Potemkin wrote:Precisely. Humans are what we are, and there's no point whining about it. We just have to get on with it, making the most of what we are. We can't change our essential nature, but we can at least try to smooth off some of the rougher edges. Nor should we judge ourselves too harshly. After all, chimpanzees don't exactly live lives of blissful, kind-hearted benevolence, to put it mildly. And the very fact that we are criticising ourselves so harshly is evidence that we (well, some of us at least) have rather high standards, so high in fact that 90% of people fail to live up to them. Lol.
Yes, so one can’t really say a cat is bad for eating a mouse. The cat has to eat mice or it will starve.
Good and bad only matter within human groups. Human social behaviour is built on norms. It is a dichotomy for judging adhence to those norms within that group. Of course it is open to manipulation. And we are back to games theory as we discussed in the thread on Puerto Rico. Being a bunch of nasty little monkeys, group norms of behaviour are frequently manipulated to the benefit of some and the detriment of others in the group. Hence why some people make such a public fuss about other people’s behaviour while holding themselves above scrutiny.
Groups whose norms are built on an optimistic view of human nature and which demand a high level of conduct increase the opportunity for manipulation, since there is no recourse to reference of conduct in regard to self interest. The result is a culture of pompous self righteousness in which self interest is masked behind layers of pretence and deceit. Furthermore, since the manipulation of group norms can only result in norms that are deterimental to the self interest of some members of that group, such a culture is inherently unjust.
The superior approach to a just social order, in my view, is to acknowledge what people are really like and build a system that is resistent to this sort of monkey business. Thus accountability is preeminent.
This is the thinking that lies behind the genius of both the British Parliamentry system and the system of governance employed by the Venician Republic. Both systems were created to shape a system in which even dirty rotten scoundrels could trust each other, thus avoiding to a degree the destructiveness of the prisoner’s dilemma. (It is important to recognise some have claimed my thinking is Whiggish). Anyway, I’m sure Shakespeare would agree.
So, what was this thread about? Oh yes, people being judged guilty before any trial.
So OK, here we have a reshaping if norms to suit an agenda. If a man is accused of inappropriate behaviour toward women, that must be accepted at face value. To not do so could cause emotion trauma to the women in question, thus the norm of innocent until proven guilty must be abandoned. The original idea behind innocent until proven guilty was to protect the innocent, it being deemed better to let a few guilty people go that wrongfully punish a single person. This protects all of us as potentially we could all be wrongly accused at some time.
The new norm that a man is guilty without recourse to determining his guilt or innocence, follows the feminist norm that it is all men that are the problem. All men are rapists, it has been claimed. This is objectively not the case. In fact the claim that it is all men constitutes hate speak. It is like saying all Muslims are terrorists.
Now here we see another interesting aspect of good, bad and manipulation of group norms. Such manipulation results in contradictions. I am interested in how the PC people can reconcile objecting the the claim all Muslims are terrorists, as hate speach, while ignoring the fact the claim it’s all men is of the same logic. Ergo: hate speach.
The guilty of some men accused should not allow hate groups to reshape norms such as the principal of a fair trial and innocent until proven guilty, in order to be better able to peddle their prejudice against their targeted outgroup. By moral panic, pompous grandstanding and other means of manipulating the good norms to subjugate others in the group, the PC people increase the level of injustice in society.
Typical monkey business, really. Like other primates, it comes down to dominance behaviour. We might call this ‘status seeking behaviour’ in the human context.
@Godstud , mate. See anything you might recognise in yourself there?