What is 'objective' value?

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm kept in line by the law, and I'm just one person.

Oh, is there an officer standing over your shoulder?  No..there is not..and no...you are not.  As to the number of people you are....one can only hope it's a small number...as closely approaching one as possible.

It's a numbers game, and it's important to keep the number of people like me below some threshhold, otherwise things would go awry.

No they wouldn't, you're bog standard. 

Lying is a strong word.  It's more like establishing a bias.  I think the key is to 1) prevent the idea from being considered to begin with, 2) keep it from being spread.

It's tough to say how man would have turned out with religion.  What I do know, is that everybody I know, regardless of religion/no religion, teaches their kids that people are important, and should be treated nice, solely because they are a person.  That's what I'm teaching my kid.  I think it's nonsense, but I want that bias in there.  I know it was hammered into my head, and my default reaction to people is affected by it which is probably for the best.

I don't know how serious we are at this point......in this comment you've expressed a value for human life.  Why would it be for the best to have this hammered in, as you put it?

RE brainwashing - there have been atheists for as long as there has been religion. I don;t think that you're really providing much in the way of refutation of my position, or establishment of your own..in this.

[henryp]

I agree, it is a problem. There will always be extreme psycopaths who will kill given the opportunity. To fix that would probably require eugenics or something, which is a moral minefield in itself.

People generally accept humans have value because they have empathy. You can't enforce or implant empathy.

You're doing it now.  We call people who don't accept all humans have value simply because of the species they are classified as "extreme psychopaths" that need to be "fixed."  

So instead of the issue being 'do I care if some rando in china dies' it's "Am I an extreme psychopath/broken."  

The principles of marketing work.  And not just to get people buying different brands of beer.

[robvalue]

Psycopath is a scientific term, not abuse. I meant extreme as in unable or unwilling to control themselves and to fit into society.

By fix, I meant fix the problem you refer to, not the people.

[henryp]

I'm kept in line by the law, and I'm just one person.

Oh, is there an officer standing over your shoulder?  No..there is not..and no...you are not.  

Oh.  Well never mind then.

[henryp]

Psycopath is a scientific term, not abuse. I meant extreme as in unable or unwilling to control themselves and to fit into society.

By fix, I meant fix the problem you refer to, not the people.

Fair enough.  Would you agree there are still plenty of negative connotations associated with the term in society?  

That's the genius of the system.  Even without your intent, I still infer that you thought it was a bad thing.  So we need an entire movement (which I think is occurring in the attitude towards mental diversity?) before people would view psychopath being meant as a bad thing.

[robvalue]

Yes, I agree that "psycopath", like many technical terms, has acquired a negative spin. And I don't like that at all. When it gets to the point where there isn't an actual word that doesn't carry implications, the language is problematic. Educating people about it objectively would be great, to help them understand some people don't have empathy and so don't see things the way most people do.

What I was trying to say is that (in my opinion) stopping opportunistic killings entirely would require something so extreme as to be probably worse than the problem itself.

If there is another solution which somehow better integrates psycopaths into society, I'd be all for it. I don't think brainwashing would work, and I have moral objections to it also.

By all means, encourage people to care about human life. Appeal to their empathy. It's when someone has no empathy that the situation is very difficult. It's not their fault if they don't have it, of course. But ultimately society needs to be safe, so if someone is randomly violent they have to be removed. This is a form of mob rule, I totally agree. I just don't think there is a viable alternative which isn't worse.

[henryp]

Brainwashing may be the wrong word. I'm not sure what you would call teaching children to behave a certain way though. I don't know if you can not 'brainwash' kids. They aren't capable of thinking on their own yet, and you have to teach them something, and whatever you teach them is almost certain to stick for at least the first decade or two of their lives, and most likely remnants of it will remain forever.

Kids are built to be brainwashed. I think maybe we just consider brainwashing nice things into their head as not brainwashing, whereas bad things is brainwashing? I dunno. I just know from my anecdotal observations of watching my brothers/sister/self get raised, and raising a kid of my own, that controlling who they are seems remarkably easy, at least early on.

[robvalue]

I think of it this way: teaching them how to think is education, teaching them what to think is brainwashing.

There will always be some sort of conflict, and things they need to know that they cannot yet understand. The way I would do it is that you should only teach "as fact" that which they will later understand the reasoning behind, and which they cannot do without the knowledge of at that point. Otherwise, you should generally be able to explain the reasoning behind everything you teach them.

Regarding this matter, I'd be more concerned with educating parents to spot a child who doesn't have empathy as early as possible, so as to have the best chance of helping them appropriately. I'd prefer this to trying to impose dogmatic thinking on everyone just in case they turn out a certain way. I think on the whole parents do teach their children to respect life, but telling them to just accept it and that it's a universal fact would not be productive in my opinion. I may not be understanding your approach properly, however.

Even a psycopath can appeal to their children's empathy, without having to bring their own feelings into it. Maybe when they are old enough to understand, the personal conflict can be explained.

[Mystic]

Regarding "how do we explain value in ourselves and the relationship to the Creator".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9mlaAEWv9o

There is an important line in that:

"He is in all things but without being merged with them neither separate from them".

The rest is beautiful as well, and there is more pertaining to the reality of the source of our value.

[bennyboy]

I like the singing, but it has nothing to do with the OP.