"Cowards did not reproduce, for they were socially ostracized, and neither they nor their sisters (presumably young and not married) could find spouses. Eugenic motiva- tions may also be detected in the choices made in wife-sharing or husband-doubling arrangements (see below). Plutarch agrees with Xenophon that a man could ask a husband if he might plant his seed in a wife who had already produced children, but he also attributes the initiative to the husband. For example an elderly man with a young wife might offer her a handsome, noble young man, and then adopt the children born of this union. Daniel Ogden has speculated that Spartans believed that in the process of wife-lending, male sperm could mingle and produce offspring who were thought to have descended from two male parents. Though the male contribution to the embryo was usu- ally thought to dominate, it is also necessary to pay sufficient attention to the female contribution. The rejection of cowards’ sisters and of some wives in favor of married women who were euteknos (“blessed with good children”) and gennaia (“well born”) reveals a belief that the mother was more than merely a fertile field for the father’s seed, and that each woman continued to make her own particular contribution to the offspring. Indeed, in Plutarch’s Sayings of Spartan Women, the mothers take all the credit for the way their sons turn out. Of course this is an exaggeration that results from the author’s effort to prove that Sparta was very different in this respect from other Greek cities where mothers had little to do with the rearing of sons after the age of seven. Xenophon reports that at Sparta fathers were involved in their children’s upbringing.
He [Lycurgus] saw, too, that during the time immediately following marriage, it was usual elsewhere for husbands to have unlimited intercourse with wives. He decreed the opposite of this: for he ruled that the husband should be embarrassed to be seen visiting his wife or leaving her. Thus the desire for intercourse was more fervent in both of them, and if there should be a child, it would be more sturdy than if they were satiated with one another. In addition to this, he took away from men the right to take a wife whenever they wanted to, and ordered that they marry in their prime, believing that this too was conducive to the production of fine children. If, however, it happened that an old man had a young wife—seeing that men of that age guard their wives—he thought the opposite. He required the elderly husband to bring in some man whose body and spirit he admired, in order to beget children. On the other hand, in case a man did not want to have intercourse with his wife but want- ed children of whom he could be proud, he made it legal for him to choose a woman who was the mother of a fine family and well born, and if he persuad- ed her husband, he produced children with her. Many such arrangements developed. For the wives want to get possession of two oikoi, and the husbands want to get brothers for their sons who will share their lineage and power, but claim no part of the property. Thus in regard to the breeding of children he thought the opposite to those of other states. And anyone who wishes to may see whether it turned out that the men in Sparta are distinctive in their size and strength. (Xen. Lac. Pol. 1.5-10)." [Pomeroy, Spartan Women]
This is why I have a high respect for the ancient Greeks; they were very in tune with nature and the noble spirit.
Cowards and weaklings should not be allowed to propagate. The finest most fertile feminines adore the best fighting males, i.e., men of grit, men of power, men of physical strength, men of prowess, and natural dominants. Western civilization is infected with a disease; a disease that shelters and allows the genetic filth to perpetuate their bloodlines. Modernity gives these weaklings a chance in the gene pool thanks to the illusion of fitness via money. In primeval times, the physically fit males received the most beautiful females as they had to hunt, fight , pillage, etc in order to obtain resources to survive and obtain the admiration of the feminines. But now, everything is civilized and emasculated. Men don't need to hunt, engage in bloody combat, and be physically fit in order to perpetuate their bloodlines. They now just need to regurgitate bullshit they heard in school and obtain a piece of paper ( degree ) and wa-lah! then they get a job as a pencil pusher and bring in the cash. This cash has the illusion of being synonymous with resources that alpha-males obtained in nature. As prior mentioned, the problem with this new civilized system is that weaklings can now obtain resources to attract and mate with feminines while in primeval times, they wouldn't have had a chance as they would have perished do to their physical unfitness. So as a result of modernity, a sea of weaklings, retards, and beta-males are being popped out of deceived female vaginas.
This is why I have a high respect for the ancient Greeks; they were very in tune with nature and the noble spirit.
Cowards and weaklings should not be allowed to propagate. The finest most fertile feminines adore the best fighting males, i.e., men of grit, men of power, men of physical strength, men of prowess, and natural dominants. Western civilization is infected with a disease; a disease that shelters and allows the genetic filth to perpetuate their bloodlines. Modernity gives these weaklings a chance in the gene pool thanks to the illusion of fitness via money. In primeval times, the physically fit males received the most beautiful females as they had to hunt, fight , pillage, etc in order to obtain resources to survive and obtain the admiration of the feminines. But now, everything is civilized and emasculated. Men don't need to hunt, engage in bloody combat, and be physically fit in order to perpetuate their bloodlines. They now just need to regurgitate bullshit they heard in school and obtain a piece of paper ( degree ) and wa-lah! then they get a job as a pencil pusher and bring in the cash. This cash has the illusion of being synonymous with resources that alpha-males obtained in nature. As prior mentioned, the problem with this new civilized system is that weaklings can now obtain resources to attract and mate with feminines while in primeval times, they wouldn't have had a chance as they would have perished do to their physical unfitness. So as a result of modernity, a sea of weaklings, retards, and beta-males are being popped out of deceived female vaginas.
Do you even have a degree? I would judge by your failure to spell "dominance" that you don't. Believe me, as a current student there's more to it than simply "regurgitating bullshit you heard in school and obtaining a piece of paper." Going through the process of getting a degree requires intelligence, discipline, organisation, self-reliance, critical thinking etc. all skills fundamental to intellect which can be applied to the rest of ones life. People earn high levels of money because they have developed themselves to the point that they deserve a high wage. This isn't ALWAYS the case, and money isn't the end- it is a means, however the process of reaching the stage of a high wage usually requires a high level of personal development and experience. If you believe that the ONLY factors that should be applied to mate selection are raw physical strength and courage, then you obviously socialise with extremely shallow examples of mates. Human beings express excellence in a variety of ways: intelligence, artistic capability, self-discipline, philosophy, discovery, sporting prowess, etc. A combination of a variety of these displays of excellence serve to impress a mate. The substance that is behind the external physique and fighting spirit is also important. Your argument stems from Darwinist assumptions. Do you think in primitive societies, humans failed to help their kin at all, they just let them die if they weren't fit enough? Whilst culture plays a large role on the human psyche, we're still very similar as our emotions haven't changed. Humans have always felt empathy, particularly towards those closest to themselves. This is true within all group species, particularly mammals. So in other words your Darwinist ideals and assumptions are particularly unfounded. Your approach is largely reductionist. "In a warlike and restless clan, for example, the sicklier man may have occasion to be alone, and may therefore become quieter and wiser; the one-eyed man will have one eye the stronger; the blind man will see deeper inwardly, and certainly hear better. To this extent, the famous theory of the survival of the fittest does not seem to me to be the only viewpoint from which to explain the progress of strengthening of a man or of a race."- Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All Too Human, §224
Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
"Whitman’s conception of the relationship between body and soul does, indeed, very strongly echo Hegelian idealism. It comes as no surprise that Hegel also believed in phrenology,35 a pseudoscience that claimed the existence of a direct relationship between shapes of the human body and moral qualities.
In his 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass, Whitman writes: “All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain.” This statement, that so closely echoes the phrenological principles, contains a clear formulation of the assumption that underlies aesthetic morality: “moral beauty” proceeds from physical beauty (physical superiority). This is not to deny that there is room in Whit- man’s thought for spiritual beauty hidden under an ugly physique, e.g., “The ugly face of some beautiful soul”36 (“Faces,” 1), but that represents the excep- tion, the enigma. Beauty, for Whitman is not just erotic, youthful beauty, but rather harmony and lack of deformity (all of which, of course, reaches its peak in youth), so that there can be beauty in old age too.
Physical beauty is never predicated of Christ. Rather, the opposite is true: Christ is usually pictured as bleeding, suffering and despised by others dur- ing his Passion, the most transcendental part of his religious activities. Other than that, no physical description is given of him prior to the Resurrection. The physical attractiveness of the Christian messiah was irrelevant for the new morality being preached. With Whitman, the case is different. While for Christ the messiah his being good was the sign of his divine nature and the source of his moral authority, in the case of Whitman his attribute as messiah was beauty.
Given the close connections between body and spirit, between spiritual purity and physical beauty, to Whitman the poet is not only a person endowed with superior spirituality, he is also a man of an “impeccable ‘physiology’.” For Whitman, genuine prophecy and poetry can originate only in the man of perfect body. It is for this reason that he chose to mythologize himself as the superb male who radiates health and spirituality.
Eugenics is a natural consequence of aesthetic morality. The attainment of higher degrees of physical perfection and beauty through the pairing of physically superior individuals is a notion that acquired new “scientific” dimensions in the nineteenth century with the popularization of the differ- ent versions of evolutionary theory. Eugenics, though, was by no means a new idea in the nineteenth century. As we saw before, Plato affirms that Love is the love of generation and of birth in beauty, and in The Republic he favors eugenics among the elite individuals. Inevitably, Whitman shared in that ideology too. According to Aspiz, Whitman enunciated “an evolutionary gospel of racial betterment.” It is within the context of his quest for beauty (admit- tedly, of a particular type) that Whitman’s ideas, and poetic utterances, on the black person and other races finds its proper framework:
You Hottentot with clicking palate! you wooly-hair’d hordes! You own’d persons, dropping sweat-drops or blood drops! You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of brutes!
You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down upon, for all your glimmering language and spirituality! You dwarf’d Kamtschatkan, Greenlander, Lapp! You Austral Negro, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip,
groveling, seeking your food You Caffre, Berber, Soudanese! [ . . . ] I do not prefer others so very much before you either, I do not say one word against you, away back there, where you stand, (You will come forward in due time to my side)
(“Salut au Monde,” 12)
However, Whitman did not have a systemic thought on eugenics. Heredity is at the center of what we could call his eugenic ideas. According to Mar- lene Walther, in every man Whitman sees a potential breeder that may be “the start of populous states and rich republics,” while in a woman he sees “‘the bearer’ of mothers and of them that shall be ‘mates to the mothers’.” To which she adds that Whitman despises, even condemns, those who spend themselves “‘with no thought of the stain, pains, dismay, feebleness’ they are bequeathing,” while he gives his bravos “to all impulses sending sane children to the next age.” The topic of eugenics was so important to Whitman, Walther points out, that he wanted it to be established as a science, “the noblest science.” Whitman believed in the temporary supremacy of the white race.
While opposed to extending slavery to new territories, Whitman also opposed total abolitionism as “mad fanaticism” and as a “dangerous fanatical insanity.” Radical abolitionists acted, in his opinion, “as if slavery was the only evil in the universe.” He was afraid that the competition of cheap slave labor might negatively affect the interests of the white working class, and he believed that “the institution of slavery is not at all without its redeeming points.”
In fact, he approved of the constitution of the State of Oregon, which prohibited blacks (slave or free) from entering the state,55 and was convinced that had he lived in the South he would have sided with the Southern whites on the question of slavery.
Whitman felt a kind of aversion to blacks, according to Asselineau, who adds that the poet, who could “scarcely hide his disgust for Negroes,” went as far as to reproach them with the color of their skins. Whitman believed blacks “quite incapable” of governing themselves, and shared the opinion with Carlyle that “God had created the blacks to act as servants to the whites.” He thought that the black race lacked the drive to self rule, and that somehow its natural place is a subservient one.58 Whitman did not believe in amalgama- tion of whites and blacks. Neither did he wish it to happen. Indeed, as Kue- brich remarks, he hoped that blacks would be one day sent back to Africa or at least somewhere outside the United States.
While working as a nurse in the hospitals in Washington during the war, Whitman said that, in comparison with the ongoing slaughter, he “did not care for the niggers,” and in a letter to his mother, he mocked them and com- pared to “wild brutes let loose” a group of them who paraded in a disorderly manner to celebrate the election of Mr. Bowen.61 Somehow unsurprisingly, when describing some positive quality in the black soldiers who were fight- ing the war, Whitman made an aesthetic observation: “[W]e cannot find fault with the appearance of this crowd—negroes though they may be. They are manly enough [ . . . ]. Many of them real handsome young fellows.” In contrast with his negative perception of the black person, later in life Whitman expressed his belief that the future of the world is one of open communication and solidarity of all races. And the fact is, during his years in the Washing- ton hospitals he also nursed black soldiers.
Folsom sees also “a kind of Darwinian view of race” in an anno- tation made by Whitman in a manuscript fragment that appears to have been written as part of Democratic Vistas but was never published:
The blacks must either filter through in time or gradually eliminate & dis- appear, which is more likely though that termination is far off, or else they must so develop in mental and moral qualities and in all the attributes of a leading and dominant race (which I do not think likely).
To Whitman, the same as to many of his contemporaries—philosophers, ideologues, and common people—evolution was an inexorable law, the way of nature, always leading to new forms of perfection (think of Bucke’s cosmic consciousness, a result of the evolution of the human intellect, as he defines it). Thus, it was something that called for our cooperation. Through conscious cooperation, the pace of evolution could be sped up, the goals, both good and inevitable, reached sooner." [Brasas, Walt Whitman's mythical ethics of comradeship]
"One explanation Aristotle offers for what he sees as the pre-political level of development among many people, Greeks and non-Greeks alike, depends upon a theory involving climatic differences. The main passage relating the effect of climate upon human character occurs in Politics, VII. 7 where a question arises concerning what sort of natural character people in the ideal state or polis should possess (1327b18–20). The answer Aristotle gives identifies two main qualities of character that citizens ought to have:“spiritedness” (thumoeides) and “intelligence” (diano ̄etikos, 1327b36–8 ). Following this claim, Aristotle offers a rudimentary form of the climate theory of ethnos, or national, differences. In outline, he maintains that peoples (ethn ̄e) from colder parts of the world have too much spirit (thumos), and not enough intelligence (dianoia) and as a consequence, lack political governance, whereas peoples from hotter parts of the world lack spirit and so, submit to tyranny and enslavement (1327b23–31).
He distinguishes the wild, ungovernable peoples from the cold climates as “Europeans,” and those from the hotter climates as “Asians” (1327b24, 1327b27). Finally, and predictably, we find that between the extreme regions of cold and heat lie the areas of the world inhabited by the Greeks, who alone possess the kind of disposition capable of governing themselves, because they possess both spiritedness and intelligence (1327b29–31).
A preliminary question to be asked concerning Aristotle’s climate theory concerns its origin: it does not arise with Aristotle but in fact bears close similarity to an earlier treatise in the medical tradition, as well as a brief reference associating climate to character in Plato’s Republic IV (435e–36a). The fifth-century Hippocratic work, Airs, Waters, Places, which appears to be Aristotle’s model, gives a scientific, naturalistic account of the effect of climate and geography on human traits, including physical and moral features. Another original connection to Aristotle’s account may be Sophistic sources, some of which are associated with the climate theory of national character as well.30 For our purposes, we shall draw upon the Hippocratic treatise for its expression of the climate theory.
The general idea advanced in Airs, Waters, Places is that climates with marked sea- sonal changes cause variations in the semen which in turn gives rise to other effects, including bodily size, shape, and disposition of human character. In the opening section, the work sets out a contrast between Asia and Europe:
Asia differs very much from Europe as to the nature of all things, both with regard to the products of the earth and to the inhabitants . . . the country is milder and the dispo- sitions of the inhabitants also are more gentle and less passionate. The cause of this is the temperature of the seasons. (sec. 12)
It then proceeds to explain the cause of the dispositional differences:
"the chief reason why Asiatics are less warlike and more gentle in character than Europeans is the uniformity of the seasons, which show no violent changes either towards heat or towards cold, but are equable. For there occur no mental shocks nor any violent physical changes which are more likely to steel temper and impart to it a fierce passion than is a monotonous sameness. (sec. 16)"
In contrast to the Asian temperament, Europeans are ungovernable: “the wild and unso- ciable, and the passionate occur in such a constitution, for frequent excitement of the mind induces wildness, and extinguishes sociability and mildness of disposition” (sec. 23). The author of the treatise then generalizes about the differing characters of the two, finding the Europeans more “courageous” from undergoing exertions and hard- ships, and the Asians less so due to a climate that “induces indolence” and for this reason, he finds European barbarians more warlike than Asians (sec. 23). In the Hippocratic work, variability of climate produces dispositional differences in people’s character. On the one hand, the cold climate makes Europeans possess a kind of wild belligerence that leads to courageous disposition, while the mild climate of Asia makes Asians such as to be gentle and timid.
An obvious parallel exists between the Hippocratic and Aristotelian accounts con- cerning the relation between climate and natural disposition. Yet the former also draws a correlative cause for character in the political regime:
"where men are governed by kings, they must be very cowardly; for their souls are enslaved, and they will not willingly undergo dangers in order to promote the power of another; those that are free undertake dangers on their own account, and not for the sake of others . . . for they themselves bear off the rewards of victory, and thus, their institutions contribute not a little to their courage. (sec. 23)" [Julie Ward, Philosophers on Race]
"It is possible to infer character from features, if it is granted that the body and the soul are changed together by the natural affections: I say ‘natural’, for though perhaps by learning music a man has made some change in his soul, this is not one of those affections which are natural to us; rather I refer to passions and desires when I speak of natural emotions. If then this were granted and also that for each change there is a corresponding sign, and we could state the affection and sign proper to each kind of animal, we shall be able to infer character from features.
For if there is an affection which belongs properly to an individual kind, e.g. courage to lions, it is necessary that there should be a sign of it: for ex hypothesi body and soul are affected together. Suppose this sign is the possession of large extremities: this may belong to other kinds also though not universally. For the sign is proper in the sense stated, because the affection is proper to the whole kind, though not proper to it alone, according to our usual manner of speaking. The same thing then will be found in another kind, and man may be brave, and some other kinds of animal as well. They will then have the sign: for ex hypothesi there is one sign corresponding to each affection." [Prior Analytics, 2.27]
"Phrenology was a complex process that involved feeling the bumps in the skull to determine an individual's psychological attributes. Franz Joseph Gall first believed that the brain was made up of 27 individual 'organs' that created one's personality, with the first 19 of these 'organs' believed to exist in other animal species. Phrenologists would run their fingertips and palms over the skulls of their patients to feel for enlargements or indentations. The phrenologist would usually take measurements of the overall head size using a caliper. With this information, the phrenologist would assess the character and temperament of the patient and address each of the 27 "brain organs". This type of analysis was used to predict the kinds of relationships and behaviors to which the patient was prone. In its heyday during the 1820s-1840s, phrenology was often used to predict a child's future life, to assess prospective marriage partners and to provide background checks for job applicants.
Gall's list of the "brain organs" was lengthy and specific, as he believed that each bump or indentation in a patient's skull corresponded to his "brain map". An enlarged bump meant that the patient utilized that particular "organ" extensively. The 27 areas were highly varied in function, from sense of color, to the likelihood of religiosity, to the potential to commit murder. Each of the 27 "brain organs" was found in a specific area of the skull. As the phrenologist felt the skull, he could refer to a numbered diagram showing where each functional area was believed to be located.
The 27 "brain organs" were:
The instinct of reproduction (located in the cerebellum). The love of one's offspring. Affection and friendship. The instinct of self-defense and courage; the tendency to get into fights. The carnivorous instinct; the tendency to murder. Guile; acuteness; cleverness. The feeling of property; the instinct of stocking up on food (in animals); covetousness; the tendency to steal. Pride; arrogance; haughtiness; love of authority; loftiness. Vanity; ambition; love of glory (a quality "beneficent for the individual and for society"). Circumspection; forethought. The memory of things; the memory of facts; educability; perfectibility. The sense of places; of space proportions. The memory of people; the sense of people. The memory of words. The sense of language; of speech. The sense of colors. The sense of sounds; the gift of music. The sense of connectedness between numbers. The sense of mechanics, of construction; the talent for architecture. Comparative sagacity. The sense of metaphysics. The sense of satire; the sense of witticism. The poetical talent. Kindness; benevolence; gentleness; compassion; sensitivity; moral sense. The faculty to imitate; the mimic. The organ of religion. The firmness of purpose; constancy; perseverance; obstinacy."
""There are four temperaments, accompanied by different degrees of strength and activity in the brain-the lymphatic, the sanguine, the bilious, and the nervous. The temperaments are supposed to depend upon the constitution of particular systems of the body: the brain and nerves being predominantly active from constitutional causes, seem to produce the nervous temperament; the lungs, heart, and bloodvessels being constitutionally predominant, to give rise to the sanguine ; the muscular and fibrous systems to the bilious; and the glands and assimilating organs to the lymphatic.
The different temperaments are indicated by external signs, which are open to observation. The first, or lymphatic, is distinguishable by a round form of the body, softness of the muscular system, repletion of the cellular tissue, fair hair, and a pale skin. It is accompanied by languid vital actions, with weakness and slowness in the circulation. The brain, as part of the system, is also slow, languid, and feeble in its action, and the mental manifestations are proportionally weak.
The second or sanguine temperament, is indicated by well defined forms, moderate plumpness of person, tolerable firmness of flesh, light hair inclining to chestnut, blue eyes, and fair complexion, with ruddiness of countenance. It is marked by great activity of the bloodvessels, fondness for exercise, and an animated countenance. The brain partakes of the general state, and is vigorous and active.
The fibrous (generally, but inappropriately, termed the bilious) temperament; is recognised by black hair, dark skin, moderate fulness and much firmness of flesh, with harshly expressed outline of the person. The functions partake of great energy of action, which extends to the brain; and the countenance, in consequence, shews strong, marked, and decided features.
The nervous temperament is recognised by fine thin hair, thin skin, small thin muscles, quickness in muscular motion, paleness of countenance, and often delicate health. The whole nervous system, including the brain, is predominantly active and energetic, and the mental manifestations are proportionally vivacious and powerful." [Mattieu Williams, A Vindication of Phrenology. (1894) pp. 49-50.]
This is why I have a high respect for the ancient Greeks; they were very in tune with nature and the noble spirit.
Cowards and weaklings should not be allowed to propagate. The finest most fertile feminines adore the best fighting males, i.e., men of grit, men of power, men of physical strength, men of prowess, and natural dominants. Western civilization is infected with a disease; a disease that shelters and allows the genetic filth to perpetuate their bloodlines. Modernity gives these weaklings a chance in the gene pool thanks to the illusion of fitness via money. In primeval times, the physically fit males received the most beautiful females as they had to hunt, fight , pillage, etc in order to obtain resources to survive and obtain the admiration of the feminines. But now, everything is civilized and emasculated. Men don't need to hunt, engage in bloody combat, and be physically fit in order to perpetuate their bloodlines. They now just need to regurgitate bullshit they heard in school and obtain a piece of paper ( degree ) and wa-lah! then they get a job as a pencil pusher and bring in the cash. This cash has the illusion of being synonymous with resources that alpha-males obtained in nature. As prior mentioned, the problem with this new civilized system is that weaklings can now obtain resources to attract and mate with feminines while in primeval times, they wouldn't have had a chance as they would have perished do to their physical unfitness. So as a result of modernity, a sea of weaklings, retards, and beta-males are being popped out of deceived female vaginas.
Do you even have a degree? I would judge by your failure to spell "dominance" that you don't. Believe me, as a current student there's more to it than simply "regurgitating bullshit you heard in school and obtaining a piece of paper." Going through the process of getting a degree requires intelligence, discipline, organisation, self-reliance, critical thinking etc. all skills fundamental to intellect which can be applied to the rest of ones life. People earn high levels of money because they have developed themselves to the point that they deserve a high wage. This isn't ALWAYS the case, and money isn't the end- it is a means, however the process of reaching the stage of a high wage usually requires a high level of personal development and experience. If you believe that the ONLY factors that should be applied to mate selection are raw physical strength and courage, then you obviously socialise with extremely shallow examples of mates. Human beings express excellence in a variety of ways: intelligence, artistic capability, self-discipline, philosophy, discovery, sporting prowess, etc. A combination of a variety of these displays of excellence serve to impress a mate. The substance that is behind the external physique and fighting spirit is also important. Your argument stems from Darwinist assumptions. Do you think in primitive societies, humans failed to help their kin at all, they just let them die if they weren't fit enough? Whilst culture plays a large role on the human psyche, we're still very similar as our emotions haven't changed. Humans have always felt empathy, particularly towards those closest to themselves. This is true within all group species, particularly mammals. So in other words your Darwinist ideals and assumptions are particularly unfounded. Your approach is largely reductionist. "In a warlike and restless clan, for example, the sicklier man may have occasion to be alone, and may therefore become quieter and wiser; the one-eyed man will have one eye the stronger; the blind man will see deeper inwardly, and certainly hear better. To this extent, the famous theory of the survival of the fittest does not seem to me to be the only viewpoint from which to explain the progress of strengthening of a man or of a race."- Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All Too Human, §224
Haha I make one negligible spelling error, and you take that as me being some ignoramus? If anyone is going be labeled as ' shallow', it should be you.
Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
I remember posting this old news in the general news thread here and asking in one of the Race threads if such near-spartanism would be permitted today without people condemning and killing you for a monster...
Its a good context to record Pinker's remarks:
Quote :
"We have come a long way to arrive at an age in which one-pound preemies are rescued with heroic surgery, children are not expected to be economically productive until their fourth decade, and violence against children has been defined down to dodgeball.
How can we make sense of something that runs as contrary to the continuation of life as killing a newborn? In the concluding chapter of Hardness of Heart/Hardness of Life, his magisterial survey of infanticide around the world, the physician Larry Milner makes a confession:
I began this book with one purpose in mind—to understand, as stated in the Introduction: “How someone can take their own child, and strangle it to death?” When I first raised the question many years ago, I thought the issue to be suggestive of some unique pathologic alteration of Nature’s way. It did not seem rational that evolution would maintain an inherited tendency to kill one’s offspring when survival was already in such a delicate balance. Darwinian natural selection of genetic material meant that only the survival of the fittest was guaranteed; a tendency toward infanticide must certainly be a sign of unfit behavior that would not pass this reasonable standard. But the answer which has emerged from my research indicates that one of the most “natural” things a human being can do is voluntarily kill its own offspring when faced with a variety of stressful situations.
The solution to Milner’s puzzlement lies in the subfield of evolutionary biology called life history theory. The intuition that a mother should treat every offspring as infinitely precious, far from being an implication of the theory of natural selection, is incompatible with it. Selection acts to maximize an organism’s expected lifetime reproductive output, and that requires that it negotiate the tradeoff between investing in a new offspring and conserving its resources for current and future offspring. Mammals are extreme among animals in the amount of time, energy, and food they invest in their young, and humans are extreme among mammals. Pregnancy and birth are only the first chapter in a mother’s investment career, and a mammalian mother faces an expenditure of more calories in suckling the offspring to maturity than she expended in bearing it. Nature generally abhors the sunk-cost fallacy, and so we expect mothers to assess the offspring and the circumstances to decide whether to commit themselves to the additional investment or to conserve their energy for its born or unborn siblings. If a newborn is sickly, or if the situation is unpromising for its survival, they do not throw good money after bad but cut their losses and favor the healthiest in the litter or wait until times get better and they can try again.
The “natural affection” is far from automatic. Daly and Wilson, and later the anthropologist Edward Hagen, have proposed that postpartum depression and its milder version, the baby blues, are not a hormonal malfunction but the emotional implementation of the decision period for keeping a child.
Mothers with postpartum depression often feel emotionally detached from their newborns and may harbor intrusive thoughts of harming them. Mild depression, psychologists have found, often gives people a more accurate appraisal of their life prospects than the rose-tinted view we normally enjoy. The typical rumination of a depressed new mother—how will I cope with this burden?—has been a legitimate question for mothers throughout history who faced the weighty choice between a definite tragedy now and the possibility of an even greater tragedy later. As the situation becomes manageable and the blues dissipate, many women report falling in love with their baby, coming to see it as a uniquely wonderful individual.
Many cultural traditions work to distance people’s emotions from a newborn until its survival seems likely. People may be enjoined from touching, naming, or granting legal personhood to a baby until a danger period is over, and the transition is often marked by a joyful ceremony, as in our own customs of the christening and the bris. Some traditions have a series of milestones, such as traditional Judaism, which grants full legal personhood to a baby only after it has survived thirty days." [The Better Angels of Our Nature]
J.-Xt. encourages indiscrimination and the production of retards at one end.
And the discouragement of abortions of these retards at the other end.
Abortion jokes are not funny because its laughing at something we didn't have the spine to nip at the very start.
And the very start is the Violence called j.-xt. "Love".
Debating whether the unformed fetus is some dead matter like some cheap egg-yolk,, shifts and ignores the real debate... is J.-Xt. innately diseased or not? That this debate is conducted and led by J.-Xts. is the real joke.
