This probably bears mentioning, yeah Even though I think ascribing it to "sadism" is kind of misreading the tone of the room in January 2017, after this dude had already used government property to shout "Heil Trump"https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1302045968917884928 …
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Also I'm not really defending Odysseus murdering all those suitors but like I don't know if there would have been a similarly reliable way of getting them all to fuck off and leave Ithaka after literally a decade of sunk costs what's to stop them from poisoning Odysseus
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So a lot of this is basically unpacking the aphorism that "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind", which, like, fine, whatever, that's kind of an innocuous pursuit, but I've always found this particular kind of concern to be more than a little disingenuous
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Like an eye for an eye only leaves the whole world blind if you take eyes from people who haven't taken eyes If you only take eyes from eye-takers, specifically, and set aside culpability by association, you still have plenty of be-eyeballed people left over
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Replying to @Nymphomachy
Well the point is that if there's no overarching central authority to decide the validity of people's claims, and you have an "honor culture" where justice is decided by people enforcing their own claims on each other, then you'll *always* get "disproportionate" revenge
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
Because most of the time the person you take revenge against doesn't actually think they did anything wrong That's why they did it in the first place So from their POV you're the asshole
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Replying to @arthur_affect
sure, but for it to get out of hand you ultimately have to accept the premise that the number of people who can be punished for a crime can rightfully exceed the number of people who committed it If you accept "innocent people are off-limits", your scope narrows
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Replying to @Nymphomachy
Well it gets out of hand because if you do the worst thing you can do to the other guy -- kill him and leave his body to be eaten by crows etc -- then his family will come after you for doing that, and whoever kills you will then become the target for your own loved ones
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
It gets out of hand because of kinship networks where people feel like they themselves can owe a duty to vengeance on behalf of a relative or friend who got killed Which is the whole glue that holds society in general together etc
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Replying to @arthur_affect
yeah I guess my point is that if kinship networks ruin revenge then maybe the problem is with the existence of kinship networks
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But then you've got nothing, all I have to do is to make sure I kill you after I rob you and I get away free That's why being kinless in such a society was such an incredibly vulnerable position
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
Anyway my point was you don't need someone going "I'll kill him AND his little dog too" for the "cycle of revenge" to be bad The classic cycle of revenge only requires that people become killers to take revenge on people who have already killed
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
Maybe in such a scenario no "innocents" are ever harmed, but it's still a massive waste of human lives over time
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