Let go get rich cutting the nutsacks off orphans!--Or, Humanity sucks!

The BBQ Pit
61

Am I the first person in this thread to point out that the Catholic church, for more than a thousand years, castrated young boys so that they’d keep their pretty soprano singing voices. That way their choirs would sound real pretty.

I’m off to look for cites, but the impatient can do a search on castrati or castrato.

Mind you, for much of that time the boys’ parents or guardians were the ones behind the mutilation, claiming that the child was gored by a bull or some similar mishap. I think the Church didn’t let more than several centuries go by before it stopped condoning the practice, and then just a half-millenium more or so before they really put their foot down.

62

You’ve just gone and proved that even a math genius can look like a dumb motherfucker in print.

Sam

P.S.- I grew up poor and white in a multi-racial depressed neighborhood, thank you very much. I don’t care if you’re white or black or green, if you can’t get your point across in text, 2+2 still doesn’t mean shit in english.

63

“Am I the first person in this thread to point out that the Catholic church, for more than a thousand years, castrated young boys so that they’d keep their pretty soprano singing voices. That way their choirs would sound real pretty.”

That’s nice and all, but what does it have to do with the topic at hand? Are you putting forth the “past transgressions of western society negates westerners from recognizing and condemning human right abuses in the present” argument?

64

Since this is a part of our cultural heritage, does that mean I can castrate Gawd’s children? Just checking. I mean, it may be wrong, but please don’t interfere, it would be immoral of you to do so. Just turn your back and accept it.

65

There aren’t enough :rolleyes: to even describe what I’m feeling right now.

66

Oh, so if you can’t spell, your not for shit. So, I create an aids vaccine, but Gawd says I am still a moron becuase I can’t spell. Yeah. Right. You are a friggin’ genie-ous.

I still say, if the best you can do is attack the spelling, I must have a pretty good arguement.

67

This is the last time I’m visiting the subject with you because we’re getting nowhere quick. You haven’t had anything but a circular argument regarding the hypocracy of criticizing one’s own culture for criticizing another culture. That’s it, that’s all. You’ve not managed to get anything else of substance out of your thick ass skull except a little race-baiting, and mass sarcasm.

So the answer to your comment is no, you don’t have a good argument.

Sam

68

So, GaWd, are you against stopping people from mutilating children?

69

GaWd, labmonkey, I can’t say I had any particular point in mind when I posted, but I guess my point would have to be just that we, and our superior western culture, are not very far removed from those backwards, uncivilized people we are excoriating.

Please don’t take it to mean I think it’s okay to castrate orphans. But I don’t know that I think it’s any worse than harvesting orphans for their organs, performing clitoridectomies, or any other form of heinous abuse of the young.

I’ve said all I’m going to say. Feel free to keep ripping holes in each other.

70

No Ryle, please read the thread and you’ll find several places where I clearly, concisely explain exactly what it is I am against.

bluethree, I agree.

71

Hey Bosda, Achilleus and GaWd are fucking jokes, I didn’t think anybody outside conservatives’ caricature of extreme liberals held such beliefs and I can hardly believe my eyes reading that someone is filing away mutilation, torture and murder of children away as regrettable but acceptable cultural difference (note to self: Theresienstadt = acceptable Nazi cultural expression), but how about keeping us proud Eurotrash out of it.

Now, if you’d excuse me, I’m going to beat up my kids a bit and then perhaps rape my new neighbor. She’s a good looking gal and I feel like expressing my healthy masculine culture. Hope nobody is going to come down on me for that, that would be cultural insensitive and really hurt my feelings.

  • Rune
72

Maybe if it were adults cutting the gonads from other willing adults, this could be accepted as a unique cultural tradition. The fact that unwilling children are involved moves it from the realm of unique cultural tradition to the realm of disgusting crime against a minor.

Let’s not think about Africa for a moment and consider an example of this happening in the United States of America. Some churches handle venemous snakes as a spiritual ritual. Willing adults handling deadly snakes is an interesting local custom. Adults making children handle deadly snakes is a crime.

73

So, GaWd, what is your opinion of the international efforts, agreements, and treaties meant to protect rhinoceros horns, tiger penises, and elephant tusks from their traditional uses in traditional cultures? Please compare and contrast with your opinion of the international efforts, agreements, and treaties meant to protect children from their traditional uses in traditional cultures. Please state which of the following traditional uses of children in traditional cultures (if any) you would find objectionable and would attempt to stop the practice of:
[ul]
[li]male genital mutilation[/li][li]female genital mutilation[/li][li]slavery[/li][li]sexual relief[/li][li]child labor[/li][/ul]
Please state which of these practices (if any) you would find objectionable in your own culture. Please state the reasons you believe that any atrocity can be excused on the grounds of “culture”.

74

bluethree, I certainly wasn’t calling you out, it’s just that some people have been using that exact argument in a ridiculous attempt to justify an inexcusable violation of human rights. Sorry, if I seemed a tad edgy( ya see, I’m a recovering Catholic :wink: ) I hope I didn’t come across as dismissive of cultural sensitivity, I’d like to think I try, I just don’t like to see it used basically as a get out of jail free card.

Also, GaWd , apologies for the ad homs, I let my temper get the better of me. My diametrical opposition to your opinion stands, however.

75

Hey everyone, get some perspective. We aren’t talking about some traditional practice here. This is a new phenomenon (like kidnapping other tribe’s young people and marching them to the west coast once was ).

So I don’t think we need to be concerned about cultural insensitivity.

I wonder if any one complained when Britain outlawed the slave trade several decades before the Lincoln presidency. They even boarded foreign vessels in support of their arbitrary edict without a coalition Sure mucked up which by then was the cultural practice of trapping people in Africa. Don’t you think it would have been better if Britain acted several centuries earlier?

Oh one more thing. Everyone is talking about castration. Its the skinning humans part that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

76

What GaWd & Co. don’t seem to realize is that radical cultural relativism isn’t an ethical system, it’s a sloppy-minded pop slogan.

As has been repeatedly pointed out, even radical cultural relativism assumes a norm that it seeks to impose on everyone: It is always unacceptable to criticize a different cultures norms even if doing so is your cultural norm.

But the rot is, of course, deeper than that. The caricature version offered by Achilles and GaWd completely denies the concept of human rights.[sup]1[/sup] Since Germany has already come up, I won’t be further godwinizing this thread by pointing out that under the philosophical position they have taken, they are unable to say that the holocaust was a bad thing. Violent anti-semitism was, after, all, a long-established cultural practice.

What they are missing is an actual ethical system. Now this is a lot more work than nailing your colours to a bumper sticker. But it’s the only way to begin to work out a coherent ethical POV. You could right a book arguing all the intermediate steps, so I won’t.

Suffice to say that murdering young children so you can use their testicles as lucky charms is morally wrong in an absolute sense. By the same token, female genital mutilation is wrong in an absolute moral sense.

Some people have complained that European efforts to “civilize the natives” have caused wars, bloodshed, hatred, etc., etc. Whether you should take action to correct an evil is, however, a completely separate question from whether you can recognize that an evil exists. We can say that slavery in the Sudan is evil. It does not follow, however, that we should or even ethically can invade Sudan to stamp out slavery. These are complex, and highly pragmatic, questions.

Nor, however, should we engage in a sort of reverse sour grapes. “Well, since we can’t actually do anything about it, I guess it’s not so bad after all.” It might be easier on your conscience not to judge what you choose not to change but that doesn’t make your refusal to reach a moral conclusion virtuous.

[sup]1[/sup] Actually, there’s a lot more than that wrong with it but it will have to wait. sigh So much stupidity and so little time.

77

Male genital mutilation anywhere it occurs, except when consented to by the mutilee.

Oh yeah. That’s what these guys are doing. We don’t like it, but we don’t want to be judged for what WE do to our children, either, so we mustn’t judge them.

78

Cue the ominous music…
Please tell me you’re not talking about circumcision?

79

You seem to believe that deploring the situation in Africa and despising those who perform such acts is the equivalent of considering some African cultures inferior. In my own case, I must admit you have a point.

If (please note the qualifier) a culture allows and encourages the permanent mutilation of children, I do feel that they are inferior. If that makes me an evil cultural imperialist then so be it.

I believe that there are some activities that should be hated and stopped whenever possible. If activities like this aren’t condemned then where are the limits? Is anything at all OK as long as it is tolerated by a culture?

Regards

Testy

80

Separating subjects, you infected hemmorhoid? You are the one blaming the 9/11 attacks on the hideous cultural violation of objecting when Africans castrate orphans.

The moral emptiness of your position has been adequately exposed by Truth Seeker and others. I assume you were equally vehement in condemning the US and others’ efforts to end apartheid in South Africa, in funding for AIDS prevention in Africa, and staunch in your support of slavery, Pol Pot, and the killing fields.

Actually, I am quite sure you held no such position, since this half-baked cultural relativism is nothing but a chance to assail your betters from the safety of your mother’s basement.

Some people have a well-thought out and consistent moral positon. Others simply post to fill the time while their girlfriends are inflating.