This Slate article from 2004 cites psychiatrists who say that that sort of megalomaniacal contempt for other people is a hallmark of psychopathy.
Well, uh, er, thank you (I guess) for speaking up for the oppressed bullies of the world. You don’t often see someone with the fortitude to take the side of those who sadistically victimize the weak and vulnerable. The debate wouldn’t be complete without someone representing bullies.
That is a flagrant misrepresentation of my point, focusing on one phrase out of context. No-one is advocating the position of the bully, being wilfully mean to other people comes from a place of emotional weakness and weakness is implicitly what I am against. However, mollycoddling the victim and pretending that because it doesn’t fit with people’s invented notion of equality/fairness/justice, it shouldn’t happen, are reactions of a weak mind. Read my entire post and that will be self-evident. Moral knee-jerk reactions are facile.
Nah. Your attempt to justify bullying was facile.
Those who are bullied are not bullied because they are weak, just because they are different. And bullying does not give them an opportunity to toughen up, it just hurts. In fact, those who have been bullied are probably often likely to take their experiences and become bullies, themselves, when an opportunity arises. Your claims about your life and your ethics would be an indication of that sort of thing. Social Darwinism, (which is what you are attempting to promote), was based on a misreading of a single section of Darwin’s biological theory and has never been a valid scientific theory, just a political rationale for abuse, discrimination, and oppression. It has long been discredited in the sciences and I see no reason to support pseudo-science.
Philosophy is not science, it is world view. You may relate my point to ‘social darwinism’, but since I’m not interested in relating Darwin’s work on biology to sociology and philosophy, to accuse me of pseudo-science is foolish. I have offered you no scientific argument for my point, merely that it is my belief. If I attempted to validate my beliefs through spurious empirical data this would be pseudo-science. Quite frankly, that in my opinion was a moral knee-jerk reaction, but I’ll forgive you your weakness.
Those who are bullied are bullied because they allow it to happen, or because they aren’t powerful enough to stop it. Sorry if this touches a raw nerve, or exposes one of the bleeding hearts of western cultural values, but weakness is not equal to strength and there will always be weak individuals who need to strengthen up or they will suffer. They may be different but everyone is different, some people are mean-spirited and nasty and this is another form of weakness. I have never bullied anyone in my life, and have been on the recieving end of bullying when I was younger so why you seem to think I speak for bullies worldwide is quite frankly beyond me. I would not, however, allow myself to be bullied again, as I see that the sovereignty of a man’s will is more or less all he has in this world, and that without that he is a vague shadow of what he should be. If you want to give all the weak people of the world a big hug and keep them safe, feel free, but you’ll need pretty big arms to cover all the weak individuals we encourage to stay weak.
If you’re going to call something facile, at least have an argument that isn’t based on the misuse of language and spurious reasoning. That would be like me inferring that since you show compassion to the weak, you must therefore definitely be a Christian. I’m no more a social darwinist than I am a member of the Communist party of China, regardless of whether someone wants to lump my opinion in with them, or any other group.
There is no solution to this growing problem which the public will accept.
Let’s try that a different way:
“A man who is mugged is mugged because he allows it to happen, or because he isn’t powerful enough to stop it.”
“Women who are raped are raped because they allow it to happen, or because they aren’t powerful enough to stop it.”
“An ethnic group that is “cleansed” is slaughtered because they allow it to happen, or because they aren’t powerful enough to stop it.”
In other words, when a crime happens it’s the victim’s fault.
As someone who once got mugged by someone I was bullied by, I can definitely agree with the first. The third is about a group of people, each individual member is individually responsible for not protecting themselves from their own death, their survival or not as a group is their shared responsibility.
The only one I take issue with is the rape issue, since men and women are not equal in power, it is disgustingly weak and dishonourable for a man to treat a woman like that. In my opinion sexual predators and abusers should be executed in every proven case and it’s the weakness of our society which allows them to survive.
My argument is not that people who do bad things are good, that would be a wilfully contrarian and intentionally incendiary point to argue. My argument is that it is human nature for some people to be like this, some to a more subtle or indeed more evident degree. We as a society believe in a nonsensical abstract concept of fairness, in which it’s okay to be weak because no-one should exploit this at any rate. This is great when we’re all Christian and the majority of people are scared by God in to behaving this way, but it falls apart when there are people out there who intentionally prey on your weakness (religious leaders themselves in some cases). Subservience to foolish ideals of pity and mercy and justice and equality only weaken you. This is my genuine opinion. You’re free to disagree but be assured I’m not trying to be ‘edgy’ or say things to enflame.
A way of explaining it is like this: Someone comes up to me in the street and attacks me. He has no justification for doing so. I’d really prefer he didn’t, because I don’t enjoy it. However, at this point my survival/wellbeing is my responsibility. If I am weak and feeble I am going to be beaten up/robbed/killed whatever. Moralising after the event will not help me, what would have helped is more strength/more power/more mental fortitude/more confidence etc. Morals are all very well for us all to pat ourselves on the back about, but they are essentially arbitrary value judgements and they won’t protect you from the harsh realities of life.
No. “Weak” and “fault” are not the same thing. That’s you putting words into another poster’s mouth.
Of course when someone is overpowered and attacked, it’s because their attacker is more powerful than they are. Compared to the attacker, they are weak.
Bullying is not an isolated assault, by and large. It’s repeated assault. And yes, it’s repeated because the bullied person can’t get it to stop. I’m not sure I’d use the word “weak”, because as we’ve seen from this thread, sometimes parents and school officials and the bullied kid really do a great deal to try to address the issue and fail. I don’t think that’s weakness, I think that’s evidence that the problem is larger and more powerful than the people trying to handle it. But if it’s not weakness as an objective term, it is weakness in relation to the bully.
Yes, if a woman is repeatedly raped over many different days, then it’s because she’s not powerful enough to stop it - she’s not free to leave her rapist, she’s not brave enough to kill him or she has no access to a weapon or she lacks the intestinal fortitude to use one. She may not be objectively weak, but she’s not as strong as her attacker. It’s not her fault, but if she had more tools at hand, or more training, or better options for moving away, she might well be able to become strong enough to overpower her attacker and escape.
I don’t like the word weak. Not at all. But the sentiment is sound. Fighting bullying is a two (at least) pronged attack. We have to give the bullies a better option for keeping themselves amused or for expressing themselves, *and *we have to arm the bullied with strategies to reduce their appeal to bullies.
Taking care of the weaker members of human society didn’t start with Christianity. In 1909, we discovered 60,000 year old Neanderthal remains, of a person who had been severely arthritic and had lost most of his teeth. There was evidence that this person had lived even though he would have required someone to help him with eating. Humans have been “mollycoddling” the weak for at least 60,000 years. That ship has sailed, a long time ago.
Is it a growing problem, or is it that violence that happens at schools gets more media coverage now than it might have in another era?
I didn’t believe altruism started with Christianity (that would be playing into the hands of Christians with their argument that we have no moral reality until God reveals it through His books), but rather that it is typified within our society by Christianity. For every example of kindness there is an equal example of horrific treatment by humans to one another. Please don’t assume yourself so superior as to treat people’s logic so flippantly. Ships sail from ports across the world daily, many sink before they reach their destination, some of them used to carry slaves, some ships waged war, spread famine and pestilence and colonialism. Your ship symbolism is quite fitting come to think of it.
You are a Social Darwininst and the fact that you object to that association simply demonstrates that you are bothered by that association, not that the association is in error.
I am sorry that you cannot reconcile your beliefs with your attitudes, but there you are.
I do not have any particular ideological issue with social darwinist opinion, ergo I’m not going to enter into a debate on it’s content. What I am saying to you is that your conflating my belief with your perception of what constitutes social darwinism is nothing more than your opinion. I am not speaking from a platform of social reform based on Darwin’s biological theory of evolution. You have equated the two ideals, but this is your decision. If there is overlap then it is incidental, not intentional.
Further, I have adequately expressed and defended my belief, pontificating my philosophy any further serves no utilitarian point other than proselytizing; converting people is contrary to my desires. You can use base tactics such as trying to insinuate that there are problems of dissonance between my argument and my psyche,as is your right, but they are baseless accusations.
So, yours was just a drive-by posting without any point? You drop in, make a series of claims that are congruent with Social Darwinism, get offended that your philosophy has already been debunked as bad science, then decide to pick up your marbles and go home.
That’s fine. Just recognize that we can see what happened.
(I also note that you tend to get things wrong. Nothing you posted was based on “Darwin’s biological theory of evolution,” and I certainly never claimed that there was. Further, there is no dissonance between your argument and your psyche; they are in perfect agreement. It just happens that they also agree with bad political philosophy.)
I’m impressed that you speak for a multitude.
My philosophy has never been debunked as bad science. Believe what I say or not, you can live with the perception I’ve put forward as you can with others that could be put forward that I’d disagree with. I’ve never offered scientific proof that my philosophy for life is an objective truth, merely stated it as one in opposition to many subjective perceptions being expressed and that are currently believed. Realise that or not, it’s ultimately irrelevant. Your status on this board does not affect the veracity of what I’ve said.
Learn to accept points of view that differ with your own or don’t, I care not. I’ve said what I believe and I’ve explained why I believe so; everyone is free to agree or disagree as they see fit. You can interpret this as giving up/conceding to your ‘superior’ logic or however you’d like. Casting aspersions about my intention and meaning are your right regardless of your accuracy. No has picked up marbles, nor gone home.
Oh and as an addendum; Social darwinism is “Darwin’s biological theory of evolution” applied to to society and social life. I never advocated this, hence my disagreement with your identification. Your conflating my ideas with social darwinism is your intention and your opinion. It is validated by nothing other than your perception of the similarities.
As well you should be.
Yeah. It really has.
Straw man. I never claimed that you had.
You are wrong. It was a few errant philosophers’ misapplication of a mistake they made in reading Darwin’s work, (or in misreading poor synopses of his work). Hence it was never “Darwin’s biological theory of evolution.” (I find it amusing that even when trying to deny your association with Social Darwinism, you are still trying to make it sound as though it had some sort of legitimate underpinning with just a simple error of application.)
For someone whose philosophy is that people should just toughen up, you seem to be rather thin skinned when it comes to someone telling you you are wrong.
Sorry, but your philosophy has just turned you into a bully. You no longer have empathy for victims. There is nothing stopping you from hurting someone else and blaming them for not being strong enough to stop you. Remember, you’ve already discounted morality as weak.
No, untrue. I know myself to be correct, I was attempting to explain my position, however nothing I said conceded or displayed weakness in any sense. That is a nonsense position. In addition, being ‘wrong’ would require this to be a discussion on empirical facts, which it is not.
Another nonsense position is ‘your philosophy has just turned you into a bully.’. Cites please. Who have I bullied? I’m nice to my daughter, my parents and my close friends. I’m tersely polite to strangers. Read up on utilitarianism. My position influences the fact that I do not give to charity, nor care about world events that most people have knee-jerk emotional reactions to. I would never render aid to a stranger in some way that even slightly impeded my life. Indeed morality is weak and silly and a crutch for people who’d like to believe that there is some kind of higher purpose or meaning to life that ‘unpleasant’ events run contrary to.
I’m really not going to bother with Mr. ‘Your philosophy is bad science lololol’ again, because if he can’t see the difference between philosophy and science, that is his weakness to deal with. He’s never cited anything other than ‘this is bad science’ to attack my position. No ideas of his own, nor any clear evidence as to what elements of my position are wrong. I’ve said what I have to.