Gendanken, From dearest William, these few lines, all deep in your heart: Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action.
That was wonderful, Rosa. Very apt. Which work did that come from? Nothing new under the sun. Eh, Gendanken? Even Shakespeare had this idea before you. But, I doubt if he carried it through to it's fruition. And it's likely that it was only a passing thought of a character rather than a true reflection of his own.
Rosa, Have you no conscience? SouthStar, Oh? And who said this? John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. It sure wasn't me. I did mention Cain. But Cain is from Judaism. As is the Nephelim mentioned in Gendanken's original post. You, of course, assume this to be your religion of meekness. Perhaps I should have posted in Hebrew? Too bad I don't know Hebrew. The interpreter mechanism is a thing that Gendanken and I have been discussing for some time now. It is the facility in the human brain that interprets sensory input and the associations aroused by it. It's the stamp of approval of our consciousness. It makes schemas. It lies quite often. It tells grand stories to itself in the dark. It makes gods of mortal men. Human gods out of human animals. No, infants don't have a conscience. Their brains are not developed enough. Perhaps their conscience could be said to be their desire to not be alone. To be fed. To be warm. To be held. To pick things up and place them in their mouths. Infants are incomplete. And their maturity is based on age. The limbic system is still developing. Later in life, the older child is also incomplete, the corpus callosum doesn't develop fuly until about 10 years of age. And, what of the teenager? Not many have what can be termed a conscience. Not in my experience. Even those that had them previously tend to misplace them somewhere in teenage life to find them later. Same thing. It's about the ends rather than the means. Alright. You got a deal. Don't bring christianity into this thread and I won't accuse you of being a christian. Deal?
Jesus did, of course. Unfortunately, you are again mistaken. Cain is NOT a Jew and never was. In fact, Cain is before the Law of Moses and Moses himself. Whatmore, Cain lived WAY before Abraham himself. How can you in soundness of mind logically call Cain a Jew? I see. And has there been any reports on the "stamping" of approval on this "interpretor mechanism" by the conscience? I don't recall any report of any such "interpreter mechanism" ("stamped" by the conscience) which invents schemas either, or lying. I didn't know the conscience is in anyway associated with storytelling either. And the conscience, concerned with fairness and justice, now somehow has to do with a desire not to be alone? Where did you recieve this information from? Or even that such an endowment is concerned with picking things up? And if maturity is based on age, then everyone of a certain age would obviously have the same maturity. And as for not knowing teenagers with conscience, perhaps you should look elsewhere because you are dearly mistaken. See: http://www.washingtontimes.com/culture/20040803-113749-7050r.htm The conscience cannot be misplaced either, since it is intrinsic. It is only supressed in lawlessness, subdued but never terminated. If as you shockingly say, the conscience could be misplaced, then these teenagers could never be judged. How can you logically judge someone who has not a conscience? It simply makes no sense. It seems as if your point rests on this crass generalization of an age group, commonly associated (unnecessarily) with instability. And since you brought up Cain, we can see that his brother turned out quite differently from him. Surely you can't be insinuating that because of Cain's age, he was a more "complete" humanbeing or that he "misplaced" his conscience. If so, then his countenance could not have fallen as the report maintains. It simply makes no sense whatsoever. Whatmore, Cain actually laments his iniquity in 4:13. Even as someone who squeezes the trigger can easily be shaken by the sight of his fallen comrade. Or that gang members can be plagued by conscience and want out. Or even the reports of rapper Mase, who left the rap industry because he was tormented by his conscience. Well this God reserves wailing and gnashing of teeth for the self-seeking, who supress their consciences. You're the one still quoting Bible verses.. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! P.S. I have no problems being "accused" of being a Christian. If I have erred in something I said, it is only gracious to gently chide me.
Maybe so. But you parroted him in your second post in this thread. Maybe so. But he is part of Judaistic lore which Christianity coopted. This is completely off topic to this discussion. You missed the whole point. The conscience doesn't approve the interpreter the interpreter approves the conscience. As it approves your very reality. Everything you see, touch, taste, and feel is interpreted. The interpreter explains to you why you did what you did when in fact it was for a completely different reason. The interpreter hides the hidden aspects of your self from your visible aspect. Again, you've missed the point entirely. Of this whole thread, methinks. Conscience at it's base is a means of instilling within an individual the mores of this group. It is in our godlike abstraction that we have interpreted fairness and justice. And made them universal to boot. What are you saying? I've never said maturity has anything to do with age. Maturity I take to mean some type of measure of arbitrary values. Maturity of the brain is dependant on age though. It's scientific fact. Teenagers without conscience. What the hell does your link have to do with anything? It's about an 11-year old girl that doesn't feel like dressing like a stripper. So what? Does that say that all teenagers are this way? Or even a large number? Most I've seen and remember from my own time as a teen were self-centered bastards. So angst-ridden that they couldn't get past themselves if their life were on the line. Even that 11-year old girl could be seen as self-centered. She is sure as hell congratulating herself on being such a 'nice' girl. Not like those 'sluts.' Hormones rage wild in teenagers preventing from using their practically mature brains to their fullest potential. As someone around here has said, they can't tell shit from gold. The can't see past their nose. There is no such thing as lawlessness. There is a law that lies beneath our abstractions. One from which we can never remove ourselves no matter how hard we interpret. We are animals and nature is a bitch. Why couldn't the teenagers be judged for not having a conscience? For the most part, most teenagers (that I've ever seen) step outside of the social group. They rebel against everything and anything. They are judged for this all the time. When they go into stores, they are followed and watched to make sure they're not stealing anything. When they're hanging outside of a business, people wonder what mischief they're about to get up to. Judgements come every day. And they are judged. Oh? Does it? How so? What is my point exactly? I think you missed it. There are physiological functions at play that I'm describing. You can't escape them. First off, Cain was a mythical being that has no part in this discussion. Not in the way you are trying to use him. As though the story were a real story and the events were real events. I brought up the concept of being your brother's keeper. Cain was secondary to that. Second, Cain suffered consequences for his actions. Unfair consequences, but that's off topic. And yes, killers do sometimes suffer pangs of conscience after the fact. They have not wholly escaped the condition of morals. The instilling of a particular conscience. That's the point of this thread. Very few escape these things. And I contend that they don't so much escape as have it twisted. That their interpreter twisted it. Although, many killers (true merciless killers) were seriously abused and hence their conscience was filled in a different manner from the average among the group. What?! Those who supress their conscience show conscience? I don't understand this. And I hesitate to ask for clarification. But shoot it at me. No, I was quoting you. You just don't remember what you have posted. Apparently. And I think I was gently chiding. By the way, check out the Respect is a Modern Luxury thread in philosophy. Within you will find more talk of murder than respect because it was a direct offshoot of this thread no doubt. But, some of the questions you ask in here were detailed in there. These two threads sort of intermingle.
Going through my Dune novels for quotes and I found an extremely apt one for here. (Have I mentioned that Frank Herbert was a genius?) Most civilization is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame. --The Stolen Journals (of Leto II, God Emperor)We are domesticated animals. You can even see this in the fact that we have lost the ability to wiggle our ears. It's a common trait of domestication. The large-eyed, limp-eared traits of dogs and cattle. Not all dogs show the limp ears, of course. Sometimes we breed the wild back into them. But, do we ever breed the wild back into ourselves?
Those who would actually escape the pangs of conscience, those who would indeed escape and not only twisted the conscience into something they find justifyable -- those people would become like robots. Also, a question: Do you think that it is good to escape the pangs of conscience? BS. Are you saying that once, we were wild, free and pure, and then this ugly thing called society sucked us in and made us little coward twits? *** Lately, you have become warmer than you used to be, South Star. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Depends on what they've filled their conscience with. Doesn't it? Somewhat. Yes. Not entirely though. Here's the thing. Conscience is this invisible tune that we all dance to. We can't hear it we only feel it's effects to our gut. It is a recursive loop that has been going blindly for thousands of generations. It is the voice of the past calling us to our monkey roots. We are not monkeys anymore and our monkey's conscience is causing problems with the newness of our world. The largeness and the smallness of it. Everyone is our neighbor. Everyone deserves love. Everyone deserves respect. There is no outside anymore. No outsider. Our monkey conscience depends on outsiders. This is the crux of the problem to my eyes. It's not so much that the conscience needs to be done away with, but we must learn to see how it is being filled. We must make the process conscious. We must fill it ourselves rather than allow our hairy shit-flinging ancestors the honor of filling it for us. We have to escape the past. Exit the merry-go-round. Exit the loop. The danger grows every day. If we don't exit the loop, then the loop will drag us down into a system which is small enough for the loop to handle. Smaller groups. Fractured civilization. Is that what you want? Fix the loop or fix they system. Which is it to be? (By the way, fix the system is misleading. The system will fix itself. We will still have our eyes closed and fix nothing.) And, I'm not saying that this revaluation of conscience is not dangerous as well. It is. But, it is less dangerous than doing nothing and continuing blithely on with our eyes shut and denying the reality of the wall which we are fast approaching. For the most part, yes. But, not entirely. There are still some wild genes active. But not many and they become rarer every generation. Especially now that we have made the world a neighbor. This is the danger. By the way, it's possible you missed the point of the quote. Instilling cowardice is not the only way to instill civilization. It is just the quickest, surest, and easiest. And you know the path most men take.
