1. Just behavior or treatment.
2. The quality of being fair and reasonable.

These are a couple of examples to help you define Justice for yourself... My first step into philosophy was taken when I was 6 and because of something denied to me because I had chicken pox, and instead of sympathy was given a Bible story about the fall of man... Well, wait a minute Mom!!!, Does that sound fair to you??? And what sort of God expects fairness from people that he with omnipotence cannot diliver individually to human kind...

You see, that in pursuit of the fruit of knowledge I did what my dispised ancestor did, and put aside the notion of God as one beyond reasonable acceptence... And yet justice I could not put aside... What is it really... Do you think for a moment that your definition really defines it??? What does the far side look like since we know its face??? The thing itself, justice is beyond our ken, and beyond our reach, and is infinite in its expression and violation...

0 Replies

@hamilton,

hamilton wrote:

of course it will be. every single moment is unique.

That is easy enough to say; but if you ever get stuck in a time warp fifteen minutes to quiting time, and the clock begins to run backwards, and then starts to slide slowly down the wall like a gob of snot and everything remains in that state for a couple weeks while your life runs ahead to its tawdry conclusion without you, then you might feel differently about it all...

0 Replies

@Arella Mae,

Arella Mae wrote:

I can appreciate your stance but I do think it is rather unrealistic. As long as mankind is going to break laws there is a need for punishment. You seem to care more about the "criminal" because the consequences they have to face "injure" them? How many are injured because that ONE criminal rapes and kills a child? There are people out there who could not care less about anything. We've named a few of them. Would you rather of seen them running around in society because we didn't want them to be "injured" because we punished them? Seriously?

The object is not punishment, but to end the cause of crime, and injury and bring social justice... Look at the facts... We know a lot about tribal societies... The Germans were not so different from the American Natives... People could often get away with murder, even, but not without a price which was paid by ones community... Only if your community could not reach agreement on your behalf would you life be forfeit... Part of the cost of our wars in the East are blood money which must be paid for those wrongfully killed...What it did was to make law and order the responsibility of ones community, but part of the failure of law results from the treatment of all as individuals and the deliberate breakdown of community ties, support, and obligations... It does not work... It is all well and good to say the individual stands on his own, and suffers only his own mistakes... The fact is that we still hold communities responsible for their own even while we long ago stripped them of power over their own... The black community has no power over its own... That does not stop us from holding them all responsible for the crimes of the few even when they are the primary victim of black crime... The cost of punishment as we have it could never have been paid by communities in the past, and even now it is sucking up a huge part of our state income... It does not rehabilitate anyone, and it serves as no example anyone can heed... People, and especially poor people and youths, uneducated more than educated, think fate plays an inordinate part in their lives... Tribal people all thought in this fashion, but for them it was a reason to forgive since no one however willing could succeed in injury if that injury was not fated... Now people simply think they are lucky to escape justice and unlucky if caught... The chance of touching such people with reason or examples is slight... We need what we had that once worked, and that is community control.
Sorry to make this addition...

1 Reply

@Fido,

uhh...
nuh-uh.
indians had such a smaller population to comb through, when a crime was committed, than gemany. in germany, it would be much easier to disappear, than in an indian tribe.
plus, even if you ran, indians could just track you.

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@hamilton,

Inconsideration for others, anybody who ghosts, lack of manners, rudeness, etc

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@hamilton,

Hi

I would say - maybe having babies outside of the marriage, fraud, blackmail, being hypocritical, anti-social behaviour;prostitution rings, child pronography, acting out of line, beoing a loudmouth, disturbing a memorial or a funeral, giving birth to a bastard etc.

/TooFriendly112

0 Replies

what makes someone a jerk?

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