On 4/26/05, Keith Henson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > At 07:23 PM 19/04/05 -0700, "Warren Ockrassa" wrote: > >On Apr 19, 2005, at 6:35 PM, Dan Minette wrote: > > > >>From: "Warren Ockrassa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > >>>On Apr 19, 2005, at 6:27 PM, Gautam Mukunda wrote: > >>> > >>>>Why? Morality is not the product of an opinion poll. > >>>>Something is either the right thing to do or it is > >>>>not. > >>> > >>>Umm, I can think of a lot of historical precedent that might indicate > >>>otherwise. Ethics (I prefer not to use "morality") is very much an > >>>artifact of culture, society, weltanschauung. To my mind ethics is all > >>>about opinion polls -- the opinion of an entire society, in some cases. > >> > >>So, the Holocaust would have been ethical if Germany had won? > > At least as "ethical" as the extermination of various native peoples. > > >It was ethical to the Nazis at the time it was taking place. Just as it > >was ethical for slavery to be practiced, here and elsewhere, for a long > >time, just as it was ethical for the original tribe of Israel to, > >occasionally, utterly murder rivaling peoples, even to the point that a > >psalm was written singing of the joys of dashing out the brains of > >enemies' children against stones. > > > > From my point of view today, and I suspect from yours and most others', > > those actions are all reprehensible. But to no small degree I suspect > > that's because we're living in a world and a time that affords us the > > luxury of extending the epithet "human" to *all* people, even those we > > oppose or who oppose us. > > Agreed. Further, I think I can describe what it takes, namely an expanding > economy, to keep a population in a mode where it extends "human" to > all. In stone age times where there was plenty of room to expand, it was > not good for your genes to go out trying to kill neighbors. Different > situation when the future looks bleak and you are facing the problem of > your children starving. .... > Keith Henson
Your generalization is weak, Henson: there are plenty of examples of civilizations going on the war path without a bleak future. Germany, circa WWI- they went to war at least partially *because* they were doing so very well, and felt they weren't getting their share of international influence. Not because their economy was crashing, or threatening to. Japan, prior to WW2, went rampaging through the Pacific. Was their economy crashing as well? US- just about any war. See the Civil War. Was the enthusiasm on both sides for a blood bath a result of disastrous, prolonged depression? What about the French Revolution? Historians agree that at the time, everybody, peasants included, were doing economically better than previously (Although it is true the vast bulk of gains were going to the upper classes. But the lower people did gain). What unleashed the Terror? Not the expectation of a deep depression. ~Maru _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
