Nope, no poisoned well. Increased respect and the knowledge that one extrapolates your posts beyone their literal meaning at one’s own peril (which is not an insult - you mean what you say and you say what you mean.)
And here all along I thought you were against periods and question marks. See? I do have to read your posts more carefully now! 
Shoot. I’m trying to remember a study I read, probably from here, about ‘war’ between two or three tribes of apes. Rape was involved, as well, of a similar nature, I think. I believe one of the apes was named ‘Peter’, but I might be wrong. Ring a bell with anyone?
Y’know, when you come in late like that you just seem a dilletante.
Yeah. I was against gang-raping eleven-year-old girls before it was cool.
Yeah, well I’m against the gang-raping of 10 year olds, so there. I’m the 
est
Well, in that case I will point out that I am ALSO against the gang rape of ten-year-olds. Where do YOU stand?
DAMN! Shoulda previewed!
We had an incident in the Chicago suburbs a couple of years ago. Some teen aged boys videotaped themsevles taking avantage of a girl who had passed out drunk. Even though all the evidence was there they did not spend any time in jail. If society does not punish the criminals the criminals will get bolder. My guess is that the 40 year old may go to prison but none of the other “innocent little children”, will recieve any punshiment at all. I hope I’m wrong.
So, WhyNot, how* you* doin’?
Oh c’mon. That’s funny!
To (evidently) All,
I went back and reread things again. After my OP, Gigo made a sensible point, then Cervaise offers his “explanation” to this behavior. While there is no doubt that ugliness has manifested itself in violent ways, in the past and today, there are certain things that are beyond the pale. The Manson family actions were so outside the bounds that we are unable to comprehend it. It stood out as the work of an insane person, someone who’s mind operates differetnly than normal humans. Ditto with monsters that kill their own children or rape infants.
We don’t just attempt to explain this atrocities away as, “Dude, we’re just monkeys with pants.” No, there are somethings that not even monkeys would do, pants or no pants. Rape happens, yes. Even gang rape is an unfortunate reality. But that’s more than what is at work here. Not only do the numbers involved begin to move the incident into its own category, but having 40-year-old adults complicit in it take this atrocity out of the realm of human behavior.
I stiil find Cervaise’s attempt to explain away the grossness of this particular incident as simply another facet of the human condition gross in itself. There is a point which, once passed, people cease being human. Sure they look the same and have the same bodily functions, but part of being human is in the brain. Has man not progressed? Has not society? Is there nothing that our heavy-browed descendants would do that is no longer what we would call human?
Cervaise attempted to allow the actions of these animals define down what it means to be human:
This attitude is as wrong as it is unhealthy for our society. The more we utter nonsense like this the more we lower the bar as to what is acceptable, thus increasing the likelihood that further, similar ugliness will manifest itself. After all, we’re only human, right?
In reading over the his response to me and mine to him, I stand by my post. Could mine have been gentler? Sure. I guess, in part my tone was in response to what I saw as a shitty one coming from him. But that’s not the issue. The issue is his brutish world view and how he thinks that the degree of ugliness in question is something that resides in all of us. The issue would have been how he would have attempted backed up his nonsense if he recognized an obligation to do so.
From one of the articles:
Might as well hang me know. I have a video camera and condoms in my house too. Anyone else joining me on the gallows?
The leap you still demonstrate yourself utterly incapable of making is that no one was claiming that this is acceptable. Certainly, nothing in what Cervaise said could possibly be taken as an argument that this sort of thing is to be expected or permitted - and certainly much less so than your quasi-supernatural crediting of it to, as far as I can divine, Satan.
Your tone has nothing to do with it. It was the outrageous stupidity with which you responded that made people ridicule you, not the tone of what you said. Since, once again, nothing about what Cervaise said can be remotely described as condoning or excusing the event, your reply was simply moronic. Your crediting of it to either an abstract force (taking your words figuratively) or an imagined bogeyman is the only comment in this thread that can remotely be taken as an excuse for what happened.
At any rate, this is simply more evidence that you’re too stupid for rational argument. Perhaps you’d be happier in MPSIMS than in the pit.
Oh, and since it has since been thoroughly demonstrated that gang rape is, indeed, something that happens “in nature”, you owe us all a further apology for your moronic attempts to claim otherwise.
To me, this is the crux of it. If they are no longer human, morality no longer attaches. Like when you referred to “evil itself taking form,” as if evil were some kind of force external to the human psyche. It is precisely because we are capable of such monstrosities that we lay any claim to morality at all.
You heartless fucking bastard! You deserve everything that you get.
And more.
Much more.
Yes, yes it is.
Magellan01 is misinterpreting others’ claims, that’s for sure. But I think Magellan01 is also being misinterpreted.
Note that his/her original question was “How is something like this even possible?” I think it’s fairly clear she wasn’t intending by this to ask “What’s the causal explanation for this?” but rather “How could these people even begin to give a rational explanation for this?”
The answer given (“It’s because we’re monkeys”) answered the “causal explanation” interpretation of the question–in other words, the answer given presupposed the incorrect interpretation of the question.
Since Magellan01 wasn’t asking the causal question “Why, in fact, does this happen” but rather the justificatory question “How can rational people with any moral sense at all justify such actions” or something along those lines, s/he understandably interpreted whatever answer she was given as an attempt to give a justification for the action. Since the answer was “It’s because we’re monkeys,” she therefore believed she was being told “Our primate nature justifies our evil acts.”
To reiterate: S/he was asking for a justification (actually, s/he was rhetorically implying there can be no such justification by asking for such a justification in a particular way) so s/he interpreted the answer as offering just that–a justification.
The answerer didn’t intend to give a justification, though.
And hence the misunderstanding has ensued.
-FrL-
(We’ve probably most of us participated in the following kind of conversation at least once in our lives:
A. How could you do this?
B. Watch me!
Speaker B here purports to misunderstand A’s question (in this case for some kind of sarcastic effect) in much the same way I am claiming Magellan’s question was originally misunderstood.)
Striving achieve consensus, can we all agree that gang raping an 11 year old turns out to be a less than optimal activity, most of the time.
Only because of the qualifier.
Yes, but you have it in reverse order. We assume them to be human (for all the obvious reasons) until they commit such a heinous act and remove themselves from the pool.
Evil exists in the world, particularly in the minds of men. We know to quash it, the same way we know not to eat out own shit. We should reasonably expect someone who views himself as a fellow human, to excercise a minimal degree of control when a sick thought flashes through the synapses in his brain. If they do not, we need not minimize their transgression by pointing out “Oh they’re just human, a member of the animal kingdom like the rest of us.” In fact, doing so does a disservice to society itself as in an insult to the progres man has made over the eons. It also, tends to move the bar slightly as to what is “understanndable” behavior and what is “acceptable” behavior, etc.
Excellent point. And with such an aknowledgement comes the understanding of how important a moral code is. And is to maintain. Embracing the “we’re just monkeys with pants” meme is ignorant and detrimental to our own future.
Note: iin reading the responses yet again, I think part of the problem is the word “excuse”. I did not and do not mean it in the absolute sense of the word. I can’t imagine even Cervaise on his most brutish day would be of the opinion that crimes of this nature should be “forgiven”. I menat in the vein of “minimize”. If that helps, great. If not, that’s fine, too.