Nature is Brutal. Think of the Wolf and the Rabbit. For every predator to live they must kill in order to live. Being eaten by a Wolf is obviously a very painful and frightening death for the Rabbit. That is the natural world. Of all of the political/economic systems there are, the one that matches the natural world the closest is Capitalism. Aboriginal, Tribal, Feudal, Theocracy, Socialism, Communism… none relies upon competition more than Capitalism. Where does competition end and brutality begin? We use the term Brutality here for any form of oppression, exploration or damage to the planet. The Rabbit meets a brutal death in the jaws of the Wolf, but, the Wolf has no choice but to eat the rabbit. He has neither the ability nor the knowledge that he could do otherwise. So of course this makes Man the most Savage and Brutal animal of all. I don’t want to be too pessimistic. Of course there are many benefits, joys, and beauty to being human. But there is still the Brutality. What are your thoughts on this topic?
I’ll let you know after I plunder your village.
LOL, good answer!!!
Man isn’t that brutal. Technology and education has a civilizing effect on us, and we aren’t nearly as bad as a thousand years ago. And capitalism helps bring about technology and education. By raising the general level of wealth kids can afford to go to school rather than work.
Capitalism is also based on the concept that my selfish needs can be met by meeting your selfish needs. People aren’t competing in a vacuum, they are competing to find ways to meet the needs of the individuals in the market. Assuming it is regulated, the goal is to provide the best services at the lowest cost.
Unregulated capitalism is a bad thing that leads to monopolies, corruption, plutocracy, labor abuses, pollution, etc. But aside from a few radicals who are making a resurgence in the US, most people know that and want some regulations on it and safety nets to protect people.
I guess I don’t see the problem. Wealth, education and technology make us more civilized and less brutal. Capitalism, when regulated properly, leads to more wealth, education and technology.
The argument is based upon long-debunked romantic ideas of noble savages, pristine nature, social Darwinism and original sin.
Needless to say, the conclusions are a load of horse hockey.
Nature doesn’t even exist. Unless you accept some form of super-natural, then by definition everything in the universe is natural. So your statement is simply that the universe is brutal.
No, simply not true. Predators can live quite happily on carrion. And all organisms have to kill other organisms to live. It’s not just wolves. A cow that eats a blade of grass takes that grass form another cow, a grasshopper, a slug and a termite, who will all die as a result. All organisms remove limiting resources form other organisms, leading to their deaths. Predators do this neither more nor less than prey or plants. Resources are finite. Every organism must kill in order to live.
No more so than starving to death because a cow ate all the grass, or succumbing to an infection caused by a microbe, being poisoned by eating the wrong plant, dying of exposure because a higher ranking rabbit expelled it from the warren or simply succumbing to leukaemia brought on by old age. All rabbits die. Of all the ways that rabbits die, being killed by a wold is probably the least painful and frightening death.
Utter nonsense. In what possible sense is the constant state of war found in Aboriginal societies or the constant state of enforced servitude found in feudal societies less reliant upon competition?
Nowhere. Since we have already established that the whole universe is brutal and all organisms within it brutally kill other organisms, the distinction is meaningless.
And so on an so forth for the rest of the screed. The whole argument is constructed form romantic ideals, misunderstandings of the reality of the world and human societies and then produces a *non sequitur *conclusion.
I think everything you said is correct. And well stated. But, you only told half the story. Imagine the life/future of 17 yr old preparing to graduate from High School. One has a father that is a manager at an insurance company and makes $200K a year. One has a Father who is an electrician and makes $60 a year. One has a father who is a janitor and makes $22K a year. Is this pyramid not a form of competition? What of the Janitor who worked his whole life, retired, and now lives on tuna fish peanut butter and jelly and social security checks. Of course he could of made better decisions in life but he did work his whole life and, well, some people are just not cut out to be as successful as other people. What are your comments on my observations?
Wow. That was a pretty good response. You could give me a little leeway for poetic license or metaphor however. I never thought of herbivores competing and causing each other to starve. Does that really happen? I do know that many animals do starve of course but, well, I wasn’t thinking that their death came because of the actions of another. I do agree with you that starving slowly to death is worse than getting quickly eating but getting quickly eating is still painful. I guess I was imagining an imaginary world of no predators…
Were Aboriginal societies in consonant warfare? I thought as long as geography and resources were sufficient is was a very good way of life. I agree of course that Feudalism was much worse than capitalism. Communism too. So maybe capitalism is one of the better/the best of the list. I think maybe I got too focused on the idea of competition. You made some very excellent points though, it was a very interesting response.
Been playing Civilization again, ehe? 
They all rely on competition however, since they are all human constructs and humans rely on competition. Personally I’d go with the Greeks and go for Communism early, then switch the Republic and Democracy for the really good wonders, but that’s just me.
Out of curiosity, are you asserting that none of the other forms of government (Communism? Seriously??) are forms of ‘Brutality’??
Why? We do the same thing as the Rabbit AND the Wolf, being omnivorous and all. What makes us more Savage™ and Brutal(arr) than all the other creatures? I’d say if you are going to base being savage and brutal in terms of changing the world and killing more creatures you’d be hard pressed not to go with bacteria as the biggest mass murderers of all time. Not only did they change the very air we breathe (putting out all that oxygen stuff and essentially killing just about every other organism on the planet at the time), changing climate and habitat world wide, but they have killed uncounted other creatures in more direct ways. Yeah, those bacteria…they are the Hitler AND Stalin of the Animal world. We are pikers in comparison.
I would have gone with ‘angst ridden’, personally.
Like the ability to know the universe, to appreciate the world…and porn of course. Oh, and pizza…man, the other animals are seriously jealous of our ability to make a good New York style pizza! I love it with the tangy marinara sauce cooked on a wood fired stone oven with a bit of sausage and pepperoni (hopefully killed so you can taste the fear) and some real mozzarella…
…er, where was I?
That you have an overly idealized view of the world, coupled with that angst stuff I mentioned. Oh, and I’m starving…time to order a pizza…
No, upon further reflection I can see that most/all forms of government rely on Brutality and competition. Can I say that Socialism has the least competition/brutality? I guess my point about man being the most savage/brutal animal is we have the intelligence and ability to do otherwise. Thanks for your response!
My thoughts are that you should watch This TED Talk. It’s Steven Pinker giving a synopsis of his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, in which he exhaustively argues that violence has declined over human history. He makes the argument that aboriginal cultures are the most violent of all, that a significant percentage of members of aboriginal cultures die through homicide, dwarfing numbers in almost all non-aboriginal cultures. It’s not mass warfare, it’s just constant little raids and murders.
Capitalism, with its emphasis on exchanging goods only through mutual and voluntary trades, and keeping the goods of the wealthy protected from the desires of the poor unless the poor can come up with something to trade, is an extremely artificial system with no known correlates in the nonhuman world. It has some serious cruelties built into it, but they’re cruelties of organized force (capitalism fails to function without a significant police force to protect property), not the cruelties of the wolf.
But your definition of ‘Brutality’ wrt our actions and those of other creatures is artificial and arbitrary and basically applies only to humans. The wolf doesn’t know or care that it’s being ‘brutal’ by your contrived definition to the rabbit, and the rabbit doesn’t know it’s being brutalized by the wolf because neither has the ability to even conceive of this entire discussion or know what ‘Brutality’ even IS (they are also both notoriously bad readers as well…and neither can make a good pizza, though I’m guessing a wolf would love a rabbit and cheese with extra sauce if s/he could dial the local pizza joint and ask for one).
As for Socialism, there is as much competition in terms of resources as any other system that is devised and run by and for humans…there has to be. As to where it ranks on the ‘Brutality’ scale, I guess it would depend on how you parse which countries are actually Socialist (not very many, unless you are counting countries that have socialist aspects but use a capitalist economic framework, such as the US and most of Europe…heck, most of the western world would fall into this). True Socialism, however? I guess it would depend, as I said, on how you parse that…I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head unless we get into No True verse True Scotsmen, and then we have all those kilt issues. Also, when I visited Scotland there wasn’t a decent pizza place to be had, though I didn’t do an exhaustive search, so that’s purely anecdotal. I’m sure some hurt Scot (Pjen most likely) will be along shortly to explain in great detail how there is a great pizza place (with haggis pizza no doubt) in Scotland and how I just missed it.
They do have rabbits though (they call them hares however)…
I actually remembered that video as soon as Blake pointed out how violent Aboriginal life was!
OK… your points about capitalism are good. But, what about the owner of a Golf course who forces low paid employee’s to work on the weekend while he spends his weekend on his Yatch with his trophy wife and a bunch of buddies (with spouses/girlfriends) from his Fraternity days. It’s better for the guy working at the golf course than he would have it in either communism or feudalism but he is still being exploited by the boss, is he not?
I thought we were in agreement on this part. That’s what I meant when I said Humans have ability/intelligence the Wolf does not posses…
OK, I can’t quite tell what your opinion of European Socialism is. Do you basically agree/endorse it or not? Your writing and explanation is actually good but somehow I missed your main point.
Shit yes he is. Don’t mistake me for a capitalist.
Edit: and this is a really trivial example of the cruelties built into capitalism. Focus more on the child who lives in a house with lead paint because his parents are poor, or the lack of medical care available to the poor, or conditions in factories in countries with weak safety protections.
Well…that’s an interesting shift sideways. Ok…so, is the owner of the Golf (which is Capitalized…I see what you did there, even if you didn’t) course (like in flour, right? And un-capitalized, though those millers…er, don’t get me started) ‘Brutalizing’ the employee? Is he holding a gun to his head or threatening to eat his kids (or, worse, his pizza) if he doesn’t work on the weekend? The thing is, that worker can always take his labor elsewhere if he doesn’t want to work at the golf course.
If the worker decides to work really slowly, or screw off when no one is looking, or take and extra long bathroom break (or the myriad things I did when I worked at a golf course when I was a kid), does that mean the worker is exploiting the boss?? What if the worker is doinking the bosses trophy wife (no comment about my past), does that mean he’s exploiting the boss?
[QUOTE=Robert163]
OK, I can’t quite tell what your opinion of European Socialism is. Do you basically agree/endorse it or not? Your writing and explanation is actually good but somehow I missed your main point.
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I tend to get lost in my own rambling, often and generally I’m only humorous to myself. I don’t think Socialism is less competitive, if that’s what you are asking me. The thing is, wherever you set the bar you still have to gather the same resources (or more, if your bar is set more towards socialism, since you have offer more services).
As to my opinion of European Socialism, I think it has it’s good aspects and bad, and it obviously works for Europeans which is the biggest thing going for it, but that it wouldn’t work at all for them if they didn’t have and allow a Capitalist economic system to pay for it (to be fair, I don’t think Capitalism would work for us backwoods Americans if we didn’t have a Socialist frame work to soften it either). Personally, I’m a live and let live sort of guy, except when it comes to bacon or sausage…I wouldn’t want to live in most European countries, and most of them wouldn’t want to live in the US, so we are all good. I personally think that the US has a good balance, though I could wish the bar was moved a teeny bit more towards our own brand of socialism wrt services offered (and I wish we could get over a lot of our race baggage).
The fact that we can conceive of ‘Brutality’ and empathize with other creatures makes us less brutal, IMHO. YMMV of course, but since you can only have this debate with another human I think that speaks volumes.
I can see that you are a kindred spirit!
Of course a worker can exploit his boss. But if his only Job skill is being a caddy or a groundskeeper at a Golf course, where else is he supposed to get a better job?
Yes, we can empathize with other people and a Wolf can not. That’s a good point. I think I basically agree with you about the difference between USA/Europe except I am a bit closer to favoring European Socialism, really though because I am pretty critical of life for poor people in the USA.
[QUOTE=Robert163]
Of course a worker can exploit his boss. But if his only Job skill is being a caddy or a groundskeeper at a Golf course, where else is he supposed to get a better job?
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If that’s his only skill what else SHOULD he do? From Each According To His Ability To Each According To His Need, and all that…and the world NEEDS golf course workers, obviously. I’m unsure what the issue is, as I see this (not the from each according non-sense of course) as a feature, not a bug. The worker gets a job, which means he gets paid to do something useful. The golf course owner gets work done that needs to be done. They agree on a price for that labor when the worker accepts employment and the boss accepts the work. It’s an open agreement where the worker can basically work as long as he likes as long as his labor is what the boss wants (and as long as he’s not caught scrumping the bosses trophy wife). If the worker feels his labor is worth more he can take it elsewhere…perhaps to a competitors Golf course. If the boss doesn’t feel the workers labor is worth what he’s paying (or catches him scrumping his trophy wife) then he can fire the worker. I’d say this is pretty civilized on the ‘Brutality’ scale, over all. I seriously doubt if the wolves were in charge it would be this clean and orderly (though I can totally see the worker wolf trying to score with the alphas bitch when the alpha wasn’t watching…of course, there is that whole tearing out of the throat thingy which disturbs this picturesque crystals and unicorns Nature scene).
The thing is, if said worker is not getting what he needs out of this bargain, then that’s when society sets some bar for socialism and socialistic type services to help him out. Where that bar is set depends on the country and it’s citizens, but every country that uses a Capitalist economic system has a bar somewhere, which tends to soften raw Capitalism and make it palatable to the citizens of the country it’s operating in. A lot of folks on this board don’t like where the US sets it’s bar, and I can respect that, but I think most of them understand that to HAVE a bar you have to have the Capitalism.
Indeed, good answer, and since XT already did go Godwin 
I can point out that abusing and twisting the evidence of evolution is how the wrong lesson about the wolf eating the rabbit was arrived at and used in Nazi Germany. (with a fox in this case: )
The link there goes to the way over the top short animated film Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi (1943) directly to the rabbit and the fox lesson in the WW2 Animated Propaganda Film of Walt Disney. It was a very common way to teach the wrong lesson in Fascist German classrooms and in Nazi “educational films”
I have seen documentaries (I think one was The World At War) showing clips of live action films with pseudo German scientists explaining that “lesson” too for German viewers of that era. So while Disney was off in a few items like any propaganda film does, that bit about the rabbit and the predator was indeed used as a stepping stone to teach the German people about why it was good to subjugate and even exterminate other people.
As others pointed, your definition of ‘Brutality’ is artificial and arbitrary and basically applies only to humans and I should add: It is also a construction that history has shown that it leads to very bad results.