(Yesterday, 08:45 AM)quintessentone Wrote: I certainly hope not, it only will drag this site down as happened on ATS.
It seems someone took me literally, and changed the thread title...
* * *
(Yesterday, 10:10 PM)chr0naut Wrote: In many of his posts he has called for military actions and executions.
DBCowboy seems to have little understanding of value human life. The very young are often like that, and will follow rules without evaluation of consequence, thinking that they are being 'right'.
I was thinking about this yesterday, after I posted my Mudpit remark.
However, the member in question is apparently old enough to have a child in the armed forces.
Quote:There are several personality disorders where these do not come about and although they gain other more adult attributes, they remain at a juvenile level ethically. We would class these emotionally undeveloped people as having narcissistic, sociopathic and psychopathic disorders.
I find attributing anti-social behaviour to mental instability or some developmental disorder unhelpful. We can, perhaps, lock up the perpetrators following such a diagnosis, but that isn’t always possible. Then what should we do? Console ourselves with the thought that they are sick? Crow over their illness? Call their actions blameless because, after all, they are not well?
Psychology is all very well in its place. It is, in fact, a lifelong interest and (informal) study of mine. But when it comes to cases of this kind I am happy to let psychology go by the board and evaluate people on the basis of what matters, which is whether or not they behave decently towards others and myself. By their moral behaviour, I mean.
Without naming names, there are several members active on this thread who, by this measure, fail catastrophically as human beings. They seem unable to treat others with humanity, let alone respect – apart perhaps, from their own associates, though even with the latter, privilege is limited and conditional. Like members of the Soviet Politburo under Stalin, their relatives and associates* are always on probation, likely to disappear if they fall out favour.
In such cases, I prefer to call a spade a spade. These people are not mentally but morally defective. We can attribute that to whatever effective cause we like – genes, environment, fate, God, the Devil – but the proximate cause is always that they have no sense of others as human and deserving of life and respect.
On Deny Ignorance, most of these moral cripples are right-wingers, but that is only because of the ATS legacy. A historical accident. As my Politburo remark above indicates, leftists are often equally guilty. The problem isn’t one’s political views but the degree of extremism one brings to them – how many people are you willing to make suffer, and how much suffering are you willing to tolerate, in the service of your politics?
Some of the members we exchange more or less uncivil words with on Deny Ignorance are willing to go all the way. The reason they are not mass murderers is simply that they are powerless nobodies.
__________________________
* They have no friends, only temporary fellow travellers.
For forms of government let fools contest;
Whatever is best administered is best.
Whatever is best administered is best.




![[Image: 99ea5596c2e42ff2f56017451b643e12.jpg]](https://denyignorance.com/uploader/images/99ea5596c2e42ff2f56017451b643e12.jpg)


