Shakespeare wasn't a screen writer. He was a playwright. Died 400 years ago.

Right, here too. As the old Industrial Workers of the World slogan goes, "no need for slaves, no room for masters." Also, "No gods No masters."

Workers are free to join / not join a union, but then, if they work in a union shop, don't want to belong, why should they get the wages the union bargained for? And why should employers be allowed to interfere with workers organizing? After all, labor produces all wealth.

These are triage issues. — YIOSTHEOY

Are there no ethical questions in carrying out triage?

As I said, what Greece and Turkey are doing is immoral and unethical by transporting them across their own boundaries.

I would consider Greece and Turkey's actions to be an act of war. — YIOSTHEOY

This is an asinine opinion.

Why should Turkey and Greece alone shoulder the burden of refugees and migration from Afghanistan, Somalia, parts of West Africa, Bangladesh, Iraq, and so on?

Yes the UN should be working on solving problems, but it is hamstrung by the permanent members of the Security Council who are loathe to have the UN as an active player against their perceived self interests.

Welcome.

To me it makes more sense to quote philosophers rather than a playwright. — YIOSTHEOY

And why is that?

Without work you cannot eat. — YIOSTHEOY

Yes, but that's not what "right to work" means. "Right to work" is shorthand for "anti-union".

So, lactating males are as useful as tits on a boar after all.

Granted: all mammalian fetuses begin development using a common template. Offspring with xy chromosomes emphasize some parts of the template; children with xx chromosomes emphasize other parts. Our biological systems are very similar, whether male or female.

Our biological systems are extremely similar whether one belongs to the black, red, white, yellow, or mixed race. Norwegians, Navahos, Nigerians and Nepalese are extremely similar.

Individuals vary considerably, but still bear the clear stamp of the template which we are all derived from. But some people delight in parsing out all our minute differences (lauding and honoring difference itself) while others find it more sensible to merge as many of our commonalities as possible.

So if I decide that "red" means "gay sex", then I have the right to call people who disagree with my usage ignorant and behind the times? :s — Agustino

If you alone decide that, you have no right to expect everybody to agree with your usage. If a thousand people say red means gay sex, they don't have a right to expect agreement. If a million people use red to mean gay sex, then... maybe.

"Gay" was not a respectable term for a long time. The New York Times did not agreed to accept "gay" meaning "homosexual" until long after it became the preferred term in most media.

"New words" are borrowed from other languages ("salsa," "pizza"), coined by cobbling together ancient words (Latin 'jur' + 'dictio' = English "jurisdiction, by way of Old French), coined out of thin air ("OK"), or an old word is given a new meaning ("gay", "bread", "dope"). There is no formula which predicts which word will become standard. "dope" just recently became an adjective meaning "really good"; "bread" has been a term among some people meaning money for maybe 50 years.

Preferred descriptors get changed by professionals who like to tweak phrases. Public Health people decided that "venereal disease" was not a good term and so "sexually transmitted diseases" was used in its place. That wasn't good enough either, so now we have "sexually transmitted infections".

VD ---> STD ---> STI---> god knows what is next. This all within about 45 years.

People elect euphemisms for words that describe unpleasant conditions:

"passing" for dying is an example. "indigestion" for vomit; "Pelvic exam" for vaginal/cervix exam (doctors are not examining the pelvis). "gas" for fart. "feces" for shit. "bathroom" for toilet (or "restroom" or "ladies room" etc).

All sorts for interests come into play and change language: class, profession, religion, science, economic interests, and more.

Out-groups (like inner city blacks) often develop a patois that is mined by in-groups (suburban whites) for its outré value.

Linguistic "leaders" try to model the most "correct language", in the same way that people who want to be au currant latch on to concepts like "cultural appropriation". White people singing blues music is "cultural appropriation". Wearing a totally fake feathered headdress for halloween is "cultural appropriation".

How long "cultural appropriation" as a linguistic cultural sin will last is anybody's guess. I'd give it 5 years at the most.

I don't think it will prevent them for living a better life. Quite a lot of research shows that people who do successful change sex do have serious psychological issues and continue to suffer. So I think not changing sex, not giving in to an unnatural desire, is the first step to a cure. — Agustino

If one spent one's first 20 years being deeply conflicted about their sexual identity (am I male or female?) it would not be surprising if these conflicts would cause long-lasting personality issues. People who have merely ordinary physical handicaps such as very poor vision or deafness very often develop long-term personality problems, or distortions, owning to their experience of disability. If the child is lucky, he or she will grow up normally, but that depends on getting good breaks along the way.

That would be even more true for persons with difficult complex sexual problems. (Look at the long-term damage that child sexual abuse does.)

The more important fact is that such species do not display a desire to change their sex. They accept their nature as it is. Man is the only animal that sometimes tries to deny his nature. — Agustino

In some cases it's pretty clear that an animal is displaying a desire. I would guess that in mammals, at least, there is some range of innate sexual responsiveness. But what would a horse desiring to change that innate sexual response look like? Don't know.

Well, obviously, a word gets coined, or used in a new context, and this usage gains popularity, until, in some cases, at some point, it eventually becomes common usage. You don't need to do extensive research to gain that knowledge. It happened with the words "gay" and "queer" and many, many others.
— Sapientia
I am not a linguist and would not like to pretend I am one. I really am sorry, but I just don't have knowledge to converse about this. Nor do I think I can just know by thinking about it 10mins for the first time in my life. — Agustino

For ordinary discourse by the vast majority of people, the meaning of words can change, and often does change, generally over a fair amount of time.

In 1850 guys who liked sex with other men were referenced with the term "sodomy" -- a term which still has a fairly stable meaning. "Homosexual" was first coined in German in the 1860s. The first known use of "homosexual" in English was in Charles Gilbert Chaddock's 1892 translation of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, a study on sexual practices. "Homosexual" became the preferred "official" term for guys who liked sex with other men (there were lots of other, slang / slur terms in use of course--queer, faggot, cocksucker, etc).

Homosexual and sodomy haven't changed their meanings very much. "Gay" has not always referenced "guys who like sex with other men". It's not an undisputed term now.

Take "crippled". A space ship that is hit by a little rock is "crippled". Older people note that so and so is crippled up with arthritis, and it isn't an insult. People who were paralyzed by polio were "crippled". For some reason this became a "bad term". Activists who were "crippled" wanted a different term: They are "physically handicapped"; "Physically challenged"; "Mobility impaired"; "Differently abled"; or "crippled". They don't like the term "able bodied" even though that is presumably a very good thing. Is one visually impaired or half blind? Hearing impaired or can't hear a thing? People in wheel chairs complain that people treat them like non-entities. Calling a wheelchair a "mobility device" isn't going to enhance the passenger.

First there were "transsexuals" (back in the 1960-1980s) then there were "transgendered". "Gender, gendered, gendering, transgendered" and so on reflect post-modernism which views sexual behavior as socially constructed and fluid. Post-modernists like turgid language which obscures more than reveals. Post-modernist thinkers don't see an essentially binary set up in nature (roosters and hens are just engaging in pointless performances, apparently). They see a continuum which ranges from god-knows-what on one end to archaic, oppressive, colonialist, all-powerful White Males on the other end (he said, sarcastically).

The self-esteem and individualist tendencies blended with post-modern gendering and produced people who decide for themselves and declare what they are, and if you don't like it, that is your closed minded problem, not theirs--even if it is nonsensical.

I believe there are, indeed, people whose self-identity is at odds with the physical body in which they find themselves packaged. I have found on a number of occasions that my self-identity doesn't match my body either. There are people with whom I'd like to have a winning fist fight, for instance, but when I look in the mirror, I find that it is highly unlikely I would get past the first punch. There are people to whom I would like to be irresistible, but for some reason, they are able to not even notice me. I would like to win bicycle races but I don't have Lance Armstrong's body, mind, or supply of drugs.

Many people have abnormal bodies which don't match the self image of the occupant. People who are blind, deaf, epileptic, schizophrenic; have diseases such as multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, congenital deformities, and so forth, all have to make daily compromises with the physical/mental variances that shape their lives.

One of the things I dislike about "transgenderism" is that it projects that deviation from the 'norm' onto everyone. Everyone is someplace on a wide spectrum, continuum, of sexuality. Well, some are, but it seems like an awful lot of people do not find their sexuality scattered across the graph. A similar phenomena occurs among some gay activists: "Every man has at least a little desire for sex with another man. Sure, some more or less straight men do. But most straight men don't seem to have any such desire.

Projecting individual wishes onto everyone is generally not thought to be a sensible intellectual procedure.

Actually BC, what is known in the medical field as iatrogenesis is one of the leading causes of death in developed countries. — Agustino

Unfortunately, this is true--something like 100,000 deaths per year in the US are the result of medical errors. The current epidemic of opioid abuse, which is resulting in an epidemic of OD deaths is a consequence of incompetence. Doctors shouldn't be writing Rx's for strong drugs (like oxycontin) WITHOUT regular face-to-face follow ups. If the condition is bad enough to need many pain pills, then it is bad enough to see the doctor before you get your next Rx for painkillers. If pain isn't improving, maybe a different approach is needed.

Why so many?

I tend to chalk up both good and not good performance in many fields to the system in which a job is embedded. That isn't to say that individuals don't vary; some are incompetent and some are excellent. But IF the system allows incompetence, then... you'll get a lot more doctor error, regardless of competence.

Sure, I've been in doctors offices a few times and wondered about the guy's qualifications. But even good doctors make mistakes. And the patient isn't necessarily able to evaluate a doctor at first glance.

I do agree very much that people need much more practical medical literacy, and they should start building up this skill early on.

The way that the title question is worded doesn't make sense to me, but I doubt whether anything needs to be done to bathrooms — Sapientia

They should be cleaned regularly, and leaks should be fixed.

The NHS may have one of the best technologies in the world, but it's of no use when you don't have sufficient doctors, when your doctors do not think - but rather are bureaucrats following procedures, etc. — Agustino

Instead of torturing psychopaths, we could just send them to the NHS to be treated for tonsillitis or hemorrhoids--that'd fix em right proper.

All doctors (practically speaking) are stuck in a bureaucratic morass. How long you have to see a patient, what can be done for a patient, what can be prescribed to a patient, etc. is determined by insurance companies, state medicaid programs, medicare, the hospital's resources, [or their national equivalents] and (for a few) their great wealth.

I can't say that all patients get excellent care. Some get too much (too much / too many medications, inappropriately prescribed antibiotics, too many investigative procedures, etc.) and some get too little.

Doctors generally chose medicine because it was (sometimes still is) highly remunerative, it's interesting, some even do it because it helps people. Generalists are eventually swamped with too much information to absorb and utilize, and specialties tend to operate in silos. A brain surgeon might not notice that the patients leg was chopped off at the knee (a rhetorical point).

And in the long run, for most people, what determines health and longevity are things like adequate diet, public health operations (inoculations, clean air, clean water, etc), safe work places and highway safety, not smoking, not drinking excessively, and so on. The average longevity of white women in the US has taken a recent dip because of a big surge in opioid drug use among working class women resulting in fatal overdoses. White men are dying earlier too lately, not for lack of medical care but for the collapse of their former raison d'être (regular work, adequate wages, standing in the community, drugs, alcohol, etc etc) Neither decline (about a year in the aggregate) owes anything to inadequate medical care. (It owes a lot to an inadequate society.)

I have never witnessed first hand a lion killing an antelope; I have only seen carefully edited film which is almost always more sympathetic to the fleeing antelope than the very hungry lion with cubs to feed. It is difficult to resist the slant of the film maker that the predator is cruel and evil (at least to some extent) and the prey is innocent and good (pretty much entirely). Are the furry little animals in one's yard vermin one would wish to be preyed upon, or are they cute little bunny rabbits. 1 rabbit is cute. Way too many rampantly reproducing rabbits are vermin. Come, Lord Eagle, Prince Hawk, feast and raise a plentiful brood.

It follows, then, that the "good life" is not the most "moral" life exactly, but rather the least "immoral" life. — darthbarracuda

There have to be both moral lives and immoral lives for us to know that there is a difference. I propose that we are not always immoral, even least immoral, all the time. We are often moral, occasionally immoral; more and less moral, more and less immoral.

For we all screw up. We all cause tension between people. We all halt the desires of others while maintaining our own. And yet we can't help it, either. — darthbarracuda

"All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned, everyone one in his own way. And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."

No, we can't help it, because we are part of nature. While we do not each seek exclusively our own good, we do and we must take care of our own needs once we are able. (Unlike lions, though, we tend to cull as much of the herd as we can get our claws into, to our long-term disadvantage.)

There is also no instance of genocide. — Agustino

1 Samuel 15:2,3

2 This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt.3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy [a] everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'"

Hosea 13:16

16 The people of Samaria must bear their guilt,
because they have rebelled against their God.
They will fall by the sword;
their little ones will be dashed to the ground,
their pregnant women ripped open."

Psalm 137
Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!” [referencing the destruction of the Temple)

8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
...
9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.

Actually, God has a habit of ordering the killing of children--all for the greater glory of his sublime divine self.

Psalm 136:10

to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt
His love endures forever.

Noted in "Gentiles in the Hands of a Genocidal God" (Christianity Today)

Joshua 6:21-27

21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

This, from Christianity Today: Can We Trust the God of Genocide?

But actually, that's the easy part. What's not easy is explaining what appear to be deliberate acts of divine cruelty. God's virulent rage. His hair-trigger vindictiveness. His apoplectic jealousy. Why would God make women and children pay for the sins of despots or the apostasy of priests? God's behavior at times appears to the skeptic, and even to the devout, as mere rancor, raw spite. There are passages in Scripture that make God look like a cosmic bully throwing a colossal tantrum.

In light of this, it's hard to stick to the claim that God is love—unconditional love, love that seeks and serves and suffers and gives until it hurts. It's hard to reconcile the New Covenant God revealed in Jesus Christ, who welcomes little children, eats with sinners, speaks peace to troubled hearts, calls us to love our enemies, and lets adulterers walk away unscathed, with the Old Covenant God, who lays waste to entire cities, lets babies be dashed on rocks, opens the earth to swallow families whole, smites his own priests for just touching holy relics, and encourages parents to stone their own children for acting up.

Here is a fun-scurrilous passage from a Abrahamic-religion-unfriendly blog:

Psalm 139

God is your Facebook stalker, the one who catalogues your every word and gesture, even, apparently if you go to hell. There are some more scary-stalker verses about how god watches us when we sleep, followed by an imprecation to please, please, please kill the wicked.

I think there often is a feeling associated with love, but in and of itself, love is a free decision of the will. To really love someone you have to first want to love them. — Agustino

Love is a progress. At the beginning, it is all feeling and emotional rush. Later (months at most, one hopes) the heat cools, and love becomes more sober, more thoughtful. Complexity of feeling, thought, interaction grows. The couple now has a history. The importance of will grows. The two halves of the pair look deeper; overlook; decide to accept, decide to ignore, Eventually, they decide they will not part. Maybe they get married, or just commit. maybe they take out a mortgage (more binding than a marriage contract), get a house and a dog, some furniture, stuff. Time goes on; years pass; they are still together. There is rough sledding, and they remain a couple. Love grows, there are emotions that go with deepened love, but nothing like the first phase.

Maybe there is a crisis of one kind or another. Job loss; job finding in distant cities; unfaithfulness; sickness; accident; all sorts of problems. Will comes into play here, especially, when the partners respectively decide to stay together, not because they have to, but because they want to. Maybe they need each other as well as want each other.

Will won't get love going, but only will can sustain love over the long run. Love and Will are mutually strengthening.

Of course, but this is not to say Nazi Germany was irrational - it was just inefficient, but it's aims were rational, albeit twisted and evil. In the case of the serial killer it's his AIMS that are irrational. — Agustino

The more I read the bios of the core Nazi group, the more undecided I am about whether the Third Reich was actually rational. On one level it was, on another level it wasn't. The united German state was still relatively young when the Nazi Party was conceived in the early 1920s, but there were various and sundry institutions which had been operating for a long time -- military, civil, industrial, educational, and religious organizations, administrative systems, etc. All of that stuff was typical, run-of-the-mill, rational.

To the extent that the Nazi Party occupied the previously existing institutions, these old institutions remained rational, if corrupted. What seems irrational to me was the way the Nazi Party operated over and above the old institutions, rapidly and severely torquing Germany into a twisted mess.

The Nazis weaseled their way into power by violence, deceit, and terror. A small core group built up a great deal of personal/state power very rapidly (Heydrich, Goering, Himmler, Goebbels, Hitler, etc.) which further twisted Germany. True enough, a lot of Germans tacitly or overtly approved of some of the twisted policy.

Were the top Gestapo Leaders, for instance, sociopaths, "normal criminals", or merely operatives in a state? Some writers have suggested that authoritarian principles were deeply imbedded in child-rearing and educational / training practices. If so, we shouldn't be surprised by the way the Nazis led and the way the German people followed.

Some of them had to be at least half psychopathic / sociopathic. (Some psychologists suggest that a little psychopathy is very helpful in top administrative personnel.) A psychologically normal person can hate a group of people. I don't think a normal person could be in charge of Auschwitz, live there with his family, and be a normal person. Probably his wife couldn't either. The same thing applies down the line.

But then, one has to ask themselves, can ANY highly ambitious, aggressive climber -- be it in the military, business, church, politics -- be entirely normal? It gets kind of iffy. Take Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Scott Walker, any of the Bush clan, et al: Can one trust anyone who really wants to run the United States, Russia, China, Brazil--or Panama, for that matter?

Sometimes it seems doubtful.

Let me ask you differently: were you opposed to the death sentence that some of the Nazi leaders received during the Nuremberg Trials? Why or why not? And please consider that even the crimes of Nazi Germany pale in comparison to the crimes of these serial killers. At least, despite the immorality of everything the Nazi regime did, they had the legitimacy of a state, of a legal system, of a people. They had reasons for what they did, even if those reasons were wrong, misguided and evil. At least it made sense. What a serial killer does is so terrible that it doesn't even make sense!! There simply is NO REASON for the evil that they bring into the world - not even a wrong reason, nothing! — Agustino

You weren't asking me, but... what the hell.

Had it been up to me, I would not have executed the Nazis after Nuremberg. In their case, they might have served as a more potent warning to the future alive than dead. I would never have released them, and they would certainly not have been allowed the pleasure of any sort of celebrity. I wouldn't have tortured them, but I wouldn't exactly have left them alone in a cell either. I would have brought them face to face with the atrocities and crimes they committed again, and again.

I don't think the crimes of Nazi Germany pale in comparison to anything a serial killer can do. (Actually, they are kind of similar).

Yes: Germany had the legitimacy of a state, of a legal system, of a people. Like I said, only genuine, human, and normal people can commit world-class atrocities and crimes against humanity. But really, the Nazi's didn't care that much about legality. Reinhard Heydrich, for instance, made it very clear that he didn't want his terror operations interfered with by lawyers or state and party bureaucrats. He liked to have educated people on staff, but no lawyers or ethicists, thank you.

We can debate military strategy. Maybe Hitler should have invaded England, maybe not. Maybe Hitler should have launched Operation Barbarossa earlier in the year. Maybe Hitler should have planned for the Russian winter better. Maybe Hitler bit off more than the Germans could manage.

But outside of the activities of the Wehrmacht, not much about the Nazi state actually made sense or was rationally managed. The Todt Organization carried out Hitler's wishes and built all sorts of fortifications, barriers, pill-boxes, etc. Hitler apparently liked building these things. Hermann Goering thought many of the structures were a joke. They barely slowed down the D-Day invasion or the invasion of Germany proper. The submarine pens were, actually, pretty good defense against aerial attack -- they were heavily over-built.

Hitler and the Nazi party groped toward the final solution of the "Jewish Problem" over the course of 15 years. Had the Nazis been rational, they would not have had a "Jewish Problem" in the first place and instead could have benefitted from the contributions of loyal Jewish citizens. They wouldn't have had so much confusion over what to do with the Poles once they had conquered Poland, had they really had reasons for doing what they did. Had they been rational they would have kept the Polish population more intact so that they could have served Nazi interests more effectively, especially when Germany needed all the productive power it could get when it invaded the Soviet Union. Had they been rational, they would have played a liberationist role in Ukraine and Belorussia, rather than the vicious blood bath policy they followed.

The Nazi state was not well run from an administrative point of view. The tool of terror didn't prevent government contract waste, fraud, and abuse. Parts of the Nazi regime worked OK, but other parts were sluggish, unresponsive, and inefficient.

But if torture was introduced in the way I have outlined, you realise it would be used exceedingly rare (probably less than 0.001% of crimes) and even in those cases many would show remorse, even if faked, before it was used. — Agustino

Once convicted and sentenced, I don't really give a rat's ass whether criminals like Madoff or serial killers feel or exhibit remorse or not. In prison they are and in prison they are going to stay, remorseful or vehemently unrepentant.

The "penitentiary" was first conceived by the Quakers as a way of salvaging the criminal--giving them a place to be penitent. It doesn't seem to have worked all that well.

what does my proposed punishment have to do with Hitler who mass tortured innocent people in the most brutal of fashions, — Agustino

Three connections:

1. To emphasize that the Nazi regime did not depend on psychopaths. Normal, fully human people operated the Nazi state.

The crimes of the Nazi regime were carried out by many thousands of people. For now, let's say 100,000 people were involved in the various apparatuses of terror that the Nazi's deployed in Germany, Poland, France, the USSR, the Baltic states, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Italy, the Balkans, Greece, Norway, and Denmark, Northern Africa (and anywhere else they occupied). The 100,000 worked in the Gestapo and the SS, not the Wehrmacht.

Let's say another 500,000 people willingly cooperated with, aided, and abetted the Nazis in the regime of terror, genocide, repression, and brutal control. Maybe 5% of these people had quite disordered personalities (psychopathic-sociopathic), most did not. They were morally, politically and socially perverted and disordered, but otherwise disturbingly normal and sane. The same goes for lynch mobs in the US, or Hutu machete mass murderers in Rwanda.

Normal humans are perfectly capable of committing horrendous acts. 99 times out of 100 they don't commit these appalling crimes without supporting political and social conditions, social prompting, social leadership, and judicial allowance.

2. To emphasize that there is no adequate punishment possible for the worse crimes.

The crimes of the 600,000 terror operatives, and many more who tolerated what they knew was happening, is far, far beyond adequate compensation. There is no conceivable way, whether torture, mass incarceration, perpetual expropriation of any accumulated wealth, etc. that could possibly repay the damage the Nazi regime exacted on the world (and if we include the rest of the Axis, the problem just gets proportionately worse).

There is no way for the people of Great Britain to repay the damages of the British empire. The US can't now, and never could compensate African slaves and Aboriginal people for the crimes we committed against them.

3. Appropriate responses to atrocity

What fully human, civilized people do in the face of very atrocious, disordered individual behavior is seclude them from the community (life without parole).

We don't yet have the means to predict, identify, and reform potential severely criminal behavior. If we can identify a psychopath, for instance, we don't have a means to change their brains. If we can predict that some children in some settings are likely to end up in prison, we can (if we are willing) do a great deal to improve their lives. Unfortunately, we aren't all that willing.

Perhaps we could predict which child in which setting is likely to join a gang and participate in drive-by shootings and criminal enterprises. Great. Identify away. But then comes the costly part -- doing something about the child's family life (retroactively?) that conditions them to behave in criminal behavior.

Faced with mass atrocious disordered collective behavior, we go to war and (we hope) crush the nations that perform such behavior.

In both cases, individuals and states, we seek to prevent future outbreaks of behavior. Or at least, we should. Prevention takes time, consistent, focused effort, and commitment of resources. The US, for instance, has brought an (virtually total) end to lynching and mob justice. It took decades and the work of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of activists to change the culture enough. (Eternal vigilance...)

Political/economic/military efforts like the EU have established a less militantly nationalistic and more integrated and peaceful Europe--at least since WWII, more or less. Treaty organizations like NATO have helped limit the potential of aggression in Europe (so I have been led to believe). There are no guarantees, of course, but these are the kinds of things that humans should do--future oriented, positive, non-punitive approaches to restructuring societies.

When someone does such a grave offence, do you think life-prison is adequate as a punishment? — Agustino

But is this sufficient punishment? — Agustino

But how is this proportionate punishment compared with the crime they have committed? — Agustino

Do you believe that life prison is sufficient punishment for such a person? — Agustino

Proportionality is worth considering when the effect of a crime is measurable. For shoplifting, you pay a relatively small fine. With repeated convictions of shoplifting, you pay a fine and get sent to jail. For embezzlement and grand theft you pay a very large fine (if you can) and/or you go to prison and/or receive probationary supervision by the state. And so on.

Bernie Madoff stole $65 billion; he wreaked havoc in thousands of people's lives; he destroyed trust, security, and hope; he undermined confidence in the wealth management systems for his victims. He preyed on his own community, in many cases. He corrupted his own family. He lived a luxurious lifestyle on the savings of other people. His sentence was life w/o parole, but Madoff was fairly old already when he went to prison, so his time there will not be terribly long (probably).

For shoplifting and ordinary grand theft we can calculate proportionality. For Madoff, and like criminals, the crime is beyond the scale of punishments that could possibly be imposed.

For assault and battery we can calculate proportionality. Plain old murder in the first degree isn't the worst felony on the continuum of crimes, but it is beyond calculating proportionality. The lost life, say your child's, can not be brought back. Nothing can adequately compensate you or the dead child. You can be paid a settlement, but that won't really help very much.

Anders Breivik killed almost 100 people, most of them young people, in one afternoon, one by one. He was sentenced to life in prison. Proportionate? Of course not. But nothing that could be done to Breivik could possibly compensate for the scope of his crime.

Torture degrades the culture that plans and carries it out, and does not achieve compensation in exchange for the degradation.

I can not further resolve my rationale for not torturing offenders.

add it to the checklist for the fire martial — Moliere

Or more likely, some ADA office. We inspect buildings and encourage, or force, building owners to make all sorts of changes that are just as expensive (or more so) than adding a bathroom. Like, requiring an elevator in an old building; requiring an old elevator in an old building to be brought up to code (that can cost $50,000, easy); put ramps in where only stairs are available (outside usually, and involving only a few steps); enlarge doorways so that wheelchairs can easily negotiate; install handicapped accessible toilets and sinks; provide more exits where they are needed for rapid egress; change sink levels; provide push-bar exit doors, and so on and so forth. Cities spend a lot of money making curb cuts at corners so that wheelchairs can cross the street conveniently.

When the ADA legislation first passed (back in the 70s) a lot of people thought it was just incredibly stupid to make old buildings usable by people with mobility problems. UNTIL, of course, a lot of the scoffers got old and developed mobility problems of their own. Then they began to appreciate the elevator in the old building, the ramp, the curb cut, the higher ADA toilet, the lever taps on the sinks, the mechanically opening door, and all that expensive waste of money.

Lots of men's room have panels between the urinals to provide privacy to the guys standing there who would like to take a piss, but can't because they are pee shy and somebody might be watching them, so they can't make it happen. I have to be in a hurry and have a full bladder to be able to step in between two other guys and urinate readily (or have had a few beers).

All that said, I still think the toilet controversy is much ado for a rather small number of people who are betwixt and between.

*Facepalm* — Agustino

Keep slamming your hand into your face until it drives some sense into your head.

A psychopath laughing about killing people for fun threatens the very foundation of our society. It shakes us to the core, and is therefore a prime target for the media. We feel inexplicably drawn to this menace in order to try to figure out why the psychopath is laughing and how this can fit in our view about a rational, coherent world. — darthbarracuda

Exactly! This is exactly why we must step down on it in the harshest way imaginable. — Agustino

Psychopathy (which is the likely condition of the prisoner in the dock of your OP) isn't preventable at this point (before birth) and isn't treatable later. Psychopathy is caused by a failure in brain structure which enables the child to connect "fear of punishment" to "wrongness". The psychopathic brain doesn't "feel fear" like a normal person does, and the limbic system where fear is felt just doesn't connect to the pre-frontal cortex the way it is supposed to. Consequently, children don't learn to "feel" rightness and wrongness.

Psychopathy usually occurs somewhere on a continuum, between very mild and severe. Towards the mild end, psychopathy can be an advantage to people who have to make difficult business decisions, for instance, and then move on to other pressing issues. If they have to lay off 1000 people, they'll still sleep well that night.

I don't know whether the laughing murderer in the court room represents paychopathy or just plain madness.

I don't know anything about the high security prisons you are familiar with, but in the US prisons are usually some version of a hell hole. They are either grimly isolating (everybody in solitary confinement, essentially) or they are more open and the other prisoners would just as soon rape you or cut your throat, as look at you. In the average large state prison, the inmates are running the joint to a large extent. Spending the rest of your life there is not a mild sentence.

Why? You treat others humanely because they are human. If they give up their humanity by committing such atrocities, why treat them humanly? — Agustino

What makes you think people give up their humanity by committing atrocities? The thing that makes life tragic is that it always ourselves who commit atrocities. Fully fledged, deeply human people commit very good and very bad acts. Very, very bad, sometimes. Only a human, possessed of humanity, is capable of achieving profound evil. I don't like it, but that's a feature of life.

Why do you think it is bad to want to punish such heinous crimes? — Agustino

In the wake of tragedy we feel all sorts of powerful emotions. It isn't "bad" to have feelings, even feelings of hatred, rage, and such. What is bad is turning those hot feelings into policy (torturing the convicted).

Don't you find it outrageous that such things can happen? — Agustino

Outrageous? Yes, we live in a world where all sorts of outrages occur -- everything from the young child being afflicted by a refractory cancer which eats it's way through its young body, bombs going off on the subway, to planes crashing into the WTC.

Bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people. Life is not only not fair, sometimes it is downright awful.

And don't you think that those who commit them deserve to suffer for it? — Agustino

The suffering you would like to inflict will not bring your loved one back. Nothing else will, either. The state is prepared to separate the proven-murderer from society. (Some states are prepared to do more than that, of course--I am also opposed to capital punishment). The friends and family of victims have to go on with their lives as best they can. The convicted and imprisoned will live out a very diminished life.

What would you do if this happened to one of your loved ones? If someone did this to them? Would you not want to see them punished? — Agustino

First, I will suffer: grief, anger, loss, rage, regret, guilt, extreme angst. I would want to see them punished, certainly. We have had, for a long time, the necessary apparatus in place to imprison, commit, seclude. I won't be joining you in a crusade to torture the perpetrators of appalling crime.

Will you not be happier if they are punished? — Agustino

A need to see justice done will be satisfied when they enter prison. I don't think I will become a lot happier on that basis alone -- not because I would have feelings about the suffering of the prisoner, it's just that... loss is loss, and it can't be undone.

Imprisonment is punishment. Nobody breaks into prison to enjoy the wonderful life there.

Let me tell you a joke — Agustino

Let me return the favor; this is a piece of a skit I heard on the radio a long time ago, probably before you were born. The end of times have arrived and God is busy sorting out the wheat from the chaff. Various groups are called forward and sent either to the left (chaff) or the right (wheat). "Moslems -- yes, both kinds. You go the left. Jews. You go to the right; welcome. Zoroastrians, you can go to the right too. Christians, to the left. Sorry, you were mistaken."

I argue that yes, torture of the worst imaginable kind should be a punishment for such a person. Why? For one, I think many of us would feel good to see such a person subjected to the worst kinds of suffering until he begs for mercy. — Agustino

Yes, I think it can safely be said that [some] of us would feel good to see such a person subjected to the worst kinds of suffering... In the blesséd land of America, large crowds gathered to watch persons convicted by mob jury of status offenses hung from trees, castrated, and then maybe burned alive, the audience sometimes collecting bits and pieces of charred flesh as souvenirs. Further back in time, our European ancestors hanged and burnt live victims in public executions which were very well attended. Hard hearted executioners would use damp wood for the burning so that the flames would be smaller and death would take longer to ensue.

More recently, like 1933 to 1945, some of our present German friends and allies enjoyed watching (or joining in) Jews being beaten to death on the street. In the prisons, far more ghastly tortures were conducted. In Stalin's regime, ended in 1953, torture of the prisoner was pretty much an all-out romp of every sadistic practice that could be performed on a prisoner. There was also Pol Pot, Idi Amin, etc. etc. etc.

You have now publicly stated your desire to see such practices resumed.

Bible quoting does no good for the non-believer, but since you have made it clear elsewhere that you do believe in God, and believe most earnestly, Bible-quoting by this apostate Methodist may help you.

Deuteronomy 32:35... Vengeance belongs to Me; I will repay.
Romans 12:19... Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
Matthew 5:38-39... “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Ezekiel 25:17... I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful rebukes. (That is, God will -- not you.)
Leviticus19:18... You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
Revelations 21:8... But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” [You said this you especially liked this book; do you suppose you will be put in charge of the burning sulfurous pits?]
1 Thessalonians 5:15... See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. And so on.

There are people who are prepared to commit heinous crimes against persons who will feel no guilt. They are called psychopaths -- diseased minds. They were born that way, most likely. Maybe they got that way because of very bad events in their early lives. Whichever it was, they are responsible for their actions (because we hold people responsible). They must be secluded from society whether they feel remorse or not. Maybe someday we will be able to heal psychopathy, but that time is not now.

There is a moral objection to torturing the guilty; there is the repugnant historical precedence of torture; and there is another: Someone must carry out the torture. In a civilized society of healthy individuals, no one would be asked, or would volunteer to do this job, or accept it if it were offered. Conducting torture is a criminal activity: criminal in that it is against society, and criminal in that it makes a conspirator in a morally forbidden act.

For your own psychological good, extirpate from your mind this desire to torture.

Absolutely I disagree. And eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. — darthbarracuda

The "original intent" of the eye-for-an-eye rule was to keep vengeance proportionate. If, for instance, somebody stepped on your sore toe, you didn't get to gouge out their eyeball as punishment. If somebody accidentally shot your cow during deer hunting season, you don't get to slaughter their family. "Proportionate vengeance" said Hammurabi.

If somebody was being tortured for information, what you said would make sense. IF, however, they were being tortured as punishment, it shouldn't make any difference what they say.

Because the further away the power from the people, the less likely the interests of the people will be represented. — Sapientia

Not necessarily.

The UK, vis a vis the EU, is in no way the equivalent of an American state vis a vis the federal government, but... The distant federal government has generally been the enforcer on civil rights, environmental protection, fair trade, and the like while the local school boards, cities, counties, and state have quite often been the perverter of the same.

Also, larger corporations -- as effective as they are in congress -- are even more effective at the state level, in getting the kind of tax deals and local regulation (always less of both) that they desire.

It would seem like it should be the other way around. But local governments (especially in the smaller states) just don't have the same muscle the the federal government has. New York and California are able to take on corporate power better, but even there... the feds are stronger than the states.

But the Christian life requires the community. It is only in the Church that the Christian can live in Christ and avoid sin. — Agustino

Yes, I agree with you here. The Christian life requires a community, (and a real community, not the larger diluted "Christiandom"). Actually, man can not live alone and remain human, no matter what he is -- Hindu, radical atheist anarchist, communist, Donald Trumpist, gay, straight, etc. We require community.

That is why, Christianity is inevitably tied to politics. A Christian requires a Christian society. — Agustino

Your statement puts us on the horns of a dilemma.

On the one hand, certain skeins within the long Christian tradition have found excellent expression in political movements to establish social justice, old age security, disability insurance, mutual assistance, and all that good stuff. Of course, these goods don't require a Christian tradition, but in the west, some of our better social ideas have found support there.

The healthiest, least violence-ridden, most orderly states in the US (those across the northern tier from New England to Washington and Oregon) were most strongly influenced by the descendants of the flinty calvinist Puritan philosophy which viewed society as a divine institution, a 'city on a hill'.

On the other hand, some of our worst social programs have picked up on other skeins. Over the last century, conservative Christians have fought for and achieved in numerous places, the inclusion in public school science textbooks of divine creation (the 6 day kind) or the more elaborate "intelligent design" version (very much present tense). It is in the most strongly conservative Christian school districts that one will find the most intense opposition to sex education -- and by sex education I am not referencing any sort of pro-transgender, pro-promiscuity, pro-gay, pro-etc. curriculum. These curricula have focused on issues of critical personal relevance to "middle class" newly pubescent, heterosexual youth. They are not "sexual activity promotion" programs.

Slavery, and later harsh racial discrimination has been buttressed by scriptural references. The Ku Klux Klan (something of a precursor of the Nazi) was a pro-Protestant, pro-white, pro-nativist, anti-black, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, terrorist organization who had a long and disastrous role in American politics. The KKK is pretty much dead now (thanks to the concerted efforts of the capable and sometimes crooked, repressive, sometimes right-wing Federal Bureau of Investigation).

This is part of "the American Experience" -- you may not have experienced anything similar to this. I don't know. But here, combining "Christian" and "Politics" has not always worked out well.

So, at this time, what does political polling indicate would happen if the vote were held today? Which position (Stay or Exit) currently holds the best prospect of winning?

Some EU immigrants (who are Residents) can vote, and they will all vote against leaving. Historical Britain is fucked. — Agustino

Is it the case that EU non-citizen residents can vote? It seems to me I read that expats not in the UK can not vote. It doesn't make sense for non-citizens (or subjects) to be able to vote and expats be unable to vote -- if that is actually the situation.

Not really, just deceived, which came close to cheating though. Actual, proper cheating? Thank God, no. — Agustino

By any chance, have you ever looked at a woman with carnal thoughts, possibly, just a little bit, just enough to incur divine wrath? Hmmmmm? Just the teensiest bit of lust in your heart? NO? Oh, come on! Even Jimmy Carter admitted to lusting in his heart.

Jesus didn't come to eliminate sin; he came to bring salvation from sin. Sin remains, but salvation was created to conquer sin. That's the story, isn't it?
— Bitter Crank
In what sense has salvation conquered sin if sin remains? The whole purpose of Jesus's coming, which finishes with the Last Judgement at the Revelation is the destruction of sin and death. — Agustino

Well, damned if I know. According to the Agnus Dei, the "Lamb of god, takes away the sins of the world; have mercy on us". If there was no sin, mercy would not be called for. Baptized, shriven Christians sin. Who thinks they do not? Conquering sin didn't eliminate it. If sin is separation from God, and Christ's atonement for the sins of the world reconciled man to god, then the effect of sin -- alienation from god -- is kaput.

As for the Last Judgement, that hasn't happened yet, presumably. Once the Kingdom of God is inaugurated, and though we've been dead 10,000 years, we can get together and compare notes at that time.

I prefer to think that man is essentially good, but quite flawed owing to his provenance, which interferes with the "better angels of his nature" God didn't create us by fiat; we descended from other species, and retain features of species long before us.

I never did like the book of Revelations much. Along with some of the epistles, it should have been dropped into the shredder.

I won't mention the other sins you mention, because these simply qualify as excesses of things which are naturally good. — Agustino

It seems like I made the same point, somewhere along the line.

Yes, currently. In 50 years, this will probably change as the harm that unconstrained sex is causing is only growing and becoming more and more apparent. — Agustino

In 50 years we'll all be busy filling sandbags to hold back the rising oceans, and doing this at night because it will be too hot in the daytime. It will be too hot to be screwing around, with no air conditioning because all our energy will be devoted to carbon sequestration and running ER rooms to treat people for heat stroke.

I anticipate that global warming and it's attendant problems will resolve all of our moral issues, except the one of making the earth a pest hole.

From a Christian perspective, there is no escape from sinning
— Bitter Crank
Then Jesus came for nothing. Can you believe that while still calling yourself a Christian? — Agustino

Jesus didn't come to eliminate sin; he came to bring salvation from sin. Sin remains, but salvation was created to conquer sin. That's the story, isn't it?

I was raised as a Christian in a devout Christian home (Methodist). I have taken Christianity seriously for many years. I take it seriously, the same way I take the constitution seriously, but I do not now claim to be a Christian because I just don't believe god exists. I think Jesus was a real person, but I don't think he was the son of god.

In secular terms, people can not avoid sin because the definition of sin overlaps the core characteristics of human nature: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.
— Bitter Crank
I, the depreciating and nihilistic Christian who thinks everyone is evil and corrupt, do not think these are core characteristics of human nature ;) — Agustino

Well of course personality theory doesn't list the seven deadly sins as human features, but in small doses, all of these are essential. Our animal natures (as opposed to our "human" features") are not all that nice. If people weren't somewhat acquisitive (greed), if they didn't have somewhat healthy egos (pride), if they didn't have somewhat of a sex drive (lust), if they didn't somewhat aspire to match their betters (envy), if they didn't somewhat enjoy good food (gluttony), if they couldn't work up somewhat of a head of steam to defend themselves (wrath), and if they couldn't let it rest somewhat (sloth) where would we be? Nowhere.

Extreme features are often a problem in human personality, which is why you are running into so much flak about your views on sexuality. Most people do not embrace the extremity of your views. Maybe you're not crazy for holding such views (neuroticism is not the same thing as crazy), but when turned into policy such extreme views can cause a great deal of misery and harm. (And yes, they have been policy at various times--including within my time and place).

Nobody thinks anarchic irresponsibility and a complete indifference to consequences for sexual behavior is a good idea. And relatively few, merciful god, are as focussed on the alleged harm of sexual behavior as you are.

a SIN and must not be repeated - the necessity of repentance — Agustino

Hey, the Lutheran Social Service lunch and meeting on homeless youth was quite good. They pried loose a donation I intended to not make.

Anyone who commits a sin once (everybody) will commit a sin again. From a Christian perspective, there is no escape from sinning. We may not commit the same cardinal sin (like murder) more than once, but your average venial and mortal sins are the bread and butter of the confessional.

In secular terms, people can not avoid sin because the definition of sin overlaps the core characteristics of human nature: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. The normal personality is always on the verge of veering into the territory of these sins, in an exaggerated fashion, The normal personality is capable of consistently demonstrating the cardinal virtues -- prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, faith, hope, and love -- with about the same consistency that it can avoid the major sins.

We are not masters of our own houses, as Sigmund Freud cogently observed. Insisting that we can, we shall, we will, and we must avoid your favorite sin, especially the one which is the uranium in the reactor of the human personality, is a wretched form of comfort. It's a gratuitously grim sort of damnation.

Perhaps we should repent of the whole business of sin, confession, damnation, etc. As far as I can tell, believers (Christian, Jews, Moslems) behave pretty much the same way that cradle and adult-converted atheists behave. Not better, not worse. Why is that? It is so because all human personalities are held together by the same flimsy ad hoc adaptations of our animal natures to our higher aspirations.

Regardless of what the church preaches, a stiff prick still has abysmal moral standards, and 2000 years of preaching, confession, absolution, threatened damnation and fear of hell, never made much of a difference.

The well regulated human has always recognized his and her needs, and has sought to satisfy them in a reasonable way, regardless of what the church preached (or they ended up miserable). Did some people pursue a thoroughly unreasonable way of satisfying needs? Absolutely! The well regulated human has also recognized that he or she is part of a larger, complex milieu and that solutions have to be found within that milieu. It's all pretty messy.

Periodically, the grip of the church has slipped and people have felt freer to behave as they wished. The last major slippage was not yesterday, and slippage has expanded into outright erosion of religious standards and control. In Europe and North America, maybe 200 to 500 million people have repented of their allegiance to Christian standards of behavior. Leaving behind the Christian model did not make them into barbarian heathens. They altered the milieu in which they live and have been able to find more human resolutions to their conflicts.

Hence: homosexuals are not candidates for burning at the stake; transexuals are not branded as abominations (your post excepted); women who are found in adultery no longer need fear stoning (except in certain barbarian regions like the Arabian Peninsula, in the lunatic Taliban controlled areas of Afghanistan, ISIS, etc.); divorced women do not become pariahs, and so on.

a SIN and must not be repeated - the necessity of repentance — Agustino

Repentance is an important part of this discussion, but I now have to go to a Lutheran Social Service meeting on homeless youth (my arm was twisted to go to this meeting) so I will say more later.