The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #69657 Message #1213597
Posted By: Nerd
24-Jun-04 - 12:35 PM
Thread Name: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
Subject: RE: BS: Iraqis Beheading Americans
Once again, DougR, you're not reading what I'm writing. I understand your position. You would like Humans to be perfect moral beings, and that's a noble aspiration.
We are not.
We do horrible, horrible things. Until recent historical times, it was the norm. Now, thank God, it is the exception in many places in the world. But, speaking empirically rather than morally, it is human. Humans have perpetuated crimes as serious as the Rwandan genocide and as trivial as Nigerian email scams. I disapprove of all of them. But to define behavior you particularly don't like as "inhuman" will do nothing to address the causes and effects of such behavior.
In fact, it is very obvious to anyone with any sense of history that a propensity for brutal violence is part of human nature, and that being a citizen of polite society is always a struggle against these violent impulses.
Again, this has nothing to do with "being easy on anyone." It's just empirically false and historically ridiculous to say such behavior is not human.
Or to put it another way, name a species of which members semi-regularly decapitate other members.
I think you'll get only one answer.