Redeemed by the Dark Christ of Flight 123

I was, at one time, an ordained minister of the Church of the Subgenius. I paid my $20, and received my credential. My favorite privilege of ministry was “deflowerings.”

Is there really a game associated with the one and only true anti-religion?

And Happy New Year, kiddos!

It’s been great.

Right now, Brittany and Jessica are, um, pulling me away from SDMB.

Gotta run, but I’ll be back!

Okay, yeah, there is some hostility, but it’s not to you, it’s to this whole concept. I simply have a very, very cynical mistrust of the idea of anyone being truly changed by witnessing tragedy, since experience has taught me that tose changes are rarely sincere and lasting. Tragedy exists all around us, cheerfully ignored by many of those who espouse love-thy-neighbor when “reminded” by the holidays or a well-publicized tragedy.

I would never dare to claim that I am a better person than you are. I don’t know you. Truth be told, I have a nasty streak, and it takes careful policing.

Therein lies my nasty streak. I have very little patience with selfish, small-minded people. If someone hasn’t noticed the hell that surrounds us every day, they deserve to experience it themselves, in my opinion.

But the world doesn’t work that way. They will continue to blithely glide along, living lives of incredible luxury and comfort, mostly due to being born in the right geographic location, expressing scorn for the poor, and donating when the media prods them to do so. Then they’ll feel good about themselves, though they probably spend more on lawn care each year than they put into the charity fund.

If I want to know what hell is, I can look into the eyes of the children at the local battered women’s shelter. I can look into the eyes of a parent who is watching their child be slowly eaten alive by cancer.

Flight 123 was horrific, but it’s no more horrific than seeing a woman who has just been raped, or the anguish of a mother who just got informed by the military that her son was blown to bits.

My husband works in a prison. I see hell through his eyes every single day.

No, dammit! There is no “lesson” to be gleaned from any of this. Christ on a slice of toast, man, suffering just* IS*. It does not exist for a “reason.”

Utterly absent, I’m afraid.

I don’t see why not. Those who are willfully oblivious except when it’s popular to “care” fully deserve scorn.

Let me tell you a little story. My husband, as I mentioned, works in a prison. On one occasion, he was speaking to an inmate who had just beaten a fellow prisoner to a pulp. My husband asked him why, and was told in heated tones that the victim had stolen a pair of shoes from him.

“Theives deserve to get beat!” the inmate declared.

My husband looked at the papers on his desk. “It says that you’re in here for burglary.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, what about the people you stole from? Should they get to beat YOU?”

The inmate was confused and appalled by the idea. “No, of course not!”

Try as he might, my husband never made the inmate understand the irony and hypocrisy of his stance. The reason why he could not make the inmate understand is because the man had a complete lack of empathy. He sincerely could not understand why he should care that his actions hurt other people.

The prison is full of people like this, who lack empathy in any form. It’s theorized by many scholars that the concept was not taught to them as children. As adults, it’s nearly impossible to teach it, even with intensive therapy. The inmate may eventually accept it as a system of rules, but will never be able to grasp it as, shall we say, an emotional concept. He will never FEEL it, though he may obey the rules to avoid trouble.

The people of whom we are speaking, the ones who do not understand compassion, are much the same. They somehow missed out on an important part of their socialization-- or they’re just bad people who chose not to care. Take your pick. Either way, they won’t change.

I have no patience for those kinds of people. If that’s wrong, well, I never claimed to be perfect. I would rather spend my time joining my resources with people who do understand the concepts, rather than trying to stir a momentary emotional response from those who lack true compasssion.

I don’t agree. We wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now if that was true. What 9/11 raised was the levels of anger and xenophobia. The comfort and caring part lasted about as long as it took the networks to return to regularly scheduled programming.

I’m not angry at you-- really, I’m not. My anger is directed at the hypocritical people who snuggle down into a blanket of feel-good generosity for their fellow man, and then discard it as casually as a McDonald’s sandwich wrapper. It’s directed at those whose tears were as sincere as those they would have at a sad movie. It’s directed at those who use periodic generosity as a way of propping up their egos, who can pat themselves on the back as being “good people” because they gave when everyone else was doing so.

And it’s my belief that if they haven’t learned that “lesson” already, from the suffering they see about them every single day, their compassion is nothing more than a fad.

Ah, but isn’t it true that people are rarely changed by anything? What kinds of causes of change are you willing to trust?

It’s cool that you are aware of it. I’m far from perfect myself.

That’s the bulk of the human population, sadly. As Jesus said, “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Mt 7:14).

And they do. We do. Are are any of us God-like enough so that we do not deserve pain and suffering? That is, are there any of us not working through negative karma. No: “Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.”

What is the right amount? What is the right formula? I don’t know myself, but I always feel that I’m not doing enough to serve others.

You are right, of course. I didn’t mean in any way that Flight 123 was a hell “superior” to all others.

What is your philosophy? I think that overall Existence has a purpose, but a lot of evil is just evil: just is, as you say. There is the drag of entropy (hence we die), and there is also the “background evil” of the universe. One of our purposes is to battle against these things.

It depends, I think. Some are called to serve others on a deep level, others are called just to live their lives and “do no harm” and perhaps do a little good in their lives. Some, like the mentally retarded, are not called to act at all but nevertheless are blameless for not doing so.

I agree. They’re moral writeoffs, so to speak. All you can do with them is lock them up and throw away the key. I don’t believe any of that “people are good by nature” bullshit. Some people are evil by nature. And some people do both extreme good and evil.

I do have compassion for evil people, however. They are already in hell.

But then whom are you working for? Who is the object of your compassion? “Good” people who just happen to be down and out for the nonce?

My mom worked for years for a shelter for victims of domestic violence. The people there deserved compassion; they were, 99.5% of them, true victims. But they were also, 80% or so of them, people who made extremely poor life choices: i.e., dumbasses. Dumbasses who kept going back to abusers and therefore exposing their kids to further abuse. Etc. I doubt they also spent much on charity, even when they had the money.

But compassion, in my view, is for everyone, not just the people we approve of.

The mean, as always, is mediocre. Those out there ready to receive a spiritual message received it.

I think you despair to much over the mean. The mean is gonna suck, my friend. The mean isn’t going to be posting on the Dope and giving to charity or volunteering. The mean is on its couch with a bag of Cheetos and watching American Idol. The mean is braindead and selfish. And 1,000 years from now the mean will still be braindead and selfish. But if we’re not compassionate to such people, I don’t know who is left.

It seems odd to judge others’ compassion in this way, disparaging forms or modes or patterns of compassion that aren’t good enough to you. How better, wouldn’t you say, to treat each instance of compassion as a spark that might, with a further gust of compassion from without, become a flame?

When it comes from true self-reflection and is a sincere dedication to being a little bit better every day. It’s gradual, but steady. I know people who have gone through those changes, but it wasn’t because they had an epiphany. It was that they realized over time that what they were doing (or not doing) needed to be different, and made a commitment to try to be better.

Yes, it is the bulk of the population-- which is what I blame for making me so cynical. :wink: If jerks were rare, we could all just shake our heads and move on reflecting that, like Anne Frank said, that underneath it all, people are really good at heart. I can’t do that.

Things don’t happen to people because they deserve it (though my nasty streak sometimes wished it did) they just happen. Likewise, I do not practice compassion because the recipients deserve it. I do it because I think it’s the right thing to do. I know that most would not return the favor, but that should not change my actions.

There is no “amount.” Remember the story of the widow’s mite? It wasn’t the fact that she gave, it was the fact that she still wanted to give even when she herself had next to nothing that made her special.

Nor does it have to be monetary. Some of the greatest gifts I have ever given to people was simply a few moments of my time to truly listen to them. Doing small favors for your fellow man: holding a door for someone struggling with packages, or giving half of your sandwich to a homeless man. It can be as simple as calling someone who’s having trouble and tell them that you’re thinking of them. It can be as simple as a smile to someone who looks like they’ve had a bad day. It can be letting someone in front of you because they seem to be in a hurry. It can be donating blood and plasma to the Red Cross or volunteering your time.

Yes, it can involve tangible things, such as giving some of your household goods to a person whose house has burnt, or giving money when you have some to spare, but it doesn’t have to. It’s just doing what you can every day to make the people around you just a little bit happier.

I am not religious in any fashion, nor do I believe in karma or any outher supernatural force. Though I am a moral relativist, I have a firm personal code by which I abide, which is relatively simple: don’t hurt people, and help them whenever you can.

I do not believe there is a purpose to existance, unless it’s to eat, to reproduce and pass on our DNA to the next generation. We exist only because our parents had sex, and their parents before them, ad infinitum. We die because we age, or got sick, or were squished like a bug.

Nor do I believe in evil. (As an entity or force, as opposed to an adjective, that is.)

I think this is a fundamental difference in philosophy between us upon which we will never agree.

I do not believe anyone is “called” to do anything. So, I believe we all are equally responsible for being good to one another in whatever ways we can, unless physically or mentally incapable of doing so.

Not always. Sometimes, yes, they live with the consequences of their actions, but there are others who have good lives.

99.9% of people, if asked, would say that they were good people. Almost everyone can justify themselves and feel just fine about looking into the mirror each morning.

If Karma exists, it has a lot of catching up to do, for I know quite a few nasty characters who have great lives and are quite happy.

Anyone who needs it. Even those shallow, selfish people get a helping hand, for, as I said, I do not give compassion and comfort because the recipient “deserves” it, but because, as a decent person, I should give it.

I know this, and I do not despair. I do what I do because I am who I am. The actions of others do not affect that. But I will not play along. I’ll call it as I see it.

I have a very unromantic view of the world. I am a pragmitist all the way. (A pacifist pragmatic moral relativist athiest liberal, to be more exact. :wink: ) Yes, I get angry, but it’s mostly impatience at the self-delusions of mankind.

Because I’m to realistic to think that it might. I can hope and dream that I may become a best-selling novelist, but in reality, I have to acknowledge that I’ll be lucky if I can even get a publisher. Why play mental games like a child wishing for certain toys on Christmas only to be dissapointed when the package holds a sweater?

I can dream that one day, all mankind will be united, and that love and compassion will be valued and rewarded, but that’s never going to happen. Our species is incapable of it. People will always struggle for power and wealth. There will always be discrimination, though the traits discriminated against may vary. There will always be poverty, child abuse and thievery. It’s utterly inescapable.

I think that one of the problems with this world is that people rarely take a good, hard, honest look at it. Instead, they allow their views to be obscured by optimism, or philosophical, or political lenses.

You haven’t explained how. I do think understanding death has improved my understanding of life in many ways. But this isn’t really about death; you can see that in a lot of places in a lot of forms. This is about shock and horror, and I don’t think that contributes to understanding or compassion. Once the shock fades, so does the impetus for the change.

Exactly. And I think this kind of impetus that motivates people for a little while, then makes them give up in frustration. Steady motivation is preferable for that reason.

Is there? And if so, how does this “Dark Christ” stuff help anybody get to it?

Lissa, I do thank you for your responses. One key question I have for you is, granted that you are an atheist and a moral relativist, whence comes your principle and practice of compassion? I am interested in your perspective.

For me, compassion is related to my believing in the Divine and a purposeful Reality as a pantheist and New Ager.

That is good, but I don’t see why epiphanies or other more sudden realizations must be totally discounted. Like you, I aim for daily progress, but sometimes I am able to make a leap forward.

That said, I do think the mean of humanity is good/positive as opposed to evil/negative. If it were not so, our species had self-destructed by now. The “nice” thing about goodness is that it is self-reinforcing.

Which is not to say that the mean is not also extremely frustrating. Although most people have in them a preponderance of good, they still miss the chance to be all that they can. Most people do not live and love to the fullest.

In my experience, giving tends to raise the level of both giver and receiver, so that the receiver is in turn more able to give. This phenomenon is due to the self-reinforcing nature of the good.

Right, these things can mean a lot. Daily goodness is more important than sporadic goodness.

Because, but not only because.

Pretty soon I’m going to do my big Meaning of Life thread in GD. I’ve really figured it out. It’s simple but satisfying.

I’ll deal with that in the GD thread too.

We agree in part; we disagree in part. No problem with that.

In most cases I see, the crime is its own punishment. People who really screw others over usually meet a bad end. But that’s just my observation.

Not in my observation. Even wanton psychopaths tend to know that they’re evil; they just don’t care or can’t overcome it.

In a way, yes: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin–none getting their comeuppance in this life, apparently. But were they truly “happy”? When I think of Stalin or Mao, I don’t think of people with a glow of happiness about them. They were, already in this life, in a kind of hell.

I’m a writer too. The reality is that supply and demand are so out of balance when it comes to writing that it’s very difficult to hope to be published, and the rewards are few even if one does.

I think it is escapable. These are the growing pains of the species. We are still evolving, and we are improving.

But one may err in the opposite direction and ease into a cozy despair.

I think the point of this thread was Aeschines was trying to explain how it helped him. He wasn’t trying to get people to believe in something, he was creating a metaphor to describe a personal experience. If it doesn’t suit you, that’s fine, but I think you are applying more to it than necessary. He’s using the words “Dark Christ” to describe a very real emotional experience that he had.

I have a word “Respainspurtay”, that is a word that has popped into my head in times of emotional pain, it doesn’t mean anything taken out of the context of the very particular type of pain that it is, it’s in my lower body in my bowel region actually, and it’s a pain when certain muscles that were locked start to unlock, it’s kind of like when your leg is asleep and pins and needles happen when it wakes up, but imagine that in your intestines.

Now people store their emotions in their bodies a lot more than they are aware of. They have a trauma occur and then some part of their body convulses, and in order to stop feeling that, they shut down their sense of that part of the body. In order to truly be aware of that part of the body however, they must reopen that part of themselves, but the key to that unlocking is the emotional/physical trauma that locked it in the first place, so they have to finish going through that trauma to get full usage of that.

Now, it is my opinion that people have a problem with what he is saying because he is using the words “Dark Christ”. My word respainspurtay has absolutely no cultural context for you, therefore you aren’t going to have much more reaction to it than “What does that mean?”, whereas you already have a prior context for both the words, Dark and Christ. So what it seems to me, and I could be wrong, that people are putting the words before the idea, when in this case the idea came first, the name came second. The point is, not to let the words of the metaphor cloud your judgement of the communication that is trying to be passed along.

The Dark Christ clearly helps some people in that it helped Aeschines, and he is attempting to share what it was that helped him, as we all like to do. So it’s not a question of whether or not it’s useful, it is useful, to Aeschines, and to anyone who can relate to Aeschines experience. The experience is not foreign to me, my ex-girlfriend called it “The Devil Jesus”, and I think it is an integral part of the Christ consciousness, the part that goes into hell to reclaim the lost souls.

To put it simply, it is the aspect that helps you transcend your suffering. You can use any metaphor you want, this is the one Aeschines has chosen. But it’s important not to get stuck on the metaphor, as the metaphor is the box that the actual information comes in, but not the information itself.

Lissa There are lots of things that I know that I get frustrated that other people don’t get, that seems so elementary to me, and I think that they should be able to get it, but for some reason they don’t. I have had discussions with you, where I had that same feeling, that you weren’t getting something and it was quite frustrating. People learn, and they learn different things at different times in their lives. If you know something, then I hope you learn the skills to help teach it to others, but we should remember that every single person on this planet knows something that we don’t get, and in a lot of cases it’s elementary to them, but not necessarily to us.

For instance for me what you said about the people in prison was very interesting to me, it was something I was previously unaware of. I have a very natural empathy, and the idea of it being taught to a child is a new concept for me as I thought that children were generally empathic, which is how they are capable of learning anything at all. I always thought that in western society we teach children NOT to be empathic.

Erek

My practice of compassion comes simply because it is the right thing to do. Good people are kind, and I want to be a good person. I don’t strive to be good because I think there’s any reward in it for me in this life or the next. I do it because I feel it’s right.

Good people may get a “bump”, but a bad person is likely not going to be changed overnight, a la* A Christmas Carol*.

Some might say we’re well on our way.

Perhaps, but I’ve noticed that many people don’t even realize how unhappy they are. They float through life neither happy or unhappy, just in a sort of numb stasis. That’s why prison isn’t so bad for some people-- life has never given them any better. You have to see sunlight before you appreciate darkness, and many people have never seen the sun. They don’t know to mourn for it.

I don’t share your optimism. History, sociology and anthropology has taught me too much about the nature of mankind for that. I truly feel that I could go backwards or forwards in time 1000 years and people would be the same. The targets of prejudice may change, wealth may shift from one class to another, and social conciousness may shift, but people remain fundamentally the same. Unless you can eliminate selfishness, we will never change.

I do not despair at all. I simply see things the way they are. I accept the world as it is, and my place within it without reservation. I do not kick against the pricks. My knowledge does not make me despair or lessen in any way my personal commitment to try show care to those around me. I cannot change the world, but I can try to make my tiny bit of pleasant.

Mankind is capable of horror and beauty, depending on its mood. It can flood a place with generosity, or scorch it with the desert air of indifference. It hand grasp the hand of a friend and the next moment let slip the dogs of war. We are flawed creatures, incapable of achieving the dreams of peace we espouse.

That doesn’t change anything. I will still do what I can, because it’s the right thing to do.

I understand that, but he also posted this and wanted to share it, so I’m responding. Aeschines has talked about using this as a means of self-improvement, and I’m answering that I think that method doesn’t work on a fundmental level. I’m trying to explain why; let’s see if I can do that more fully.

The fact that he says he needs to be redeemed again - or will eventually need it - backs up what I said: this is not a way to help yourself or make yourself a better person. It’s just a way to torture yourself. If you’ll pardon me for saying so, Aeschines, I think your OP sounds melodramatic because you’re trying to convince yourself. Are you avoiding a hell that other people have gone through, or are you just putting yourself through yours? I don’t think gore and terror improve us - because this isn’t about death as a thing we have to come to terms with in life, it’s about seeing people die in a way that matches our nightmares. It’s more like a cartoon.
And I do think it’s a legit and interesting topic for discussion. I saw September 11 on TV like so many of us did. I saw the video of Nick Berg dying. I’m not a better person for that, not even by the tiniest bit. They shocked me, they revolted me. But the reaction I had was a visceral one to the horror of death, and in particular of knowing death was approaching without the ability to do anything. It’s a reminder that people die at random, which we all already know but don’t think about constantly because we can’t.

My experience of New York in the months and years after September 11 was that, for a time, everybody did try to be a little nicer. But it was more of “walking on eggshells” than actual kindness. For the most part, people were numb, which is the exact opposite of compassionate. They were just hoping nothing bad would happen that day. And of course, by and large, this has faded. You still see some reflections of it, like the boring annual excuse for New Years’ Eve, but it always goes away. It’s not because the redemption ‘doesn’t take.’ It’s because the teacher sucks. People cannot wander around on a day-to-day or minute-to-minute basis contemplating the horror of being beheaded or dying in plane crashes and still function in a healthy way. So if they want reasons to be good to each other, they need better ones. A reason that you naturally attempt to ignore is going to be any kind of effective, constant motivation.

In a manner of speaking, Aeschines, you’ve already admitted that this method of becoming a better, more compassionate person doesn’t work. If it was effective, “the Dark Christ” wouldn’t show up every so often to show you horrible things happening to strangers.

Oh, goodness, no. Empathy is certainly not innate. Look at a child who has had little parental supervision. He snatches things from others and ignores them when they cry. He pushes others out of the way, and doesn’t share willingly.

Empathy training is one of the most important parts of early childhood socialization. Of course, parents* don’t necessarily know they’re teaching it, even as they do. They’d call it teaching children to be “nice”, however the child not only internalizes manners, but also social skills.

It comes in the form of the example I gave: “You took that cookie from Cindy and made her cry. How would you feel if someone did that to you?” or “How would you feel if Mike made fun of you and called you that name?”

It’s teaching the child to put itself in another person’s shoes, and see themselves as others see them. (If you’re interested in reading more about this, Google "Cooley’s “looking-glass self” and Meade’s “theory of the generalized other”). It usually begins to develop firmly around age five. They learn that others have feelings just like they do.

Some people miss out on this, neglected as children or in a dysfuntional environment. If it’s missed in childhood, it’s nearly impossible to create it as an adult. As a result, some people genuinely can not understand why they should care what others are feeling.

They all don’t necessarily become criminals, of course. If they’re taught a respect for the law, they just go through life as jerks. If there’s no respect for the law, a lack of empathy can lead to criminal behavior.

They’ve studied lack of empathy quite extensively in prisons as one of the aspects of anti-social personality disorders. There’s no treatment for it, and it’s not recognized as a mental illness, per se.

  • Parents aren’t the only socializers in a child’s life. Peers also have a huge influence,

It’s about a lot of things. It’s about, as you say, shock and horror, but also indeed about death, our relationship to our creations, hope, hopelessness and efforts in the face thereof. I’m disappointed that people haven’t followed the links and thought this thing through with me (not that I’m advocating getting into the scary stuff just for the heck of it).

I totally don’t agree with this perspective. There need not be only one species of motivator; different things work for different people.

I think mswas explained it superbly.

I really wasn’t stating definitively that I would need to be redeemed again; I was anticipating the need out of recognition for the daily effort that you yourself espouse and the fact that most/all stimuli do not retain their strength indefinitely. In other words, I was being humble, not content to say that the Dark Christ had done it for me once and for all.

I don’t get what you mean. I am, in a sense, sharing the Hell that others have passed through, not avoiding it.

Here’s where following the links would help. There’s no gore there, and the really scary part is how “normal” things were until the final several minutes.

I’m not really talking about “gore” or harsh visuals that shock. I’m talking about understanding natural/moral evil on a deep level. Visuals may be a part of that, but my OP is more about the audio and actual words people said/wrote.

The teacher doesn’t suck. You move through the darkness back into the light a stronger, healthier person. I am not suggesting that we should be in downer mode all the time.

That’s like saying vitamin C is ineffective because you have to keep taking it. Which is not to say that the Dark Christ is something you need to take daily or even regularly, but the fact that it may prove useful more than once does not impune its nutritive value.

And what is the origin of good/bad right/wrong in your vision of things?

If I were an atheist (and I have been in the past), I would see goodness and ethics primarly as a practical matter: We’re a social species, and assuming we want more utility (need fulfillment, pleasure, etc.) rather than less, we’ve got to behave in ways that advance society. Further, a certain degree of respect for the individual (this differing greatly among cultures) is necessary in order to advance society (that is, pissed-off individuals can hurt society individually or band together to strike a “blow againt the empire”).

Compassion, then, would be just one mode of handling the individual to advance society. Your philosophy, not explicitly but by implication (you want to be a “good person”), goes beyond the above. Can you elaborate? Or do you disagree with my summary?

I can’t agree. Some people have experienced NDEs (positive or negative) and have indeed made Scrooge-like changes.

My dear Lissa, you do have a pessimistic streak, don’t you?

That is itself a kind of hell, I think.

Good observation.

I think you’ll see tremendous progress verus 1,000 years ago. For the most part we don’t have slavery, we don’t burn people at the stake, people have much more personal liberty, we have a much greater understanding of sex and fewer taboos and hangups about it. Sure, there are laggards in the world (cough Middle East cough American Fundies cough), but lines of the Army of Ignorance are broken, and there’s no turning back the clock on that.

But we shall continue to evolve. Wait and see.

Extreme pessimism is just as delusional as extreme optimism. The state of the world is the way that it is. We apply terms like goodness out of context. People are not Good or Evil, ever. It’s simply not something that applies to them. I might be good at getting along with people, and bad at driving. I might be a good systems administrator, but a bad father. A good mother might cut people off on the road. People are not Good or Bad. Not even Saddam Hussein, George Bush or Osama bin Laden.

People live their lives and they mature to the level they are capable of maturing to. They live in the circumstances they have been brought up in, but it is ignorance that causes them to do “evil” things. They are working in their own self-interest, which is not a bad thing at all. We all work in our self-interest, what seperates altruism from narcissism is the ability to see why it is beneficial to oneself to help others.

Sometimes we focus too much on the essential. There is a why and a how for everything. We can’t just say “We are supposed to be good.”, because there are questions about what is right, and how to accomplish what is right. It’s too simplistic to say that some people are good and some are evil. We are all self-interested as is any creature that was ever born to hunger. Our predatory nature is just as good and natural as a mother’s nurturing instinct. A Mother will kill to protect her young, this is one of the most selfish actions a creature can perform, because what she is saying is “My genetic legacy is more valuable than your life.” This is natural, this is as it should be.

When we hide behind our fears we are locked into a cage, no matter how gilded it may be, it is still a cage. I get onto an airplane knowing that it could crash, I get a slight thrill every time we hit an airpocket and the plane drops a few feet, knowing that it could kill me. I acknowledge my fear of death but I do not let it rule me. Some people need to face death in order to do so. I saw my mother die when I was 4 years old, I knew exactly what it meant, no one had to explain it to me, in fact they tried to shield it from me, but I knew. So I have a more intimate knowledge of death than some other people in this world. This knowledge was gained from experience however. There is nothing wrong with Aeschines receiving his experience of the subject in the manner in which he did.

People change however they change. The most dramatic shift one can make, and it’s a shift that can only be made my a decision in the moment is to not focus on the negative. Whatever you focus on you give power to. So if you are focusing on the negative, you are bringing the negative, if you are focusing on teh positive you bring the positive. This matters when there is a choice, if something is already negative, you cannot pretend that it is positive. So while what Lissa said is true about the world, she was only focusing on one part of the world. We are a selfish race, that’s not going to change, nor is there any reason that it is desirable to do so. But we can change and we do change, we change all the time, our understanding is increased as time goes by, we know more, we feel more, we are aware of more. Many things are viewed as mutually exclusive that are not mutually exclusive. There can be intense suffering and intense joy from one minute to the next in this world, occuring simultaneously in two different places, sometimes not far from one another. Babies are born in hospitals where old men are dying every day. To truely progress is to move beyond “States”. A State is where we are either in a negative position or a positive position, it is the creation of a dichotomy because we cannot understand the balance of the two polarities in a given situation. A state is like a religious epiphany or a low depressed point. When one moves beyond states, they see the low and the high at the same time, they are aware in all directions at once, and they move in harmony with the forces that are pulling at them from every direction.

So, there are people who never matured past being a toddler emotionally, but there are also people who have moved far beyond that, and they are both equally human. We are always going through change, I am not who I was yesterday, nor who I will be tomorrow. How dramatic that change is depends purely on how you subjectively perceive the drama that causes the shift.

Erek

I don’t think there is any origin, per se. Some people chose to do nasty things because of selfishness or sadism. Perhaps they missed out on important part of their early childhood socialization, or perhaps it’s just something in their psyche.

I see it much the same. We are all part of the social contract, and we have our duties as members of this society. Some shirk, and some rebel.

I want to be a good person simply because I believe it’s right. I have spent much time and reflection on my personal code of ethics, and I believe doing the right thing is its own reward.

Having known none of these people personally, I’ll have to take your word for it that the changes were true, sincere and lasting. An interview doesn’t cut it-- I’d have to actually see what these people have done with their lives, and how they treat their neighbors on a daily basis. (After all, someone can dedicate their lives to building houses for the homeless, yet still be a puppy-kicker.)

I prefer to call it realism, but to each his own.

I don’t think you can call it hell if the people in it don’t notice that they’re suffering.

We may have changed our laws and the methods we have for dealing with those who deviate from them, but our bloodlust is still present. Beneath or sheer veneer of civilization, we are still people who would cheer at a good old fashioned burning, as long as the victim is a member of a group we find particularly disgusting at the time. (Do remember that people in the pas thought of witches as we think of child molesters-- as disgusting, evil, reprehensible people who deserved to suffer.)

Notice, too, that there are genocides going on as we speak.

Our nation frequently executes people-- oh, in a “polite” way, of course, but they’re still as dead as dogshit when it’s over.

There are people I know who think we should turn the Middle East into a pool of molten glass with our terrible bombs.

There are fundamentalist Christians in this country who believe that homosexuals should be executed.

There are people who blame poverty on its victims and espouse refusing help because it enables a “lazy” lifestyle.

Just fifty years or so ago, a black child was savagely tortured and slain because he may have whistled at a white woman. Blacks are *still *victims of discrimination and violence.

People, at this very moment, in this civilized nation, are being beaten, raped, robbed, tortured, and murdered.

Tell me again how much we’ve “changed.” We’re still the animals which crept down from the trees a few million years ago.

Pessimists usually do.

Aeschines, mswas, and drmark2000, you and this thread have been pitted.

To be fair, so do realists!

I don’t think it’s quite that bad, otherwise how did empathy training develop at all? I think the capacity for empathy is innate, but like all our capabilities it can be developed or it can atrophy, and it varies from individual to individual. Lower-empathy children may require more development than others, but even chimpanzees seem to have some level of innate empathy.

An interesting read is Opening Skinner’s Box by Lauren Slater, where she tracked down some of the original participants of the Milgram Experiment and interviewed them to see whether it had affected them. One of the participants had indeed appeared to have had his life altered as a result. He had administered the “shock” all the way to the danger level, and it made him totally re-assess what sort of a person he was.

Fine, you’re talking about scary stuff without gore. It’s an irrelevant difference, we’re still talking about shock.

I have no idea what this means. A plane crash isn’t evil, it’s unfortunate.

I don’t think posting these links is indicative of strength and health.

But you gradually improve. This sounds more like an emotional treadmill where you periodically shock yourself to try and get back to the same place.