The Human Animal (Animals)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, June 16, 2010, 23:07 (5272 days ago) @ dhw

dhw,-I will try one more time to have us come to an agreement. I think you yourself are being too "black and white" in this topic. -First, I will be speaking from the premise that the terms "good" and "evil" are interchangeable. -The S. American tribe I discussed previously are called the Yanomomo. In their society, the men gain wealth, power, and prestige by being successful at bringing slaves into the village. -So if you're born into this society--you learn from day one that slavery is the main means for becoming powerful and earning more wives. -Slavery is an epithet in our western heritage. But it is a virtue in Yanomomo heritage. -So what is the cause of this "evil?" Is it the society? Or the individuals that are trying to play within the social rules? -Clearly, at some time in their history, slavery was important if not essential for their survival--for whatever reason. It could have been a group decision, or it could have been imposed by a greedy leader; this we cannot know. But one thing is clear: it is the society that enables the course of action that leads to slavery--and not the individuals. -It's easy for you or I to label this system as barbaric and/or inhumane, but we were raised with the (social) values of individual freedom and liberty. The Yanomomo were not. -My overriding point is that only in context of the group you live in are any of your actions painted according to whatever that society's moral valuations are. Man himself is neither good nor evil; man simply acts and the group decides what's right. -I know you playfully accused me of lawyerlike sophistry--I've found no way around this issue for over ten years. Yes; we are the arbiters of our actions, but before we are our "own men" we are whatever society builds us to be--man can never escape society no matter how hard he tries. Not without other men.-
[EDIT]-One more premise I'd like to add. I actually deny that men are "individuals" by nature. I think that we are social by nature, and the philosophy of individualism is a meme that is essentially aberrant to the evolutionary mechanisms that have brought us here.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"