I tire of this thread, as I see it as a dead end. I will discuss in a moment what your reactions imply about your overall worldview, but first I'll again try to answer the charges brought against my controversial little idea (which isn't really mine by the way) once more.------------
: Then you proceed to explain how, in your hypothetical world of prisoner testing, people would be capable of “subverting their mental tendencies”, people would become rational, and that mental defects such as racism would be fixed. But how can a rational society, where everyone is free of mental defects and/or is capable of subverting whatever mental defects might arise have a population of MURDERERS AND RAPISTS? - much less, one big enough to significantly displace the massive animal testing market that consumes ten’s of millions of animals every year? I just don’t understand your model. Please explain.
New Cynic: Not everyone behaves rationally 100% of the time. That's impossible, and even if we do behave rationally, we don't necessarily behave rightly- one mistake in the reasoning process, innocent enough, could have drastic consequences depending on the nature of the decision. But there are cases where a little reasonable thinking would prevent a lot of damage and mischief, and if we only gave our passions a moment's pause and thought about some of the things we do, maybe we'd figure out they're not such great things to be doing.
So you see, it's not very likely that we'll ever eradicate racism, sexism, murder, rape, and other social ills. But we may lessen their effect. (Do you agree?) I have held since my teenage years the belief that although perfection is an impossible goal, but still that it is working towards perfection where the redemption of the person lies. All I want is for more people to work towards bettering the state of things- and it's very easy. They just have to stop doing some of the things they usually do or thinking in ways which they are accustomed.
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: Also, irrational behavior and mental defects are certainly contributors to the health problems that have spawned medical research and hence, animal testing: Alcoholism, drug abuse, smoking, overeating, dumping deadly toxins into our environment, etc. just to name a few examples. Irrationality and mental deficiencies also lead to the use of many unnecessary animal tested products that, in a rational world free of mental defects, would probably become obsolete or be replaced with benign, environmentally friendly, natural alternatives that would not require animal testing in the first place: motor oil, shampoo, household cleaning products, etc.
New Cynic: You're right. But do you think that kind of Utopia you thought I really envisioned as the end product could ever exist? I don't. Perfection is only the prototype, utopia is just a concept sketch. I'm far more interested in what we create while trying to copy the design.
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: I guess it would be ok to give the IRS tactical nukes in a rational society free of mental defects, but what would a tax collection agency in such a society need nuclear weapons for? Can we even assume that such a society would need a tax collection agency AT ALL? How can we know how peoples’ needs would be met in such a wonderful world? (I won’t use the word “Utopia” since you find it so distracting). How do we know that people wouldn’t be able to have their needs met without the use of a huge, inefficient wealth distribution system? Wouldn’t that be more “rational”? Wouldn’t that be more representative of a mentally superior society i.e. one that was free of “mental defects”?
New Cynic: God I don't know! You're not talking to Marx, you are aware of this? I don't advocate destroying every social, political, or spiritual institution that ever existed and replacing it with something that came out of my head alone. It'd be bound to suck at managing most everything. Socieites are not made of one person and neither should their institutions be. I'll yield the task of goods distribution, taxation, and miscellany to individuals who give a damn. I picked a problem to deal with and that's all I really have time to care about.
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: You see, Cynic, by asserting that rationality and mental perfection (or something that closely approximates it) are prerequisites for your prisoner testing idea, you have, to some very significant degree, altered the very fabric in which activities like animal testing and violent crime are embedded. You have, in fact, taken the scope of this debate to a level where point value, specifics like animal testing and violent crime might not even EXIST, and, in that regard, all you’ve really accomplished is a change of subject. This leaves you in a debate room limbo between discussing what “Utopia” might look like and how to resolve the animal torture problem with human prisoners.
New Cynic: As said before, I don't think Utopia is achievable. I do however, think it would be great, and from this make it a goal of mine to live an increasingly better life; one where if everyone lived similarly, the overall state of things would improve. Let me ask you, is it possible in your view to ever improve ANYTHING? Or is this as good as it gets for any of us? Please don't pick the latter. You seem too reasonable to subscribe to such a fallacy.
Let me diverge from the original subject for a moment to give an explanation of why human testing is a viable option now but would cease to be the closer we get to a Utopian state.
Consider the (now vile) institution of segregation in the Southern United States. In some places following the civil war it was a practice in both legally and culturally enforced. The idea that blacks and people of color were brutes and savages was so deeply ingrained into the Southern mindset that such an institution couldn't help but arise. Now, for a moment I ask you to set aside your cultural indoctrination but a moment and consider, honestly, whether in its earliest years segregation wasn't an asset to blacks thrust immediately into a very biased society.
How would you react if overnight you were conferred "person" status under the law, where you had none before? What would you do when you're suddenly free to leave the property you've previously been chained to and make your own way in the world? The fact is that many blacks stayed with what they knew and became cheap paid labor for southern landowners. The roles were distinct because they were comfortable. Nobody was really ready for perfect integration (and I would argue that we still are not) and perhaps being kept apart wasn't such a judicious evil after all.
The time between the abolotion of slavery and the dismantling of segregation was a tense and difficult time for both whites and blacks, where each group had to relinquish false beliefs about the other and acclimate to the idea of a different way of life. Direct integration wasn't even possible in these early stages, it certainly couldn't have happened with the Emancipation Proclamation. For awhile segregation acted in part as a protective agency for blacks in the south, possibly avoiding additional violence due to white outrage and creating opportunities for blacks to exapnd their windows of financial and cultural opportunity.
The problem with segregation arose when it was no longer a useful instrument for social stability, and when it began to suppress more opportunities than it preserved. It was once, however, a viable, and useful social institution- even if in the present state of things it would be a reprehensible breach of rights.
Context adds a lot to the justified status of any institution, and I think given the current state of our society, testing on criminals is preferable to our present method. Given that we do not live in Utopia, and there will be disease, and there is animal torture, and we do have bodies that need to be washed- we need to test things on SOMETHING before we give them to the public. You don't value safe food and medicine? Then how do you suppose we make sure it's safe?
No, the closer we get to perfection (if we ever get anywhere near it) the more we can abandon the idea of criminal testing, corporeal existence, and punishment altogether. But these aren't the issues of our time; and our useful progressive change might one day be someone else's atrocity. Do you think we can help that, realistically? Let's act to better things however we can, and let someone else in the future worry about whether even that can be improved upon.
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: What really concerns me though is that you may not feel that there is a vast chasm between these two subjects; that routine human vivisections are the kinds of images you receive when you try to imagine a perfect world.
New Cynic: I don't see criminal testing in a perfect world. I do see it as helping to build a better world than this one. I do see racism becoming ever gradually a cultural taboo. So maybe we're getting somewhere. One can argue, and I will, that if we build models to which humans can strive, we will grow. If we build models around what we believe humans capable of, we will stagnate.
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: “I can't think of any policy more fair.” - Cynic
: If such is the case, there are treatments I could recommend that could help you with the rage and frustration that is behind this kind of thinking. Here’s my email address: waynebollman@yahoo.com. Just let me know if you want help.
New Cynic: Help won't be necessary. I'll just go back to the drawing board and try and pick something else that deserves the testing more than criminals. Maybe just your average joe citizen would do it if we gave him or her enough money. But then I'd only end up victimizing the poor, huh? Damn it I thought I was onto something.
Well I'm stumped, so YOU try solving this one. And while you're at it, tell all the MS patients that they're just going to have to wait for a cure until you get Utopia all figured out. I'm sure they'll all understand.
PS- I want nothing more to do with this thread.
None.
