-----Original Message----- From: "Richard Koenigsberg, Ph. D." <libraryofsocialscience@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Feb 3, 2005 6:23 PM To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Virility and Slaughter The implication of the passage below is that the officer is cruel because he finds it "fun" to shoot and kill people. However, the underlying meaning contained within the story has to do with morality. It is only because his culture tells him that it is GOOD = to kill that he is allowed to express the sentiment that it is FUN to kill. A.A. This makes sense. Beneath every case of slaughter carried out in the name of civilization, there is MORAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. It is not cruelty or = pleasure in inflicting cruelty that is the central issue (or problem), but how civilizations come to define killing and cruelty as GOOD. A.A. I'm not so sure of this. We Americans like to think we don't define killing and cruelty as good. Yet we managed well enough in the Civil War, Vietnam and other places. Plus we love our guns. Part of it's fear and feeling small (same thing), but I still think it's a nearly universal enjoyment of inflicting pain. Why else would the corporations do it, such as banks and pharmaceutical companies? They're clearly victimizing the poorest no less. Why domestic violence (even our illustrious president is reputed to have indulged), child abuse, verbal violence, cruelty to animals. We love our steaks dripping with blood, and on and on. There is definitely a pleasure component in it or it would never be so widespread and so voluntary. (Picture Lyndie English with a big smile on her face for example.) Andy Richard Koenigsberg ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html