Examing the Warrior and the Nature of Hatred

[ceebeegee]

I can't fathom the kind of hate that would compel someone to come to long Island all the way from Kansas, to hold up signs that says "God Hates Fags." And to bring your kids? These little ones given to your trust, and you teach them to hate? They're holding up signs and spouting unspeakable things, instead of playing with their toys and sleeping in a warm bed? I don't understand any of this.

I'm always torn when it comes to people like this. My first instinct is to ignore them, but then there's the idea of "for evil to triumph, the only requirement is for good people to do nothing." Is it strategic or just cowardly (or lazy) to ignore something like this? Are the F--- P-----es of the world looking for attention, or is there another agenda? So then my reaction is to yell back, because what they say and represent gets me so viscerally. But realistically I know that wouldn't accomplish anything--you'd have two people yelling instead of one. But I don't think I'm evolved enough to return love for hate. I know I should but that's really hard. I have a very difficult time with the whole "turn of the other cheek" of the Christian philosophy. I am a warrior. Maybe the struggle against hatred requires teachers and people who love, and not warriors. Maybe I should beat my sword back into a plowshare.

Comments

Re: What constitutes a "ruined" mind?

[mysticblaze.livejournal.com]

The distinction that needs to be made here is that teaching is also an action, and should be monitored in the same manner as other actions are. Teaching ignorant ideas constitutes ruining a mind.

Thus, if a child is taught to believe that killing people is right and that killing anyone in the way is acceptable, and as a direct result of those beliefs, the child kills another human being, are those beliefs acceptable?

And why should I, a mostly law abiding member of society, have to live in fear of the beliefs that are taught to those children? Beliefs more often than not beget actions that are related to them.

A child that will hold a sign that demonstrates hatred towards a certain group of people will most likely continue to hold that belief until such time as he or she is taught otherwise (this is where society comes in), or that belief may make the child escalate to a level of violence far beyond the original teachings. There is a good chance that the Kansas children will continue to maintain the beliefs with which they are being brainwashed, simply because they are not exposed to the outside world. Why should the rest of us allow for such ignorance to stand without doing something about it?

There are certain areas where the rights of the individual should be modified for the good of all other individuals in society. A dangerous precedent is only set if the modification is controlled by only a few and not by all members of society. There are acceptable mores that have been adopted throughout civilization, and they were adopted by groups of individuals rather than by individuals alone.

Oh, there are no absolutes in this world. Only areas of gray.

Re: What constitutes a "ruined" mind?

[minstrel70.livejournal.com]

Ah, but there are, in fact, absolutes. Plenty of them. It's the shades of gray, mostly, that have this society coming apart at the seams.

But I think the time has come to stop debating in ceebeegee's Journal and continue in person at another time.

Re: What constitutes a "ruined" mind?

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't mind.

Re: What constitutes a "ruined" mind?

[mysticblaze.livejournal.com]

Agreed. The usual place at some point in the near future, I assume. :)

Live by the sword... (Part I)

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Hi. Sorry if I'm butting in, but minstrel70 told me that he was involved in an interesting intellectual fight over here and it was getting so hot a hockey game was threatening to break out! It does look like a sticky issue being discussed. I'm really fond of philosophical debates like this one, and can't resist tossing in my two cents, no matter how decorum would suggest I remain an observer. If the owner of this journal objects, I will butt right out, but from what I have read so far, she seems intrigued by the discussion as well.

I'd just like to say that I agree that the gay bashers in question do appear to be one sorry bunch of people. They are certainly exhibiting a virulent form of collectivism -- which is pretty close to the root of evil in the world today. Here these people are, not content to say that homosexuality is wrong and that they believe it to be immoral to act on this orientation, but they actually go so far as to claim that gay people, because of who they are, are intrinsically evil and un-human, and thus not deserving of respect. Certainly this is a poisonous idea. Nevertheless, I'm going to have to agree with minstrel70 when it comes to "what to do about it" -- the scoundrels haven't done anything actionable yet.

The problem with mysticblaze's argument, is that he is falling for the same fallacies espoused by the people whose teaching he rejects. Yes, teaching is an action, so is breathing. Do other humans have any authority to license and regulate your breathing for you just because it is an action and not an abstract thought? The point here is that the criterion is not merely a question of the distinction between action and thought alone, but between actions that are peaceful and voluntary and actions that actually initiate real force. Absent the actual initiation or threat of real force the law lacks any moral authority to act.

mysticblaze asks why he should "live in fear" of the beliefs which are being taught to the children of others. The implication here is that his fears grant him some sort of authority to take action against the source of his fears -- in other words, they justify his treating the source of his fears as objects, as means to some end of his own instead of ends in their own right. The problem with this thinking becomes clear as soon as we reverse the sides. This is exactly the same argument put forward by the gay bashers, who fear that homosexuals are attempting to teach children to become gay, and therefore this fear gives them the authority to "do something about" the people who are gay. The argument is wrong, no matter who espouses it.

Live by the sword... (Part II)

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

In his fourth paragraph, mysticblaze calls upon "society" to "do something" about the beliefs of the gay bashers and their children. Hiding the responsibility for starting a fight behind "society" does not change the nature of what is being done, or suggested. The problem is, exactly who is society? Society is an abstraction. It is a construct in the minds of the individuals that comprise it. There is no "social brain" that actually exists and thinks -- there is only the aggregate effects of the actions stemming from the thoughts of those individuals that make up society. When the majority of individuals in a society attempt to live by the Golden Rule and respect one another's life, liberty, and property, society flourishes in reasonably civilized harmony. When we attempt to turn society into government and use it as a club for changing our neighbors' minds then civility and prosperity both vanish -- society fragments into what the founders of the U.S. called "faction," collectivized groups jockeying for the influence and power to control each other. It is a scary thing to contemplate that people enamoured of faction never stop to consider that when they empower a government to favor the, when their faction is in power, likewise empower government to persecute them when their faction is out of power.

The last paragraph also contains some ideas with which I must contend. The first such idea is that rights must be limited. Untrue. Rights are absolute, or they are not rights at all. The second idea is that somehow a democratic tyranny is acceptable while a despotic tyranny is not. minstrel70 is right, a dangerous precedent is set whether rights are violated in the name of a minority or a majority. Ten thousand Irishmen can be wrong, and might does not make right. It is not a wise trade to exchange one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away. This clammoring for "society" to control, not just the actions, but the thoughts of individuals betrays a substantial lack of faith in one's own ideas. Thomas Jefferson said it best: "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." Society does not think, only individuals do. Turning society into government and giving it the power to regulate the thoughts of individuals only serves to quash all thinking by individuals equally. Approximately two hundred million people in the former Soviet Union were murdered in the twentieth century for want of understanding that lesson. Do we really want to go down that road?

Re: Live by the sword... (Part II)

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

"The first such idea is that rights must be limited. Untrue. Rights are absolute, or they are not rights at all."

I don't know if I agree with this--we limit rights all the time. The First Amendment has many restrictions on it (pornography, can't-yell-fire-in-a-crowded-theater, libel, etc.), as does the Second.

(FYI, mysticblaze is a she. And welcome!)

Re: Live by the sword... (Part II)

[minstrel70.livejournal.com]

The point was that rights, by definition, are absolute; anything that may be restricted, abridged, limited, or legislated against is a privelege, not a right. Constitutional rights are based upon natural rights, and simply proscribe government action that might infringe upon those natural rights.

The speech protected by the First Amendment is the right to political speech. Your examples are not political in nature, and are examples properly restricted in the interest of public safety and decorum.

The restrictions placed on the Second Amendment right would open a whole new can of worms if brought into discussion here, but suffice it to say that Amendment is predicated on the right to self-defense, which is clearly inalienable.

Re: Live by the sword... (Part II)

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

It is not true that the First Amendment protects only political speech. That is a sophistry invented by the judiciary. The First Amendment merely prohibits the federal government from infringing the absolute rights of speech and expression. To say that the First Amendment protects only political speech is to beg the question: who, pray tell, gets to define what constitutes political speech? Currently, whomever has control of the government believes that it is government which gets to define such things, but I put it to you that we can easilly see how destructive to the Bill of Rights this kind of sophistry is in action. Stick to your guns. Rights are absolute.

Re: Live by the sword... (Part II)

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Formal apologies to mysticblaze, who didn't specify a sex in her bio. If anything, perhaps she will forgive me because I did not assume that she was a woman just because I saw "knitting" in her community memberships? Hmm, nice try, eh? By the way, minstrel70 has also already pointed out my error as well. He does look after the interests of his friends. Nice to meet both you and mysticblaze.

It is true that "we" limit rights all the time. The better word is "infringe." I put it to you that the "can't-yell-fire-in-a-crowded-theater" analogy is a bad one, since it is not the speech itself, the content, that is criminalized, but rather the effects of the speech that are criminal. To understand this, consider what would have happened in the hypothetical case if there had been a real fire. The "speaker" would not be prosecuted, yet the content of his speech remained the same. Conversely, if you get up and recite the Gettysburg Address you can also be arrested, not for speaking your mind in a theater, but for disturbing the peace and violating the property rights of the theater owner and his patrons. Rights are absolute and non-contradictory, or else they cannot be considered rights, according to the classical definition. Cases where rights appear to be non-absolute or contradictory are merely cases of misidentification and mis-definition.

As for the pornography problem, that is merely a failure to enforce property rights effectively, not a good example of the "legitimate authority" to infringe the rights of free speech and expression. The case of libel is more accurately defined as fraud, and should be treated accordingly. As for the second amendment, that issue is another whole complex jumbo can of worms which would need to be carefully unpacked before we could even begin to discuss it rationally. If you want a long involved debate on it, we could, but I think it would dwarf the current debate, so here is probably not the place.

I commend [Unknown site tag] on his choice of friends. You're interesting people.

Re: Live by the sword... (Part II)

[mysticblaze.livejournal.com]

No apologies necessary. After I changed my username, I decided to remove indications of my gender (with the exception of the few female oriented interests I list). Nice to meet you too, although I think we may have met on minstrel70's journal before.

I was quite surprised when I finally made it back to my office late this afternoon (read 4:30 pm EST) to find that this discussion had continued after my last comment. I will definitely respond to your comments, but it will have to wait a short while until I catch up on some of the work that has piled up on my desk.

Your comments are quite intriguing, and I look forward to crafting my responses to them. :)