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Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 12:20pm May 13, 2001 EST (#3789 of 3800)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

almarst-2001 5/13/01 10:36am raises profound, touch points. And the bloody history of Western Civilization since Columbus is a matter of record.

Almarst agrees that "it is just as natural for people to act "inhumanly" - that is cruelly, and in a dehumanizing way, towards OUTSIDERS, as it is natural for people to act warmly, and with accommodation and mutual support, for people WITHIN their group."

and he asks

" How the "group" is defined? "

Almarst then comes up with an argument that ought to be right, but is too optimistic - or too simple -- I'm afraid.

Life would be easier, I think, if his argument was right.

Almarst says it is hard to get people to dehumanize each other.

" To wake an Evil in an ordinary person, much greater Evil is needed."

Sadly, I don't think that's true. I wish it were true. It is terribly easy for people to dehumanize each other -- hard for people to imagine that people different from themselves are really human beings -- even when looking right at them.

--

I don't think it is safe for us to delude ourselves about "man being basically good".

Everybody, from a young age, is capable of merciless feelings and behavior.

Everybody shows that often enough.

I'm continuing to write -- sorry to be late

rshowalter - 12:27pm May 13, 2001 EST (#3790 of 3800)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

If you look at the way people have dealt with each other since civilization began, you'll see plenty of examples of horrible indifference -- of essentially predatory behavior, totally organized. In William McNeill's Plagues and Peoples it is said that civilization itself was, largely, and from the beginning, a kind of "parasitism" that he links explicitly with the parasitism of micro-organisms, gut worms, and such.

McNeill's case is a compelling one -- and neither the history of Russia, nor the history of Indians in the Americas before Columbus, nor the history of China, nor the history of any other people show times where there was not a great deal of merciless behavior on view. A few centuries ago, famine was a common cause of death essentially everywhere -- and the mercilessness shown at such times, by the aristocracies, and others with power, has been immense. The Irish potatoe famine offers a stunning example. How easily the British left Irish peasants to starve -- and die so close to them -- people in many ways so like them.

You can find more cruelty and inhumanity than your head can hold, wherever you look in the history of societies.

All the same, the Western military tradition has been especially merciless and bloody.

rshowalter - 12:34pm May 13, 2001 EST (#3791 of 3800)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I think almarst's question in almarst-2001 5/13/01 10:36am

" How the "group" is defined? "

Has a terrible answer.

People define members of "their group" in terms of their subjective comfort in dealing with them, which itself depends on ideas, habits, and characteristics in common, and on ideas in place, and people who "don't feel right" to a person are "dismissed as non-people" - - - you can see this at work in 3 year olds, or people older who are not in some way disciplined by civilization. Unless there are reasons to do otherwise -- people avoid anyone who shows a characteristic that makes them uncomfortable. And fear, in humans, is close to the surface -- any difference, and it is easy for fear, rejection, and hatred to trigger.

I've sometimes elicited such response myself, and sometimes showed them. So have a lot of other people who have lived in the world, and kept their eyes open to what people actually do.

rshowalter - 12:39pm May 13, 2001 EST (#3792 of 3800)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

And people (very many of them, anyway, more of these people male than female) can kill without qualm anyone who is "not part of their group" and is also helpless, so long as they don't have to be discomforted by the killing.

I think many Americans are this way, or they'd view bombing differently from the way they do.

But here is something important -- only a small risk or cost will deter such people -- even the cost of having to watch the agony, even for a short time. For this reason, wars are hard to justify when they are televised.

rshowalter - 12:42pm May 13, 2001 EST (#3793 of 3800)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

There are plenty of cases, in the history of Russia and China within the last hundred years, that show this kind of behavior, too.

And the body counts, in both countries, due to that sort of behavior have been immense.

I don't think "two wrongs" or "multiple wrongs" make a right, or make the killing, the injury, and the loss justified.

The thing is, we have to figure out ways that work, for more peaceful and reasonable results, for human beings as they often are.

Especially with respect to weapons. That's a fine reason to outlaw nukes.

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