Month: January 2019

Interview of Stevan Harnad by Tracie Hotchner (Part 1 of 2):
http://192.168.62.113/harnad/Temp/HumaneTalkSH.mov

Tous les jetons qui tombent, tardivement: « Cowboy » — jamais un concept sympathique — se révèle maintenant dans sa vraie forme diabolique.

Heart-breaking and hard to watch
but if you drink milk, eat cheese, eat veal, eat beef,
you owe it to yourself (and to them) to watch.
Then if you have a heart,
you will never touch them again

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C’est sûr que le mot « innocent » n’est pas le descripteur exact pour les victimes. Mais il communique quand-même le sens d’une injustice, d’une souffrance déplorable, d’une victime à pitier, à protéger. Tout ça c’est important pour réveiller l’empathie et la défense (ainsi que le désistement, si c’est moi-même qui cause la souffrance à la victime). Donc ne faisons pas trop de reproches à ce mot inexact mais quand-même efficace.

La confusion provient en partie du fait que — contraitement à l’inexactitude de « innocent » soit pour décrire la victime soit pour définir le crime — « coupable » est certes le descripteur précis du perpétrateur des crimes que nous commettons envers nos victimes. Et bien qu’on commet ces crimes envers toutes les espèces d’êtres sensibles, envers les humains ces crimes sont déjà illégaux et poursuivis — et rejetés et considérés odieux et aberrant par la vaste majorité des humains — tandis qu’envers les animaux, s’est l’inverse.

Ce qui fait que nos crimes envers les victimes animales sont de loin les plus monstrueux et abominables, quantitativement ainsi que qualitativement.

La poursuite et la consommation de sa proie par un prédateur affamé sans choix est cruelle mais pas un crime. C’est quand la prédation n’est pas impérative, quand il y des options innocentes que ça devient un crime indicible.

[I did not really appreciate the full force of the loathsomeness of Akos Kovacs‘s jaded jingo jingle, below, until I translated it into English (stilted, so as to match the original: no effort at prettification here). Note the three lines starting with *asterisks, added to obfuscate, or on the advice of attorneys, or as yet another symptom of how deeply this vicious, paranoid delusion has wormed its way into the Hungarian psyche. To find the people of vengeance Hungarians need go no further than their mirrors.]

A Bosszú Népe — The People of Vengeance

Ákos Kovács

[Kovacs is a recipient of Hungary’s Kossuth Prize — a once-prestigious award now being cheapened by the Orban regime, which has lately tried (unsuccessfully) to rescind from a past recipient, Akos Kertesz, who sought and was granted asylum in Canada because he was being persecuted in Hungary for having condemned the very trait — in Hungarians — that Akos Kovacs is floridly exhibiting in his hate-lyrics. Kovacs also wrote the sound-track for Maria Schmidt’s Budapest “House of Terror”, a monstrously distorted memorial bemoaning Hungary’s victimhood while obscuring and obfuscating Hungary’s own responsibility for the horrors.]

    A bosszú népe — The people of vengeance
    Úgy tenne jégre, — Would so dispose of you
    Hogy ne is vedd észre, — That you wouldn’t even notice
    Hogy elpusztít — You were being destroyed

A lélek üressége, — Emptiness of spirit
A mérce kettőssége, — Double standards
Egy bosszúálló isten — A vindictive god’s
Torzult tükörképe — Distorted mirror-image
E szorgos nép, ha perbe fog, — This sedulous people, if it pursues you
Téged elevenen tűzre dob, — Throws you alive into the fire
A harag réme, a béke vége, — A reign of terror, the end of peace
Tombol a bosszú népe. — Wreacks the people of vengeance

    A bosszú népe — The people of vengeance
    Úgy tenne jégre, — Would so dispose of you
    Hogy ne is vedd észre, — That you wouldn’t even notice
    Hogy elpusztít — You were being destroyed

Ne szabadkozz: Te szabad vagy, — Don’t beg pardon, you are free
A hatalmad magadnak akartad, — You wanted the power for yourself,
Hát szabad-e hagynod, hogy fúrja-tépje — So why should the people of vengeance be free
Hazádat folyton a bosszú népe? — To tear and shred your homeland?
Félnek tőled, rettegnek, — They fear you, they cower,
És inkább elevenen esznek meg, — And rather eat you alive
Csak nehogy el tudd mondani végre, — Just so you shouldn’t be able to tell
Hogyan gyülöl a bosszú népe. — How the people of vengeance hate you

    A bosszú népe — The people of vengeance
    Úgy tenne jégre, — Would so dispose of you
    Hogy ne is vedd észre, — That you wouldn’t even notice
    Hogy elpusztít — You were being destroyed

A gyűlölet rabja — The slaves of hatred
Majd kiforgatja — Will turn upside down
Minden szavamat és átkoz — My every word, and will curse
*Mert aki brancsoknak tagja, — Because those who are members of the branch
*Az ukázba kapja, — Are trained in the Ukase
*Hogy üssön, ha nem tartozol a párthoz. — To beat you if you are not in the party.

    A bosszú népe — The people of vengeance
    Úgy tenne jégre, — Would so dispose of you
    Hogy ne is vedd észre, — That you wouldn’t even notice
    Hogy elpusztít — You were being destroyed

Dúdold ezt a dalt, — Croon this song
És aki gyűlöl majd érte, — And those who hate you for it:
Az lesz a bosszú népe! — Those are the people of vengeance!

No, “Jew Laws” is not the least bit ungrammatical: It faithfully expresses both the meaning and the flavor of the odious Hungarian original. Like many features of the extremely adaptable, accepting (but sometimes awkward and ungainly) English language, noun strings work (though grammarians — always the ultimate losers when it comes to language evolution — solemnly advise against them, sometimes for stylistic reasons, sometimes because they — the strings, that is — can be ambiguous). Newspaper headline writers, military jargonauts, technical manual scribblers and hate speech mongers love ’em.

All mammals, birds, fish, and probably all invertebrates are sentient, meaning they feel. Plants almost certainly do not feel. Most people would agree that it is wrong to hurt or kill sentient beings if it is not vitally necessary. “Not vitally necessary” means not necessary for survival or health, the way it is necessary for obligate carnivores like lions to hunt and eat their prey. (Human beings are facultative omnivores, meaning we can live and be healthy either as carnivores or as herbivores: we have a choice.) As long as we continue to hurt and kill sentient beings, needlessly, for food, clothing, fashion, sport, combat or entertainment it will continue to be the greatest crime of our species against all species (including our own), alongside the crimes we have renounced and outlawed: violence, rape, torture, homicide, genocide, enslavement and subjugation. Let us hope that admitting animals are sentient is the first step along the road to ending at last the horrors we inflict on them, needlessly.

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Of course multibillionnaire Mark Zuckerberg is orders of magnitude more ethical to contribute 99% of his $45B wealth to the planet’s needs and needy rather than to keep it all for himself. But reserving $440M for one multimillionaire child is not exactly altruism either. 1% of that ($4.4M) would stll have left little Max extremely well off for life, and far better off than 99.99% of the planet.

(That said, if he does as he has promised, MZ will nevertheless become the most magnanimous of multibillionaires today — and perhaps ever…)

Is evil a “pathology“?

No “professional” opinion, as I’m not a professional in this (or any) area.

My belief happens to be that (apart from the inevitable, but small, quota of genetic psychopaths) what we call “evil” is a consequence of learning and culture rather than genes or “pathogens.”

Is learned cruelty a “disease”? Perhaps the way gambling and alcoholism are, in the sense that they can sometimes be unlearned (“cured,” or at least pushed into remission) by “therapy” (and some are born with more of a propensity towards it than others).

But calling such learned behaviors a “disease” is just playing with words. If the effects of air pollution are a disease, what is it when the pollutant is cultural (“cognitive”)?

Or maybe the question should be whether nationalism, religious zealotry, xenophobia, machismo and other malign “memes” are “pathogens”? That’s probably literally true in some sense, yet still remains more metaphorical than medical (just as a lot else that passes for psychology does). “Prevention” and “cure” depend on education and culture, not medicine. The right analogy there is not the effects of air pollution (or poverty, or injustice), but its causes: “pathogenogens”?

Unless someone finds a drug or surgery…

Not very deep, but certainly right. The trick will be to genuinely sensitize people to the hurts they inflict, knowingly or unknowingly, otherwise there will only be the pretence of empathy, practised as empty PC method-acting.

I have lately (far too late in life) become meta-sensitized on behalf of victims who are blind to the micro-insults yet suffer infinitely worse macro-injuries (“more than one way to skin a cat,” “squealing like a stuck pig”…).

If that triggered a reflexive smile then you are face to face with the real heart of the problem — and it is indeed about whether one really has a heart, nothing more, nothing less. It’s not called compassion when we care about ourselves or our loved ones. It begins outside that circle. And it encompasses every innocent being that feels.

In a variant on “we always hurt the ones we love”: We always revile the ones we hurt. Helps us live with ourselves…

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