Savage Indignation

[poliphilo]

If you want to go round all day in a haze of Pickwickian goodwill then don't start your morning with a well-researched article about child prostution in Cambodia.

Poor Cambodia. First it gets bombed by Henry Kissinger, then it gets worked over by Pol Pot- the maddest genocidal tyrant of the 20th century- then- with half its adult population in a state of post-traumatic stress- it becomes the world's premier destination for western sex tourists.

Human nature in the raw is almost intolerably disgusting.

We talk about paedophilia- which is essentially the brutalising of the weak by the strong- as if it were something marginal and shadowy- as it has to be in Western societies because of the harshly enforced laws against it- but remove the sanction of active policing and far too many us, presented with the spectacle of an unprotected child, will be calculating (a) how to have sex with it or (b) how to enslave it and then sell it to other people for sex.

Show me the average man and I'll show you a predator and a bully.

Comments

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

That's why I like dogs.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm not a great dog lover- but I follow your reasoning.....

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

Sophie is the first dog I have ever owned and it took me till I was 54 to buy her, but she's my best and truest friend now. There are still a lot of dogs I'm not too keen on.

[aftertorless.livejournal.com]

I have attempted, several times, to construct a response to this entry, and each time it has gone awry, so I won't post any of them here. But I agree with you, and I share your outrage on a variety of different levels, and I long for the day when this kind of appropriated domination, trading of objects, looking at less powerful (be it in age, economic status, etc.) "its" will cease.

And I wonder if it ever will cease...if it is at the heart of every average man.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

When I get really disgusted with the human race I tell myself that we're still a very primitive species and that eventually we'll evolve into something better.

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

that's a wonderful idea and way of looking at things. i think i will have to do the same.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I mean we've only been "civilised" for a few thousand years. I really don't believe that our present state represents the summit of evolution.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

If you want to go round all day in a haze of Pickwickian goodwill

That made me double-take! (I subtitled a documentary about Cambodia sometime last year. Not exactly bouncy and fun :o()

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Nothing personal intended:)

I don't suppose it can have been pleasant working on that documentary.

Usually I avoid reading stuff that I know is going to make me depressed and angry, but this time I just didn't step aside in time.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Show me the average man and I'll show you a predator and a bully.

Well, that's cheerful. I would respond that the best way to encourage "the average man" to keep his predatory and bullying nature under leash is to stand up to bullies, to oppose them publicly, to make fun of them, and to marginalize them. And to throw them out of our civilized society if necessary (guess where I'm going now.....)

I was reading a book on the battle of Gettysburg this morning. It told of a Gettysburg woman who was nursing wounded Confederate soldiers, and who was feeding soup to one who had lost his arms in the battle. He sneered at her and told her that "our women would never stoop to doing such a thing. We'd have our N-----s do it."

Today we'd probably we all understanding and sympathetic toward his unspeakable bad manners to someone helping him; of course, this lapse was a natural result of losing both arms and should be overlooked and/or explained away. Back in 1863, though, this Gettysburg volunteer put down the soup bowl, said, "Then get one of your N-----s to do it," and walked away.

There's something to be said for the viewpoint that some lapses of manners (or conduct) should not be excused away, and that the perpetrator should experience the consequences.

[I've never tried putting a cut tag in a comment before -- hope it works... Apologies to those who'd rather have skipped what I have to say.]

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That woman did the right thing.

In fact her response is magnificent.

By an odd coincidence I've just this moment been watching a TV documentary about the Civil War. For some reason I can't explain the Civil War moves me more than almost any other war in history.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I was driving home from church and stopped at a red light on Bearden Hill. Just to my right was a marker for a brick mansion on top of the hill. The marker said that the house was built in 1848 by a retired Mexican War general, and that during the Civil War it was used as headquarters for a different general, and that Bearden hill was used for tents for the troops.

Sitting at the red light and looking at the restaurants and banks that now surround the old mansion, I realized that all around Knoxville are old Forts and famous names--we even have Civil War cemeteries. I need to take some pictures for you.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"I need to take some pictures for you."

I'd like that.

I remember visiting a Civil War cemetery at Frankfort, Ky. It was a deeply affecting experience.

My first wife's home town was bombarded by confederate artillery during the civil war. There was an old house on the edge of town that still had a cannon ball embedded in its front wall.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wish I could think of some way of softening this judgement, but I can't.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Cynic though I be I would beg to differ. The fact is that brutality leads to a brutal nature, that I do not deny. However human beings can also be capible of great kindness and goodness, even at times in brutal sutations. My own belief is that human nature is basically stupid, with a few souls who are basically good or evil.

At the end of the day I suppose we have to look at individuals, not all men would visit prostitutes (and frankly, horrifying though this is, I really do not see that it is any better to visit adult women selling themselves) and we must change the machismo attitude that sex is a sign of power.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"basically stupid"- yes, I like that.

Humankind is not so much brutal as stupid.....

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I came to thqat conclusion when I was about 7 and I have never had cause to revise it. I don't know if that's great or depressing.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I guess the thing is to stand up to the bastards and face them down.

I don't like my own sex very much. Individual men can be dear, sweet human beings, but as a bunch I mistrust them completely.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Alas, all of us on this planet are predators. We are made that way--even weeds will choke out flowers.

Our higher reasoning, whatever that is, allows us to choose.

Still: I overheard two teachers talking, and one said a boy in her class had been hit hard on the back of the head and soon after became an out-of-control impulsive monster.

Is our higher reasoning at the back of the head?

We are festooned DNA, says Carl Sagan. Which part is sentient? Is it at all? I hope so. Sentient, intelligent predators: awful combination.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We are, of course, a species of great ape.

Do you remember the opening of 2001- where the human ancestor is set on the path to civilisation by the discovery that a bone can be used as an offensive weapon?

Eventually, I hope, we will evolve beyond our brutal and murderous state.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I'm not that keen on women either. They can be very calculating and nasty in ways that elude the average male. Female bosses are ALWAYS worse than men.