Zerubbabel

"All the territorial possessions of all the political establishments in the earth--including America, of course-- consist of pilferings from other people's wash. No tribe, howsoever insignificant, and no nation, howsoever mighty occupies a foot of land that was not stolen." Mark Twain .

Hitler and Stalin were sociopathic tyrants who rode to power by appealing to the common people's leftist or rightist desires. Hitler appealed to the rightist principle of chivalry (defense of home/tribe) misapplied to nationalism. Stalin appealed to the leftist desire for utopia ... just endure this one final conflict, and then utopia.

Yes, but it is his second to last sentence which establishes the premise which he builds this hope upon: "But more than that: the passion for justice and moral principle that is infusing more and more people can only move them in the same direction; morality and practical utility are fusing ever more clearly to greater numbers of people in one great call: for the liberty of people — of individuals and voluntary groups — to work out their own destiny, to take control over their own lives. We have it in our power to reclaim the American Dream." "morality and practical utility are fusing"??? Throughout the history of mankind morality and practical utility usually find themselves at odds with each other. But I do have to admit that sometimes a thing's great usefulness overpowers moral sentiments and creates a morality custom-made to justify the useful thing.

From the limited reading I have done here at FDR that is also my impression. I say as a compliment of the highest regard that Stephan is a passionate preacher of principles. Stephan's Disappointment with the World is explicit about this. That the means justifies the ends can be said as Fiat justitia ruat caelum (Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.) You make a lot of sense in your writing concerning uncertainty. In fact it might be the ultimate definition of utopia - the place without any uncertainty. (According to Hannah Arendt the classic Greek understanding of Hedonism was not the desire for pleasure but the avoidance of displeasure and the Leftist utilitarian seeks not the greatest happiness of the greatest number but the least unhappiness of the greatest number. This seems like merely stating the same thing in the negative verses the positive but I think we understand that one must know unhappiness before he can experience true happiness.) I would never trivialize the importance of man as creator. But creativity is not the only fundamentally human way to deal with uncertainty. Arendt suggests that: “The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises … binding oneself through promises, serves to set up in the ocean of uncertainty, which the future is by definition, islands of security without which not even continuity, let alone durability of any kind, would be possible in the relationships between men.” I think that this capacity to make and keep promises is what underpins all libertarian thought. Isabel Patterson's society of contract vs society of status comes to mind is a good spokesman for this.

Essence literally to be, is the one element about some thing that if it were changed the thing would cease to exist. For example enlightenment ideals such as Laissez-faire economics were the position of the Left against the Right’s defense of monarchy (see Edmund Burke as the first apologist of the Right). Those positions have inverted and now the Left are the statists against the Right’s defense of individual liberties. While these political positions have changed, the Left and Right still remain. Ideology as I use it here, is a sort of axiomatic premise held with conviction that may even seem to be innate to the holder. It is an overarching view (the root of idea is to see) of the world through which all other ideas and events are filtered, colored or judged. It is the greater ideology through which lesser ideologies are subjective. There is the idea that is influenced, there is the idea that influences. This relationship can occur at many levels. To find it’s essence we seek to find that highest level of idea which no other idea influences … or a ‘first principle.’ The true essence will be able to explain this ideological hierarchy, not only of current political positions, but also the evolution of these ideologies’ expression through history. Here are the essences: >>>The Right seeks principled means. The Left seeks perfect ends.<<< The Rightist first principle can express itself in the chivalric code (family, nationalism) or in adherence to religious principles (Feuerbach states, rightly IMO, that we created God as the repository of our highest principles), or most recently in the principles of individual liberty. The Leftist first principle has expressed itself first in the enlightenment, then romanticism (the reaction against the enlightenment’s child - industrialization), then anarchism - communism - socialism (communism light) - all different paths to utopia, and all using principles only as ad hoc means to an end.

The title, "lying to abusers," and the OP, posits the moral question whether it is moral to act immorally to an immoral person- to act in an unprincipled manner (lying) to an unprincipled person (abuser). That the overwhelming majority answers in the affirmative and wants to move on to argue the nuances of such unprincipled action (e.g. to practice one's lying or not) does not settle/remove the moral question thereby disallowing arguments which answer the question in the negative as unrelated/off-topic.

Spontaneous emotive reaction - passion - is the common human experience. Reason must be cultivated. Seldom are negative passions accompanied by regret if they can be justified by the conflict in which they were couched. The Ratio of Reaction-to-Regret might be 1000-1. In fact the more common response is Resentment (to emote again), by both parties. No better example can be found than right here. When the reader, in the context of helpless children, reads the word "parasite" (Nietzsche's or mine) they have a negative spontaneous emotive Reaction. The after-effect is not Reason. Nor is it Regret. The after-effect is Resentment ... and my heaping up of lots of red coins.

My idiosyncratic love of using words with clear meaning yet negative emotive connotations seems to never work-out. I wonder if anybody actually understood what Nietzsche was saying in those 2 aphorisms (?). Yes, "Dependent" is a more politically correct word, yet inaccurate. E.G. Interdependent has no corollary inter-parasitical. America did not consider themselves dependent on Britain when they declared independence. >>> "children provide more and more value to parents as they live and grow" <<< Absolutely true - or at least it was absolutely true at one time. Throughout history the family was the central economic unit - the family farm, the family trade, the family's cottage industry. Economic interdependence is now entirely external to the family, it is negotiated in employment contracts in absolutely individualistic terms. >>> "people who abuse children care more for utility in the moment ..." <<< To accept this I would have to imagine such a stream of consciousness where the options are weighed out and a course of action arrived at whereby the abuser slaps a child as the most useful action at the moment. I think such an individual would be clinically diagnosed as a sociopath. The slap, the yell is a spontaneous emotive reaction, it is a crime of passion. The word passion understood by it's etymon meaning suffering, or the total accumulation of stress (one of which is the child's unceasing dependence ;) beyond the ability/strength (see Nietzsche quote) of that certain individual to handle stress. Some people "snap" easily. Some people have no discipline in controlling their emotions. Some people are too lazy to even try. Then there are strong people who never "snap." To recognize this is not to make white knight excuses for the weak, nor is it an to appeal to some moral equivalency where the weak are "doing the best they can." It is an attempt to objectively understand the human condition. Shirgall, this is more for my censors than it is for you: I was MGTOW long before the acronym was ever coined. The reality of it is that leaving the weak to their own devices is going to yield a lot of problems. The only thing left for the M is to insure the principledness of their OW.

Oh. Good. I need not feel guilty then that I didn't grasp your argument "related to the thread topic," because you didn't make one. And I thought you were reprimanding me for "derailing" the thread.

If I were to accept the premise of utilitarianism, and I were to put on blinders and ignore other extenuating conditions, to focus solely on seeking to help stop the abuse in this specific family - then I would offer two points of critique. Our human farmers have long understood some basics of how to influence and control people. When the Farmer's Straw Boss, or some one who might consider themselves a professional in human resources, reprimands one of the slaves (employees) they do so only for the reason to effect behavioral change. Standing rules have always been to "Praise in public. Reprimand in private." To reprimand someone before his/her peers is counter-productive and usually serves to galvanize the undesirable behavior. Public ridicule is never a means of restoring an individual to productive wholeness. My point about parasitism was not a value-judgment against children. It is to recognize the unique and profoundly important institution of "family" which by right ought to be, and by necessity is host/parasitic. When in that public setting we should not see two individuals; one a victim and one an abuser. We should see a strongly bound family where the smaller is entirely dependent on the larger and only finds strength through unity because he has no strength of his own. An attack on one member should be considered an attack on all members, yet the child feeling impotence in defending his mother against public ridicule is also damaged. To address the child directly to inform him that his mother is a violent bitch, etc. is foundationally and unavoidably an action which attacks the bonds of the family unit. If the goal is to alter the behavior of the individual parent then a complete stranger in a public setting is at a sever disadvantage. A friend or a mentoring life-coach (psych-pro) can privately council and have strong guiding influence to change the parent's behavior. The stranger's public ridicule damages relationships as noted above, and can only change outward behavior in public settings. It serves to create a space where family ties are temporarily suspended - where the child has momentary autonomy while protected by strangers (surely we have also witnessed this autonomy in public) and the abusive parent whispers in the child's ear "wait till we get home." .

I answered both questions in Post #61 Stephan touts FDR as the webs largest philosophical talk show - or site, whatever. What is philosophy if not the analysis of the abstract? While the new-born fowl can run away from predators with-in hours of birth, the new-born human is entirely defenseless for years and it takes over a decade for him to become fully-functional yet still not fully mature. The new-born human is radically dependent on the care of a host, his mother. His mother is burdened by the additional demands of caring for her child. It is difficult for her to run away while carrying her child. She and her child, in-turn requires help from others to survive. This relationship is unilateral. It flows from the group (or the father as it once was in our society) to the mother, to the child. It does not flow in the opposite direction. This is an anthropological fact of the human condition and this is what makes us radically social animals. This anthropological fact is most acutely experienced in the relationship between mother and child. "Entirely inappropriate"? You have searched the net to come back with a definition which excludes parasitism in any same-species relationship. Did you seek out such a definition for the conclusion it would yield? . The "it" was the movie. The movie is not an unrelated tangent. It is germane. And it is good. Someday watch it. Kevin I have to apologize. I have not made the effort required to understand your argument. In fact as I think about it, I have no idea what your argument, related to the thread topic, is. I hope I haven't trampled any pearls into the mud. I hate that when it happens to me. Sorry. .

"one who eats at another's table" is the etymological root. Suggestion: When you look up a word in the dictionary you will find many, sometimes dozens, different usages of the word with different connotations. And every dictionary will also give the word's origin, it's etymology. Go first to the etymon. While the word may be abstract and difficult to understand the etymon is usually based on clear easily understood actions or real objects. While the abstract word is pulled away from reality, the etymon gives the connection point of return to reality. This gives the basic, the essential, the actual, real, true meaning of the word (the word "etymon" stems from Greek etymos "true, real, actual," Armed with the essential meaning of the etymon we then proceed to the various usages of the word and we see clearly the underlying thread which connects all the various usages. This understanding can also shed light on cognates. If two words share roots they, at some level, they also share meaning. Most philosophically-minded people reject the importance of etymology and instead focus on Wittgenstein's "Meaning is Use." But I say let's not forget that we move in the world of Received Ideas, we cognitively sit in the shade of a tree we did not plant. >>> "it's impossible for most children to be parasites" <<< Only you could answer this, and it requires introspection, but did you set-out to find a meaning for the word parasite which would in the end yield this conclusion? >>> "their future behaviors could provide more benefit than their earlier neediness created" <<< Most analysts estimate the average cost to get a child through high school graduation (not college) at about 250K. Now you're 4 years past MMX. You plan on paying that back? No. The popular opinion is that we pay it forward. After having been a parasite we are to become well-adjusted to then becoming a host. The parasite/host relationship is at the ideological core of our society. It is expected that your generation should experience no resentment in paying for my SS. And your grandchildren will be just fine paying off the little-bit of debt our generations have created. No? .

To be clear I do not characterize the people, only the arguments. I have learned long ago to deal only with ideas. Even this is dangerous for many people cannot separate the two. And I do not assume that this woman has been accused of being evil -that her soul was evil to it's core. Only her actions were on trial here. So reciprocate with clarity - and this is not a rhetorical question - Is child-abuse evil? .

MMX, (I'm MCMLXXV) these may indeed be better questions. But they first require the acceptance of 2 premises (or maybe it is only one basic premise). But I do not accept these basic premises. Everywhere on this forum, everything I have written, has been against it. Your questions make sense if one accepts utilitarianism, or using efficacious means to achieve more-perfect ends. I do not. I reject that premise. I accept following principled means regardless of what ends one prognosticates that they may lead to. It is the foundational ideological choice to be made before proceeding. >>> Principled Means or More-Perfect Ends? <<< Choose one or the other. Choosing both is choosing neither. (If you notice, the question I asked does not depend on first making that choice.) I entered this thread polemically against the maxim "Mean to mean. Nice to nice." Being mean to mean is justified because being mean is morally wrong. But this maxim advocates acting through morally wrong means (methods) in the expectation that it will yield a society of a higher net mean-lessness, IOW the greatest happiness of the greatest number. I reject that. That is the utilitarianism which underpins all statist arguments (and it is the current which floats consumerism, but that's another argument) as well as being logically absurd. The other premise which one must accept before answering your questions - which is really part of the first premise - is that one must jettison the principle of not "controlling" (your word) another person's life. The guiding principle which underpins all of libertarianism is that of: 1 person - 1 life ... by virtue of being born you own that 1 life. You do with it whatever you want. You do not own another person's life. You will not control another person's life. And you can not make another person responsible for your life. 1 person - 1 life. (BTW the goal of a child is to take ownership of his/her life.) That principle is of highest importance. After that one may consider secondary principles such as self-defense - of resisting force with force - "controlling" one's attacker, etc. Then we might argue the tertiary principle of intervening on another's behalf. That is this thread's principle - down at least on the third rung of importance. And if we are going to intervene on behalf of others then that opens-up Pandora's box of - Statist military intervention (?), welfarism (?), etc. Why intervene for the abused child of a stranger? Why not bomb the abortion clinic? or computer-hack the IRS? or tax the rich to feed the poor? This thread is functioning on the Tertiary rung of principles and treating it as if it were prime, IMO. .

Parasite = "one who eats at another's table." ​Nietzsche's tastelessness (and my tastelessness as I mimic him) is a test. It tests our ability to conceive this abstract idea objectively - that is to avoid the subjectivity of the emotive connotations of the word. "Parasite" is like "fascism." Orwell tells us as early as 1946 that “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable."” But these words do have meaning. They are intrinsically connected to abstract ideas which do not fade away because we find it too tasteless to acknowledge them. Here's another Little tasteless Truth: "Fascism" = bundle symbolizing the strength of a united group. At a nationalist level it can go awry as the 20th century Fascists obviously did. But at a family level it is embraced whole-heartedly by most everybody (just like communism in my other Little Truth). The Straight Story is an awesome movie which displays the virtue of Family Fascism. @ 4:00 in Part 4 of 10 begins an interaction between the main character and a young run away girl. This short dialog makes a passionate and powerful portrayal of the family ... and the short exchange has a surprising and profound end with a powerful symbolism. It's a great movie (and a great sound-track by Angelo Baglamenti). Don't disregard it because of my tastelessness. .