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english  Origins of moral & ethical behavior

Roger Pfau: emailropf@leute.server.de, 30.07.2002, 12:14
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Original: english  Origins of moral & ethical behavior (Robin Gaiason), 29.06.2002, 15:38



Itīs the old story of the struggle - the violent struggle - between the forces of evil and the paladins of the light you tell us. An age-old story in a modern dress.

While I do not intend to bore you by discussing questions of national force monopoly, I nevertheless want to stress the point of two different groups - subcultures -, which both face similar structures of problems and both find similar ways to deal with them - by means of violent struggle.

As far as I can see you try to mask the fact of your group being ready for violence. Only casually you tell us that your group "assumed control of the security for the clubs where young people went, banned the Nazis". What do you mean by "banned the Nazis"? Did you asked them politely to be nice guys? Let alone this you additionally apply means of secret services like infiltration.

So what you really talk about is the question if means that are considered evil if the evils apply them have to be considered morally acceptable if been applied be the paladins of the light, letīs say by Americans struggling against Taliban.

The common structural element - in your case, in the case of USA versus Taliban and in any similar case - is the confrontation between the "naturally born killers which are nothing but evil" and the "paladins of light which are nothing but empathic and compassionate".

It is not a new answer you give us - force against force -, and your struggle has nothing to do with compassion or empathy. Did you ever hear about an unholy war? Did you ever hear about a war that isnīt for the best of all people including the victims? Did you ever hear about a war where the winners havenīt been morally apologized?  

People like you will do this again and again, wonīt they? Force against force for all eternity. And will always wonder why nothing is changing, let alone the groups of the victims and the fighters.

The real problem is: there are coherencies, interdependencies, relations. All these "innocent victims" are not innocent at all, they are humans. They exclude people, they include people by criteria of sympathy. They help people, they let people suffer, and all this is contingently and intentionally motivated. And all this can be understand as violence against - young people becoming Nazis or punks or any further group of excluded people. Does it really surprises if the means to counter this are as violent and as senseless as the means by which the exclusion is realized?

Why not taking in consideration structural interdependencies, structural coherencies? Because the answers to be found by doing so arenīt that simple as "force against force"?

Roger