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Culturally accepted child abuse

INTJMom

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...
Laws about stealing and killing don't seem to be universal though, and have through history generally only applied to people within the same society/perceived community.
...
I would be curious to know which civilizations or tribes did not have laws against murder and stealing.
 

Carebear

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I would be curious to know which civilizations or tribes did not have laws against murder and stealing.

Which civilization did not have laws that only extended to people within the society/perceived community?

The shortest answer would be to ask the opposite: Which civilizations did have laws against stealing from or killing people outside the perceived community?

The answer is extremely few before the humanistic ideals started spreading through the enlightenment and even after that there are multitudes of examples of no laws applying if the offended part was not a part of the perceived community. Vikings murdered and stole from the Brits, Irish, French and Baltic states before they became Christian and started seeing themselves as part of the Christian community, after which it was only ok to kill and steal from non-Christians (which didn't stop Nordic crusaders going by boat to the holy land from pillaging the occasional coastal village on their way along the coasts of France, Portugal, Spain, Italy et cetera. :D) Romans killed and stole from their neighbours until they were integrated into the Roman Empire. African communities killed and stole people and treasure from other African communities and sold their captives as slaves (long before atlantic slave trade). Hitler managed to get the Germans to steal from and kill the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and homosexuals by convincing the German people that these groups were not part of the German community. I can only think of a very few pre-enlightenment examples of communities where there existed "universal" and not just community based laws or ethics against killing and stealing. On the other hand I can think of extremely many examples even today of the laws against killing and stealing only applying to people within a perceived community.

If we agreed that the US war against Iraq was a violation of Iraqui sovereignty and done partly to get their oil, US soldiers killing Iraquis defending their country during the invasion would serve as a more recent example of rules against stealing and killing not being universal.
 

INTJMom

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Which civilization did not have laws that only extended to people within the society/perceived community?

The shortest answer would be to ask the opposite: Which civilizations did have laws against stealing from or killing people outside the perceived community?

...
I don't understand you.
I said murder, not killing. All of a sudden you're talking about war.

I cannot believe there has ever existed a civilization who did not have laws against murder and stealing, and you said there were some, and I want to know what they are.
Don't start adding modifiers to my question.
Please name the groups of people who allowed murder and stealing in their society.
 

aeon

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Please name the groups of people who allowed murder and stealing in their society.

In as much as murder is a legal term, the answer is none. For murder to exist, there must be a law that defines a killing as such.

Of course I an answering from the context of this society. Such terms may not apply elsewhere.

There are currently societies that allow for the killing of women based on familial judgement of their actions, even in the face of laws against murder. But again, those are killings, not murders, because the law does not recognize them as such.

So again, you can't allow murder. You can ignore killings, however.


cheers,
Ian
 

Carebear

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INTJMom said:
Carebear said:
INTJMom said:
It is inherently wrong per the Laws of the God of the Universe, just like murder and stealing.
...
Laws about stealing and killing don't seem to be universal though, and have through history generally only applied to people within the same society/perceived community.
...
I would be curious to know which civilizations or tribes did not have laws against murder and stealing.
INTJMom said:
I don't understand you.
I said murder, not killing. All of a sudden you're talking about war.

I cannot believe there has ever existed a civilization who did not have laws against murder and stealing, and you said there were some, and I want to know what they are.
Don't start adding modifiers to my question.
Please name the groups of people who allowed murder and stealing in their society.

As you see I was always talking about stealing and killing, not murder, as the latter wouldn't make sense, like aeon pointed out. You were talking about the Laws of the God of the Universe (by the power of Greyskull! ;-) ), not the laws of logic, so I assumed you were talking about killing and stealing, not the juridical terms murder and theft.

No, perceived communities have never accepted murder or theft, as prevention of those constitutes one of the prime reasons people started organizing themselves in communities in the first place. But killing and stealing from people outside the perceived community has normally been acceptable, and I think what the enlightenment changed wasn't this dynamic as much as the perception that not all humans were part of the same community.

I think this also explains why some people today have started to champion animal rights. It's not that they feel it's wrong to kill creatures outside of their "community". They've simply come to see all semi-sentient life as part of their own community. (Yes, I'm stretching the term community now, but you get the idea.)
 

Xander

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As I have the power :rofl1: (sneaky bear!!)...

Mom,
The definition of murder presumes some kind of wrong doing does it not? At what point is murder a killing? At what point does mass murder become war? Is civil war fine?

Killing can be justified no? Does that make it any less Murder?

Now if we persecuted every soldier for each round they fired I'd bet the recruitment rate would drop for the armed services. That would be the power of stigma.

The way I see it is that if you approach a child calmly after they have fallen over, they seem less bothered about it. If you run full pelt each time they scrape a knee then the child seems to cry more and become more emotionally wound up.

If we are indeed social creatures then societies reactions will, in part, define our experiences. Ergo if we keep adding such stigma to abuse then it makes it worse for the victim.

Now if you had a celebration where they got to kick their victimiser just once... now that could go some way to rectifying the problems :D
(For one there'd be a resurgence in concrete shoes ;) )
 

SillySapienne

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My mother came from a culture and time where it was acceptable for men to beat their wives, and parents to beat their children.

My grandmother was a physically abusive women who beat my mother and her siblings, and who even attempted to beat me and my sisters, YUCK!!!

My mother even resorted to physical forms of "discipline" that some liberals would definitely say qualified as abuse.

Also, I've seen my uncle kick the crap out of my innocent cousin, on several occasions, what a prick.

Point being, I found the culture my mom was raised in to more or less be borderline barbaric. It screwed her up in the head, for sure.

I've stated this before and I'll state it again, human beings and the moral rights they deserve transcend whatever their culture, and cultural norms happen to be or dictate.
 

INTJMom

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As you see I was always talking about stealing and killing, not murder, as the latter wouldn't make sense, like aeon pointed out. You were talking about the Laws of the God of the Universe (by the power of Greyskull! ;-) ), not the laws of logic, so I assumed you were talking about killing and stealing, not the juridical terms murder and theft.

No, perceived communities have never accepted murder or theft, as prevention of those constitutes one of the prime reasons people started organizing themselves in communities in the first place. But killing and stealing from people outside the perceived community has normally been acceptable, and I think what the enlightenment changed wasn't this dynamic as much as the perception that not all humans were part of the same community.

I think this also explains why some people today have started to champion animal rights. It's not that they feel it's wrong to kill creatures outside of their "community". They've simply come to see all semi-sentient life as part of their own community. (Yes, I'm stretching the term community now, but you get the idea.)
Thank you for clarifying.
 

Totenkindly

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CaptainChick said:
I've stated this before and I'll state it again, human beings and the moral rights they deserve transcend whatever their culture, and cultural norms happen to be or dictate.

That might be a defensible position.

I think the point here was one being made from an anthropological standpoint, NOT a moral standpoint.

Carebear was not advocating that any of this was "good."

He was simply stating that, as far as laws go, a community will establish laws for its own citizens... and if you are "other" -- i.e., not part of that community -- then you have no legal rights within that community.

This is why a country that does not allow murder or theft within its own community can hand guns off to its young men and send them into ANOTHER community ... where they are not punished for murdering THOSE citizens or stealing.

It might help if you also thought in terms of "tribes." If you are in a tribe, you have expanded your self-identity to include the tribe -- you treat them as you would treat yourself, and vice versa, your personal identity boundaries encompasses other members of your tribe.

But you do not identify with the OTHER tribes... so you do not have to treat them as yourself. They are "Other."

[You see this on a small scale in "Lost" -- with the "Others." The survivors of the crash are tribes, now they're TWO tribes... one run by Locke, one by Jack... and there were still the Others out there too. People protect their tribe; the other tribes are treated as outsiders and dealt with accordingly.]

* * *

As far as INTJMom's thoughts go (and maybe yours, but hers are based on Christianity), Jesus basically said, "Love your enemy as yourself" -- do you see what he was saying, he said you have to actually identify with your enemy, your personal identity boundaries include them as part of yourself. They are no longer "other," they are YOU. Love them as you love yourself.

So your enemy -- and all of humanity -- is part of you. Part of your tribe. Thus the morality and the rights you apply to yourself applies to your enemy. There is no "other" in Christianity, at least as Jesus set it down.

Philanthropists also tend to have this attitude -- they care about ALL people as if they were part of their tribe. They think in terms of the human race being one large tribe, and no one is "other."

For a long time, the US treated the AIDS epidemic in Africa as a problem belonging to the "Other" tribe. It wasn't OUR problem. Our tribe seemed to be okay, We didn't have to be concerned about THAT problem.

But some people argued that all humans are part of the SAME tribe. They expanded their identity boundaries outwards to include Africa as part of their tribe.

So the US finally started to deal with the problem as if it were happening within its own borders.

* * * *

Carebear also points out that animal-rights activists have basically extended their identity boundaries even further, viewing ANIMALS as part of them selves in a sense and thus "part of the tribe."

Some people would disagree with that, seeing animals as separate... but it's why some people treat animals as they would treat other human beings.



Just some clarifications.
 

Xander

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It seems that the defining point of what is abuse and what is punishment is whether or not it is an agreed and acceptable punitive measure for the act which drew the punishment.

In cases of abuse it's obvious that it's wrong in any culture usually by the measure that the victim didn't do anything to draw the punishing act.

What is odd, incomprehensible to many, is when a culture allows an individual to measure what needs punishment and what does not. From an outsiders perspective it seems barbaric that an individual can decide what is a punishable act and then on the strength of their convictions meet out justice as they see fit (a precise example escapes me at present). To us it's abuse but to them it's the law of the land and acceptable as part of their culture. Perhaps to them we may seem to ignore justice and await the decision of a bureaucratic machine to decide the offenders fate.

Never the less abuse exists in all cultures both as a possibility and a reality. The question remains as to whether those not involved in the incident help or hinder by their reactions to it.

Now I can see how everyone exclaiming about the terror of it that they are increasing the message of "don't do it" but are we not also giving all those involved in it, including the victim and their family, a black mark? Are the abused partially stained by our combined reaction to the abuser and hence take on guilt about being involved in something so terrible?

Personally I think so.

The solution, however, would be much harder than the initial problem as if you remove the outrage does it then become easier?

Again, personally I think that it should be dealt with like an axe blow. Swift, sudden and efficiently. Remove the offender from the situation and leave the scene with the offender never to return. If only it were that simple.

Also what nags on my mind is that no matter what we do there will always be cases where someone gets tarred with the brush of "abuser" who doesn't really deserve it. In these cases the whole moral outrage does us no service.

Perhaps we should restrain ourselves from our natural witch-hunter instincts and let the law take it's course. Surely by whipping ourselves in to a frenzy, even when we are perhaps right to do so, only leads to more barbarism? For what is persecution of the innocent to ensure that the guilty are punished but a route to a more barbaric society?
 

MachineDog

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I didn't entirely read through this just kind of skimmed, but as far as "barbaric childhoods" and how things could be right at one time and wrong at another is really complicated and I've dwelled on it myself for awhile. I honestly feel though that the topic has been derailed from a little after the original post. I think the main concept here is that, is a taboo a concept of society and would something not be a taboo if the society there wasn't defining it as such.

Err.. imagine if being forced to do schoolwork you didn't want to do was a taboo. (wish it was) Anyway, say this happened 10 years from now. Everyones all happy of course but now they think something else is difficult or annoying but isn't a taboo yet. But now they've been raised into a society where doing work you don't want to do is pathetic and disgusting. When they see pictures of people working on things they don't want to do they have been preprogrammed to be disgusted with it. (just like current taboos) But right now, school and other work that we really don't want to do is considered perfectly normal and necessary even.

Err.. it's 3 AM and I've been up for almost 20 hours now I'm tired so I can't really continue and I can't really check my thoughts atm either. Sorry if this was out of taste, but I also disagree with the way this thread went. I don't think this topic was made to discuss the rational thinking behind abuse, just the meta-discussion of the taboo itself. Make any sense?

But anywho, can someone teleport me to this world without schoolwork please? I'd love it.
 

Seanan

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I didn't entirely read through this just kind of skimmed, but as far as "barbaric childhoods" and how things could be right at one time and wrong at another is really complicated and I've dwelled on it myself for awhile. I honestly feel though that the topic has been derailed from a little after the original post. I think the main concept here is that, is a taboo a concept of society and would something not be a taboo if the society there wasn't defining it as such.

Err.. imagine if being forced to do schoolwork you didn't want to do was a taboo. (wish it was) Anyway, say this happened 10 years from now. Everyones all happy of course but now they think something else is difficult or annoying but isn't a taboo yet. But now they've been raised into a society where doing work you don't want to do is pathetic and disgusting. When they see pictures of people working on things they don't want to do they have been preprogrammed to be disgusted with it. (just like current taboos) But right now, school and other work that we really don't want to do is considered perfectly normal and necessary even.

Err.. it's 3 AM and I've been up for almost 20 hours now I'm tired so I can't really continue and I can't really check my thoughts atm either. Sorry if this was out of taste, but I also disagree with the way this thread went. I don't think this topic was made to discuss the rational thinking behind abuse, just the meta-discussion of the taboo itself. Make any sense?

But anywho, can someone teleport me to this world without schoolwork please? I'd love it.

Um, that's already happening... the teens I raised and their friends thought making them take the garbage out was child abuse... they were just slaves ya know... and I'm not joking.
 

doob

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However: what disturbs me is that -in this theoretical issue- you don't seem to make a distinction between child labour and incest...

Yeah, I once said something similar while in conversation with some people at work and they were stunned... they didn't (want to) get it, I didn't get them.
 

MachineDog

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Um, that's already happening... the teens I raised and their friends thought making them take the garbage out was child abuse... they were just slaves ya know... and I'm not joking.

Yup.

Sorry for the one-liner but nothing else to add here.
 
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