Satanism
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Law Bringer
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written Monday, April 10 2006 13:08
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Actually, no. LaVeyan Satanism has nothing to do with balancing one's own happiness against that of others - rather, it is about increasing one's own happiness regardless of the cost to others, as much as one is able to get away with. -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
Lifecrafter
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written Monday, April 10 2006 13:12
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But if you are infringing upon somebody elses happiness and that person tells you to stop, you stop. The whole point of that is to maximize total happiness. Therefore it falls directly under what Alo said. -------------------- ??? ?????? ???? ????? Posts: 883 | Registered: Wednesday, October 19 2005 07:00 |
Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Monday, April 10 2006 13:51
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LaVeyan Satanism is about scratching their backs if they scratch yours. If they don't do the scratching, neither do you, and it looks to me like they're supposed to start it. It makes me wonder how LaVeyans can relate to one another at all, actually. I don't hold with "psychic vampires." Everyon deserves happiness. If some people are so needy that making them happy makes more people unhappy, they have to settle for less, but nobody is inherently not worth pleasing at all because they don't please anyone in return. —Alorael, who believes that to a certain point there's "free" happiness. You can do someone some small good turns with practically no inconvenience to yourself. Usually they'll feel better because you did it and often you'll feel better about yourself for being such an upstanding good guy. LaVey seems to discourage that kind of win-win exchange. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
Lifecrafter
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written Monday, April 10 2006 14:22
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That's not the way it is at all. Five sixths of my band are LaVeyans and their motto isn't "if and only if you scratch my back will I scratch yours," it's more along the lines of "I'll scratch your back now, but you had better scratch my back soon otherwise bad things will happen to you." EDIT: typo. [ Monday, April 10, 2006 14:31: Message edited by: radix malorum est cupiditas ] -------------------- ??? ?????? ???? ????? Posts: 883 | Registered: Wednesday, October 19 2005 07:00 |
BANNED
Member # 4
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written Monday, April 10 2006 14:41
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quote:I call your bluff- for instance, wouldn't selflessness be most desireable in all forms except for a sexual one? Let's say that everyone has meat, and one person is generous with her/his meat. The other people will be more inclined to help this person and less inclined to get rid of such a person. In fact, I'd argue that empathy is virtually demanded by evolution-- how else, for instance, will children survive, if not by their mothers? Hell, even the famous liberal John Locke states that a union between woman and man arose from the desire to aid in a child's growth. So as much as "selfishness" is the mantra of all capitalists out there, there's no good reason why it should prevail over "selflessness" (and to refer to it as such a term is incredibly defeatist anyway). (And of course, this assumes that "selflessness" is genetic, which I also find incredibly abhorrent and unbased, but nevermind that.) -------------------- * Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
Lifecrafter
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written Monday, April 10 2006 14:46
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quote:You must be joking. How many times have you seen an animal give up food in the hopes that the other animal it gave its food to will one day give him back food in return? Never. That cannot happen outside humanity. quote:That is a very selfish feeling. To have your line go on. Even at the expense of your own life in some cases. [ Monday, April 10, 2006 14:47: Message edited by: radix malorum est cupiditas ] -------------------- ??? ?????? ???? ????? Posts: 883 | Registered: Wednesday, October 19 2005 07:00 |
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written Monday, April 10 2006 15:05
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quote:And yet it happens inside of humanity. Let me remind you that we don't base our behavior off of the behavior of lions. At any rate, humanity, being a sexually-reproducing species, must have some form of consensus with itself. Given that, there is bound to be some form of society from an "evolutionary" standpoint. At that point, when a society exists, those who are most preferable to the society will be the ones people wish to dispose of the least and wish to help the most. Humans have a higher intelligence quotient than all other animals we are aware of: If we have organized into societies which do not butcher each other de facto (and while it is true that we kill each other, that we even observe it to be something unnatural is in itself anormal), there may be a reason for it. quote:So you're saying that your mother and father only want you to succeed so that, um, they can pretend that they've succeeded in your stead? What I pointed out was that there is an evolutionary prerogative for parents to care for their children. What you are "pointing out" is a bold-fased assumption. -------------------- * Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
Lifecrafter
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written Monday, April 10 2006 15:30
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quote:Let me remind you that we are talking about a biological standpoint, not a human one. quote:So it has never occured to you that this notion of the greater good you are so adamantly defending origionated in religion, something you are so adamantly against. Before Judaism (the first religion to forcefuly impose its morals upon its followers) nobody cared if you murdered, raped or pillaged. So long as you didn't do it to their kin (which supports my other point). quote:That is not what I said at all, and if you stopped making such assumptions you would realize that what I stated was the reasoning behind the fact that you stated. The evolutionary perogative for parents to care for their children is because children are a part of the parent. The parent knows that the child will survive long after the parent is gone. (I'm not going to get into the human side of that argument, just the animal one.) -------------------- ??? ?????? ???? ????? Posts: 883 | Registered: Wednesday, October 19 2005 07:00 |
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Monday, April 10 2006 15:31
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Whoa. TM is arguing in favor of selflessness... In all seriousness, I think Alorael overstated the case for selfishness. Among humans, there are biological imperatives for selfishness and for selflessness. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Monday, April 10 2006 15:34
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Evolution demands selfishness. Nobody does anything for nothing. There's also evolutionary selection for selective cooperation. Specifically, your genes are better off if you help relatives and if you help each other when it is more advantageous for all involved. Here are some examples: 1. You and your three siblings are attacked by a trio of hungry and quick-stepping zombies. If you all run, three of you will be eaten and one will survive. If instead one of you distracts the zombies, that one is guaranteed a slow, painful death but the other three will live. Because you get a random half of your genes from one parent and a random half from the other, you have on average half of the same genes as a sibling (one quarter overlap of each parent's genes). Saving yourself preserves one set of your genes, but dying to save three siblings saves three halves of a set. Altruism is favored by evolution because altruistic genes differentially reproduce more. [Edit: This is why parents help children. Without children, your genes die out. Your children get half your genes, so if you can let your child live with less than a 50% risk to yourself, it's a good deal. Saving your sibling's child only worth a 25% risk. I suspect that parents are willing to go to extreme lengths of self-sacrifice for two reasons. One, evolution may not be able to instill instant odds calculation, and in most cases a parent can protect and support a child with far less than a 50% risk. Two, the social stigma of not protecting your child is crippling, and the benefits of surviving a heroic rescue are large. See the 4th point.] 2. You see a total stranger getting attacked by a zombie. You know he has only a 5% chance to fend off the attacker. If you step in to help, there's a 20% chance that you'll both get eaten. But you know that there are more zombies around and that he'll be grateful. You'll probably get attacked at some point, and then maybe you'll need him to save you. If you don't save him, he has a 5% chance of survival and you have a 100% chance of survival now but only a 5% chance later. If you save him, you have a 20% chance of dying together, but if you survive you've just improved your chances to 80% when someone saves you. That means that overall you're better off risking a little bit to save each other than you are ignoring each other. Even without zombies, this is true. Helping each other in the expectations of more help makes sense as long as you expect others to reciprocate. We're pretty well programmed to do that and to ostrasize those who don't. Human social interactions are as subject to evolution as the rest of our brains. 3. You can go kill a mouse and eat it. So can your neighbor. If you work together, you'll have to split your meat, but you can also kill a dog. A dog is more than twice as much meat as a mouse. You actually make no sacrifice in being "helpful." 4. This applies to simpler things too, in large part because of programming. Why do you give to charity, possibly anonymously? You're not expecting benefits (except maybe tax deductions). You won't win accolades, and nobody is giving you charity. But you get to feel good. If it didn't feel good to give, nobody would. We don't do anything that feels bad unless we expect some reward that will outweigh the bad feeling. —Alorael, who thinks he has covered enough ground in this post. He'll keep his signature short. [ Monday, April 10, 2006 15:38: Message edited by: Hors d'oeuvre or ordure+V? ] Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Monday, April 10 2006 15:41
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quote:This is blatantly false. The statement in parentheses is questionable at best, and what follows is totally untrue. Judaism was neither the first religion nor the first moral code. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
Lifecrafter
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written Monday, April 10 2006 15:47
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quote:I never said it was the first religion or the first moral code. What I said was that Judaism was the first religion that forced it's moral code upon it's followers. It would probably have been more accurate if I included the word 'documented' in there, but I thought that would be obvious. As for nobody caring, it is perfectly true except in the cases of governments that ruled by the word of god. And for those, a bystander would never be required to provide testimony about somebody elses crimes. [ Monday, April 10, 2006 15:52: Message edited by: radix malorum est cupiditas ] -------------------- ??? ?????? ???? ????? Posts: 883 | Registered: Wednesday, October 19 2005 07:00 |
Raven v. Writing Desk
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written Monday, April 10 2006 15:54
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quote:Sigh. The last sentence of my post was meant as additional clarification. It was in no way meant to be equated with the first two sentences. So, let me clarify: Judaism was not the first religion. Judaism was not the first moral code. Judaism was also not the first religion to impose a moral code on its followers. Nor was it the first documented religion to do that. EDIT: quote:Bullcrap. I'm not sure how you became an expert on all ancient civilizations, but written evidence of the fact that people "cared" about rape, murder, etc., even of aliens, exists for non-Judaic societies going much further back in time than among Jews. Ancient Mesopotamia provides a plethora of examples. What the heck is that comment about bystanders based on? [ Monday, April 10, 2006 15:59: Message edited by: Good-Looks the Playboy ] -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
Lifecrafter
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written Monday, April 10 2006 15:57
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And what documented religion did so before Judaism? -------------------- ??? ?????? ???? ????? Posts: 883 | Registered: Wednesday, October 19 2005 07:00 |
Law Bringer
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written Monday, April 10 2006 16:00
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Judaism may have been the first to set out in codified, legal fashion how one should live, but I think every religion by nature has to impose some kind of order on its adherents, if only in the form of when and how to worship. Judaism also is much less a moral code than a legal code. I won't argue that it's not moral at all, because that's clearly false, but the Torah as a document is concerned with history and civil order to a large degree. Spiritual well-being is only one concern. —Alorael, who is pretty sure that diplomacy has existed as long as humans have been able to talk to one another. Diplomacy means raping and pillaging without someone's permission is likely to cause problems and should be discouraged. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
Raven v. Writing Desk
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written Monday, April 10 2006 16:12
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Judaism was not even the first to do that! Jewish history is rather foggy before the first millenium BCE, and few people claim a history longer than 4000 years for it. By the time their moral code was written down in a truly codified form, a profusion of other cultures had done the same thing. Were there innovative and significant things about the way it was written down, in Judaism's case? Yes, of course. But it wasn't the first. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Monday, April 10 2006 18:19
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Not being an expert on this, I can't say conclusively that Mesopotamians had a religion that forced its moral code upon its followers, but, given that the Greeks and Romans did, I can say it's a pretty safe bet. Ancient civilizations tended to get their ethics ipse dixit from religion, and, if they wanted to create new ethical systems, they'd create new religious justifications. The Jews may have been the first people to worry about orthodoxy, though. Ancient practices of which I am aware were almost entirely inclusive — "You have a god I've never heard of? Tell me about him or her, so that I may worship him or her too!" — so it was very easy to get the religion to back the ethics rather than forcing the ethics to adapt to the set religious beliefs, which is vaguely like what has been said. But I can't say definitively that it's true that Jews were the first not to be like this. That's odd: that implies a thesis that monotheism forces religious rigidity in a way that polytheism doesn't. I wonder if that holds water at all. [ Monday, April 10, 2006 18:46: Message edited by: Kelandon ] -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
Law Bringer
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written Monday, April 10 2006 18:30
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It's entropy! Every divinity is another degree of freedom, and monotheism only has one. It imposes the only possible state, which is highly ordered, upon us. As more gods are added, there are more possible religious states. Ladies and gentlemen, the Second Law of Theomodynamics states that everyone eventually has to become a polytheist. —Alorael, who likes his fast and very, very loose religious theorizing. Remember it when you take your Theological Engineering Exam. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
Warrior
Member # 4084
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written Monday, April 10 2006 18:44
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quote:The career profile must be similar for both though, so I'm sure they'd have lots to talk about at a party... :cool: :P -------------------- "Military justice is to justice what military music is to music" -G.M. Posts: 52 | Registered: Wednesday, March 10 2004 08:00 |
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written Monday, April 10 2006 19:27
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Wow- I leave for 2-3 hours, and... quote:Way to completely ignore what I said in the whole paragraph following what you quoted. quote:So wait- you're trying to prove that humans are fundamentally evil? And you believe that we were created to be fundamentally evil? What worthless, absurdist cad of a deity are you worshipping, and why haven't you taken to hating it yet? quote:This does not, in and of itself, say anything. Namely: quote:How you get to that point is beyond me. quote:Fine- but what about mothers/fathers dying to save only one of their children? If such a thing were to happen, it would indicate that empathy exists on a level that is not strictly mathematical. quote:But there is no feasible reason for the person to not help you in all subsequent occurences. The person already knows that you have helped her/him once, and based on a precept of trust which is mandated to humans by the maternal experience, s/he will help you in your time of need if possible since the person will be expecting you to do the same. In other words, it's not as if someone calculates the profit margin of being helped by another individual. Trust is an implicit process that requires an abandonment of moral calculus in order to function. quote:I take contention with this, although it's totally tertiary to the argument, so I won't bother prodding it for now. quote:Not true. The Jews were originally pagan unto themselves until an ancient queen was slain by members of the "Cult of Yahweh," at which point all other Jewish deities became lumped together as Yahweh. (Which, for instance, explains why Jethro worships "El Elohim," and Abraham remarks that Jethro follows the god of his father.) At any rate: I would contend that (and especially since the door has been opened for such) the act of trusting is the one that places the longest-lasting impression on humans. In this way, humanity has not been founded on a precision-guided laser, but rather a notion of trust in fellow human beings that external circumstances (ie, death of loved ones, communication failures, accidents, etc) can only hope to disrupt. That any "selfless" or even helpful act has to be reduced to moral calculus to be justified does not show an increase in humanity's rational capacities, but rather a progressive demeaning of every individual that results in a new, twisted form of "selflessness" that lives up to its name by denying the importance of everyone. [ Monday, April 10, 2006 20:55: Message edited by: Imban ] -------------------- * Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
Law Bringer
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written Monday, April 10 2006 20:13
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To address a point from several posts back, there really is no ground on which to assess human behavior on the same scale as that of other animals such as lions. While trying to avoid the humanocentric arrogance that pervades most thinking, humans are the only animals on Earth to have developed complex communication and the ability to keep complex records that last many generations. Other species have not. Said communication is part of our biological identity. Just because we looked practically the same when we could only grunt does not mean one can arbitrarily draw a line at which to separate our culture from our biological instincts. [ Monday, April 10, 2006 20:14: Message edited by: Kuranes- ] -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
Councilor
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written Monday, April 10 2006 20:18
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I find it interesting that animals (and humans) put a lot of time and effort into sexual reproduction to recombine genes while at the same time showing extra concern or defending relatives with a similar genetic make up. There's a delicate balance between selflessness for the sake of the whole group and individual selfishness. Dikiyoba. Posts: 4346 | Registered: Friday, December 23 2005 08:00 |
Law Bringer
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written Monday, April 10 2006 20:30
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Of course we aren't animals, but our sociological functioning didn't come out of a vacuum. It came out of evolution, and we aren't all that far removed from grunting. TM: I think I already covered parents dying for one child. Because most sacrifices result in an average increase in chance of genome survival, we sacrifice. We don't evaluate all the circumstances every time. Altruism isn't precisely mathematical because no real situation is cut and dried and I'd be surprised if there were enough evolutionary pressure to give us instant odds of offspring calculation. Also, if a parent isn't likely to have more children, that 1/2 genome is better than 0 genome survival. Trading altruism works because we evolved complex things like guilt, shame, exclusion, and all the lovely pieces of a functioning society. If you don't save other people from the zombies, word gets around and pretty soon nobody will do you a good turn any more and you're zombie bait. Fortunately, that doesn't happen because we feel guilty about letting people get eaten by zombies. Yes, that's a simplification. We feel guiltier depending on how close the person is to us and may not care much at all for a stranger from some distant land. But you know what? Locals are more likely to have opportunities to stop zombies. Trust works implicitly because we've had millions of years to come up with implicit trust. It works for us with all our complex higher thinking, but it also works for much more primitive herd animals. Trust is a function of instinctive moral calculus: groups that trust each other do better than groups that don't as long those groups also have an instinctive urge to be trustworthy. I think the tertiary issue you're sidestepping is the most important one as a simple summation of everything else. We do things because they feel good somehow and for no other reason. Do you have a counterexample? There's nothing rational about all this at all. It's true for us, ants, cows, wolves, and naked mole rats. We're all animals. We've got more thinking lumped on top of it, more room for deviation, but that's where all our thinking comes from. We didn't rationally invent altruism because we're higher beings! [Edit: Diki, that's part of the reason why the vast majority of cultures (not all, but most) place the most emphasis on protecting and providing for the nuclear family, then the extended family, and so on. The closers the relationship, the more of your genes you share, so the more of "you" is passed on if those relatives have children.] —Alorael, who sees nothing depressing about this any more than humans having evolved from chimps is depressing. Genetic programming is part of being an organism. Use your highly developed thinking brain to work with it. [ Monday, April 10, 2006 20:33: Message edited by: Hors d'oeuvre or ordure+V? ] Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
Infiltrator
Member # 3441
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written Monday, April 10 2006 20:51
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I often do things that I don't enjoy or want to do. I do this despite having no incentive to do so. Either I am an aberration, or (some) humans have gotten past a simple reward/cosequence moral paradigm. -------------------- "As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it." --Albert Einstein -------------------- Posts: 536 | Registered: Sunday, September 7 2003 07:00 |
Shake Before Using
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written Monday, April 10 2006 21:02
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quote:Um, what this implies me is that you personally hate it when you, for an example, punch yourself in your groin. In fact, you do not enjoy it at all, and have absolutely no desire to ever do such a thing. In addition, no one except you ever knows that you punch yourself in your groin, and you certainly do not benefit monetarily or physically from it. And yet nonetheless, you still do it. As I would call that an aberration, myself, I'd like to ask what your examples are of your behaviours that neither have a reward nor avert a consequence. [ Monday, April 10, 2006 21:04: Message edited by: Imban ] Posts: 3234 | Registered: Thursday, October 4 2001 07:00 |