10.0 from the Canadian judge
Cervaise types with his mouth? :eek:
Well, actually we are apes with pants. Otherwise your response was supremely awesome. I give it a 9.98.
Cervaise, I’m glad to see you say that you find the event horrifying. If you had conveyed that in your response to the OP, perhaps we wouldn’t be here now. Instead, you took a shitty, annoyed tone, and wrote what seemed to be an attempt to minimize the event. I think you still make that same mistake, but not nearly to the same degree. I will explain:
I disagree. While there are no doubt countless examples that dwarf this in scope, their are few that compare in the degree of degredation. There are few that can compare. We have adults taking advantage of a child, someone lacking the ability to make informed choices about something thaey understand very little. The treated her like a rag. And because it suited thier base desires, supervised further abuse by fiteen others. Could it have been worse? I guess they could have bashed her head in at the end. Has there been worse? Undoubtedly. But to call this “small beer” shows your continued willingness to minimize the atrocity. If you think that past horrors make this nothing to get worked up over, we’ll just have to agree that we get worked up over different things.
That you do not see this as standing out from the many daily horrs we inflict on one another honestly amazes me. No snark intended, but I am truly glad to not share your view of mankind.
Absolutely horrifying, yes. But I think that you might agree that war contorts the moral yardstick. I’m sure many good, moral, honorable men have done things in war that they never envisioned themselves doing and couldn’t see themselves ever doing again. I do not mean to minimize in any way the act you describe, but to point out that if that same act is committed outside of the craziness of war that it would be even more dispicable and unfathomable.
While, horrors, are routine, horrors of this caliber are not. Thank goodness. That is precisely why this particular even can is so heinous.
I maintain, not to this degree. Rapes happen every day. Child abuse happens every day. Do you really think that those crimes ratcheted up to the level in question are of the same ordinary variety? And that we should not take notice of the heightened degree of depravity involved?
Again, you, intentionally or not, attempt to minimize this single event. Your argument goes like this: This event qualifies as a horror. Horrors happen everyday. We can’t get caught up fretting over these (daily) horrors. Therefore, we can’t get worked up fretting about this particular one.
Do you see what I mean? That argument makes this event seem routine, it is not. It minimizes it. It takes something that is an extraordinary event and seeks to reduce it to the everyday.
I think this does the same thing I just described. This is not a daily event. Things like this are not daily events. Thank goodness.
Same problem here. Things like this do not happen all the time.
If you think human-ness is simply a commentary on biology, you are right. I don’t think it is.
Again, no snark intended, but I don’t know whether to be glad for you or sad.
And yet, usually, we don’t. There are acts of violence, and if they rise to a certain threshold we take notice of them. And depending on their heinousness and rarity (which usually go hand in hand), wew are appaled by them Extraordinary one, like the lone in question receive our maximum condemnation.
I do not deny that there is violence around us every day. I do maintain that there are those instances that the type of viloence and degree stands out from among the many other instances due to it’s extraordinary nature.
Again, I wish there was something like this in you initial response. Still, I am glad to see it stated so.
Yes. That is where we part ways.
I still disagree and say that atrocities like this are not routine.
I find it difficult to base my beliefs on what we think we understand about animal behavior. Couldn’t one possible explanation be that be runniing off the weak one they make the group stronger. I have no idea, just guessing. What makes a violent act so heinous is that they’re is no benefit to it except to satisfy the depravity of the offender. As far as I am aware, that is rarely, if ever, the case in the animal world.
I’m gald to see you say you were being glib. Perhaps your tone contributed to me not understanding you. I asked this before and you chose not to answer: 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?
You are simply making a judgment. It makes a nice bumper sticker, but it’s overly simplistic. We may share 98% of the same DNA, but that doesn’t mean that a monkey is 98% human. There are things other than the arrangement of our limbs that make us who and what we are.
I think this is well put. But it seeks to equate all falls from grace. We can, and do fail in the efforts you describe every day. But smacking your kid or berating an employee or robbing someone at knife point or jumping someone and beating him to within an inch of his life or raping a woman or raping a kid or orchestrating the gang rape of a kid or raping an infant are not of the same caliber. Some of them are not in the same universe as the others. To throw them all under the heading of human cruelty, while true, almost renders the term meaningless.
Not surprisingly, I disagree. I think there is more to being human than DNA. That someone can act in a way that is so far outside of what we accept as human that they become more non-human than human.
“Unvarnished” is fine. “Undiscerning” is not. Not all rocks are boulders. Not all wet areas are oceans. Degree matters.
Your cordial invitation aside, here’s what I suggest for you and “your part”: Reread my OP and your initial response. Then compare the sentiments in that response with the sentiments you’ve shared in your post that I am responding to here. I offer that your initial response was dismissive of the incident and you came off annoyed with OP. Also, you might notice that much of the commentary you include here is absent from your initial post. Now, not being a mind reader, and not recalling any interaction with you in the past, I respond to the words written. It turns out that it is not just a simple case of miscommunication, although that has played more than a small role. You have a different worldview. You have a different view of mankind and what it means to be human.
I don’t begrudge you any of that. I do take issue with the cavelier way (yes, that’s how I took it) you seemed to minimize the issue in your initial post. I see now that there is true disgust for the incident in question. And I am glad to see it. Like I said, if I had gotten that impression then we probably wouldn’t be where we are now. Or perhaps we would have explored our true philosophical differences without the distraction of me trying to decipher your meaning and your frustration with my inability to mind read.
I must have pasted in correctly. All the quote boxes in my previous posts should be atrtibuted to Cervaise, not Conrtapuntal.
If a mod could fix that, it would be much appreciated.
(Italics changed to underscores to preserve emphasis)
So, which is it? Is this an odd example of extreme behavior of a small group of sick people? Or is it an example of society falling? I could see the complaint that society was falling if it appeared that the various police, family services, children’s protective services, and other agencies shrugged their shoulders and said “So what?” However, it appears that “society” is taking this quite seriously and attempting to rescue the girl and track down the offending parties.
By the way,
From what I have read, (and I may have missed something), there was exactly one adult involved in the incident. I feel badly for the rather large group of teens who are sufficiently screwed up as to go along with it, but I do not see evidence of some large number (or any number larger than one) of adults encouraging or participating in this behavior.
First, thanks for the fix.
My point is not that society has failed in their response. That we’ll see about. So far, it looks good. The point I was making is that society failed in that it somehow created an atmosphere where this was even a notion that crossed through a person’s mind. The fact that it did, and thaqt they thought it okay to act on it, and that so many people went along with it, truly boggles my mind.
No, there was evidently one adult invloved. That’s what I thought when I posted. I thought I recalled another poster intimating that a female adult related to the man was also involved, but after a quick scan just now they were probably referring to the 16-year-old niece.
So in the final tally, magellan01 is still maintaining that Cervaise is minimizing the situation, because he didn’t act shocked enough.
Well, I’m glad I got this out of the way on page one. To reiterate, I’m still opposed to the gang-rape of eleven-year-olds. I see that, per usual for these threads, those who don’t act sufficiently outraged are being indirectly accused of not caring about it. Thank goodness I made sure to clarify my opinion in advance.
At any rate, magellan01 has added the No True Scotsman fallacy to his repertoire. I guess that’s, um, something. It’s good to know I can always turn to this place for my daily dose of confused thought. Let’s hope folks like Cervaise remain, offering insight to counterbalance the confusion and illogic.
My wife showed me this about an hour ago and I read the article with a big fat dose of ----> :dubious:.
I bet one of two things happens.
-
It quickly comes out that what happened wasn’t near as bad as what is being initially reported or nothing in fact happened at all and we never hear another word about this.
-
It slowly comes out that what happened wasn’t near as bad as what is being initially reported or nothing in fact happened at all and we’re subjected to a long, drawn-out circus that gives further lie to a dignified media and takes up large quantities of print and air-time that could be used to report real news.
And that was your take-away from the whole post? Why am I not surprised? I also have no doubt that you know your are misharacterizing the post, but you like pissing as part of a crowd. Typical pussy behavior. There are a few of you on these boards. Weaklings with scrawny arms that see bulging biceps when they look in the mirror. Jackals at heart, you like instigating and throwing rocks from the sidelines, doing what you can to be part of a fight where you think victory is assured due to the numbers. Pathetic.
Try reading. And rereading. And rereading again. His initial post offered zero condemnation, or shock. Therfore the problem is not that he displayed enough shock or condemnation, but rather, that it wasn’t there. Feel free to look up the fallacy you cite if you don’t get it. Then read it. And reread it.
I guess, though, I should thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify this point, as it evidently wasn’t clear enough in my post. Now tell me, shithead, how does it feel to have been of some actual use for a change?
Well he did imply it was a horror.
Wasn’t the condemnation assumed anyway? I mean he doesn’t need to tell us it’s bad. If we can’t figure that out for ourselves that gang raping 11 year olds is evil and vile then we should get psychotherapy or something instead of reading on internet message board.
Ooh, yes, insult someone on a message board for not being manly! There’s nothing like a macho tough-guy on the internet! Now, of course, if you actually knew what you were talking about, rather than simply trying to scrape together some fantasy accusation to make, you’d have noticed at some point that I’m very rarely a part of my crowd when I’m pissing all over some moron. I tend to have a lot less tolerance for morons than most people. Some consider that a failing. I’m not sure I do.
He called it a “horror”. But I guess that’s not enough.
One of the differences you’ll notice between smart people and stupid people is that smart people feel less compulsion to state the obvious. It was precisely that particular habit of the stupid that I satirized with my post back on page one about my opposition to the gang-rape of eleven-year-olds. (And I’d like to reiterate - I’m still one hundred percent against it!) See, that’s one of the constants of recreational outrage. Some of us don’t feel the need to point out that we’re horrified by this kind of thing, because it’s absolutely obvious that everyone is.
But you’re stupid and self-righteous (funny how those things always seem to coexist.) And so when someone didn’t express the requisite outrage, you weren’t capable of making the pretty obvious leap to think that he might actually find what happened outrageous. And you thus self-righteously castigated him for it.
If you were smarter, you would realize that the fact that you don’t see something isn’t evidence that it’s not there. Thus the distinction you’re making isn’t valid - you have no way to directly assess the second item at all. Why would you leap to conclude that he doesn’t condemn the gang-rape of children? Do you think there’s many people here who don’t condemn it? You really think there’s a need to state such things? Don’t you think that this is pretty solid evidence that you’re stupid?
Of course not. Stupidity always magically involves the inability to perceive one’s own deficits.
Oh, dear. I even gave you the answer. And yet you still don’t understand it.
The sad part is that you obviously don’t see any of the irony in your saying this . . .
If that is the case then no one would need to pit any atrocity ever. No one would ever have to weigh in with a vote of condemnation. Maybe you’re right. But I read his post with no chip on my shoulder about him. I simply reacted to the words on the page. In rereading it I can still see how I got the impression I did (wrong as it might have been). In light of his long post I see that he is no fool, but I am still confused by the tone of his initial post. Maybe Frylock was right and my OP wasn’t read in the way I intended. And then I didn’t read his post in the way it was intended. Maybe that’s it, maybe it’s not.
Unfortunatley for you, your character can come through even a message board.
No, he didn’t actually call it a horror, now did he. Oy vay was just honest enough to say it was implied, but I guess I shouldn’t expect the same fairness from you. And if you look at the totality of that post, the “horrors” at the end was collective, including the horror in question as well as the other everyday horrors. And that was part of the very problem I had with his post. But I guess you see the letters in the right order within the confines of the post and feel safe in concluding: “Th…Th…The word is there—look—the letters are in the right order and everything. Ergo he called it a horror.” Maybe I should have stipulated: Read. Reread. And Reread again. and if you still can’t glean the sense of the shapes on the page, ask an adult to help you.
I didn’t react solely to what he did not say. It was a combination of what he did not say and what he did say. I do agree with the notion that the default is to assume that everyone would be equally outraged by this event. That was why I was so surprised to read what he wrote, without any specific condemnation.
See above. Wait I’ll make it easier for you: Oh, this is tiresome. I didn’t react solely to what he did not say. It was a combination of what he did not say and what he did say. I agree, that the default is to assume that everyone wold be equally outraged by this event. That was why I was so surprised to read what he wrote, without any specific condemnation. Did that help?
The only thing I am sure of if I was smarter is that I wouldn’t be wasting my time with the likes of you. As far as the rest, see the two responses above. To summarize for you: it was the combination of what he did not say and what he did say.
As far as the rest of your oh-so-hurtful quips: weak. Not worthy of my time. You must do better if you’d like me to play along.
I don’t really make any secret of not being macho, now, do I? Do you use such terms of abuse for anyone who’s not straight? Just out of curiosity.
So you read his reference to “the horrors” as excluding this event? Explain the reasoning behind that.
The usual word for such things is “plural”.
He specifically called it a horror. First you say it wasn’t good enough, now you’re arguing that he didn’t even say it. Why do you lie about something that I can verify myself so easily?
Ooh, not very good at this, are you? Maybe you should stick to your strong points. Um . . . do you like bouncing balls around? I bet you’re real good at that!
So let me get this straight: you assume that everyone condemns such things, so when someone doesn’t condemn it explicitly, but describes it as a “horror” and certainly does nothing to suggest he favors it, your new working assumption is that he’s not particularly opposed to it?
I know I’ve been calling you stupid for awhile now, but this is seriously defective reasoning. If this is the way you think, I’m starting to think I should probably be nicer to you. Because it probably has to do with factors far beyond your control.
So once again, the default is “he probably condemns it”. Then, when he doesn’t specifically say so, but does nothing to suggest that he doesn’t condemn it, your response is to decide that he must feel neutral or positive towards it?
Clearly your “default” is not assuming other people condemn it. You started by deciding that people around here would favor or feel neutral towards this horror, which is why you operated under precisely that assumption in your response to Cervaise. Because, if your default was really that Cervaise condemns it, it wouldn’t take additional evidence for you to conclude that he condemns it. That’s what the word “default” means.
It’s probably good for you. I treasure the people I know who are smarter than me; how else can you improve yourself but through interactions with your betters?
What? We’re still on this? Sheesh, give that rotting pile of former equine flesh a rest, willya?
Well, see, condemnation is assumed by those who are capable of understanding that humanity does inhuman things on a regular basis. Tragic? Ayup. Horrifying? You betcha. Worthy of righteous indignation spanning a two (thus far) page thread in the Pit? Probably not, but that’s out of my hands.
Now, magellan01: You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. But one thing that is becoming crystal clear to me is that you have an inability to let things go. Rather than accept that other people share your revulsion of an act without your overblown level of outrage, you get your bloomers all twisted and make baseless accusations that you have to retract. And still you refuse to let go. If I were a Freudian, I would think you were projecting. As it is, I just think you are an ass. Something that you proved, by the by, when you accused Excalibre of being less than manly simply because he disagrees with you. Really, now. Are you actually in third fucking grade?
Accept that nobody is advocating gang rape of eleven year olds (I know, I know, dead horse and all like that), and that people respond to things differently. Frankly, if everyone I knew responded to bad news the way you have, I would probably take the pro-gang rape side just because I knew it would piss them off and give them embolisms.
But that’s just me. I can’t speak for anyone else.
You seem to think that this is an isolated instance, and therefore more heinous.
It’s not isolated (you pay for the articles if you want to read them). As you can see, my area had a similar incident. And it was horrible, the community was outraged, and Jeff Sullivan, the prosecuting attorney at the time, was and is an ass. You would not believe the amount of sexual assaults I read about in our paper. Our county also has the highest percentage of registered sex offenders in the state. And now you want me to be surprised that this shit happens elsewhere?
I share your horror at the incident, but not your surprise. I condemn your attack of **Cervaise ** for his accurate observations on the world. You owe him an apology for your idiocy.
Cervaise, wonderful posts as always.
HA! The old “I’m a victim”. Beautiful. For the record, I do not know if you are gay. I do not care. There is no way I could know from your posts. The only person who I recall as being gay is Miller. He and I have had a few drawn out arguments, some of them heated, but his character or “manliness” has never been called into question. Know why? But he doesn’t act like a punk. He knows which battles are his and is perfectly capable of fighting, and winning them, on his own. Plus, unlike you, he can be funny.
Simply unbelievable. Here are some squiggles that you decided to ignore: (emphasis added)
Wait, you just…no…you just quoted the very phrase that answers your previous whine. To recap: It wasn’t condemned by itself. It, I believe, was included in the “horror” statement at the end, which, from my point of view was part of the problem. That throwing what I saw/see as an extraordinary event in with all the horrors of man—the extraordinary and everyday variety alike—was part of the problem. Please make an attempt to understand how this confusion arose. Seriously.
Ah, now the old “lie” accusation. Is every perceived error a lie? Is your first sentence here simply a mistake on your part, or a lie. Either way, I’ll ask you to show where in his initial post that he condemned the event in question specifically as a “horror”.
Evidently…(snicker of disbelief)…we have two different ideas of what “good at this” means. But you claiming this after the your offerings that preceed it is pure comedy gold. Not what you intended, I know, but gold none the less.
Oooo, nice attempt to gently mischaracterize my oposition. Very nice attempt, indeed. First , see above regardiing “describes it as a ‘horror’”. Next, I have never said the Cervaise “favors” an event like this. The words I used were “excuse” and “minimize”. So, to reiterate—again—when he didn’t condem this specific act and (as I took it) attempted to minimize it, THEN I came to the conclusion I did. It was both things in conjunction. Of course, he has since clarified his position.
Well, it’s better than the bouncing ball thing, so I’ll give it a 1.3.
And once again, I never said he felt positive towards it. Go back and read his initial post. I know you won’t agree, but can you see how he does not condem the specific event AND how, by his own admission, he just doesn’t get that upset or fixate on “horrors” in general, or any one in particular.
Look at the OP again. Do you really think it was not rhetorical in nature? And that I was expecting someone to post a 5O-page exegisis entitled “How and Why man can commit the most depraved horrors”? I expected everyone to read the article and vent, as is often done in The Pit. My default and expectiation was just that. And for (hoepfully) the final time, I approached his initial post with the default I described. When I didn’t see him condemn the event specifically AND saw an attitude that sought to minimize the event by throwing it in the bag with the rest of our daily horrors, my default position was overcome. And the fact of the matter is that Cervaise and I do have different wordviews about this. I cope with the ugliness by acknowledging the extraordinary nature of such events and venting, as I did in the OP. He, evidently, copes with such atrocities by writing them off as another part of the human condition.
There is much truth to this. And it’s one of the reasons I enjoy the SDMB. On the other hand, you are dealing with people who are smarter than you like, what…98, 99 percent of the time? When does the improving part start?
Now, seriously, Excalibre, this has gotten old. Can we move on? If you have a legitimate question or point to make, please by all menas, offer it. But you seem intent to continue this game of “gotcha”. Let me ask you a serous question: What did you think of Frylock’s Post #57?
Are you certain of this? Keep in mind that the USA is not equal to the World. Bad things like this happen ALL the time where there is less law enforcement. Daily? Couldn’t be certain, but I bet it comes close.
Quick question for you though, do you find this scenario (one in which the girl is somewhat willing by all appearances) worse than one in which a 15 year old is gang raped (forcibly against her will) by 12 members of a rival gang?
Do you think these things don’t happen regulary because they aren’t all over the news all the time?
I like to think humanity exists in all of us, but I think it is shortsighted to claim that this is a rare event. Kind of makes fighting it all that much harder if we can’t accept that it is happening right under our noses, even as we speak.
And just so you don’t think I am all for the sexual abuse of this 11 year old girl, don’t bother painting me in with the supporters, because I find it disgusting, even if she was a seasoned whore and not some disillusioned girl doing it to fit in.