For Pity’s Sake
From Drudge we have the story of the great walnut caper. “Authorities are investigating two thefts of more than 80,000 pounds of walnuts from Northern California valued at about $300,000 … They have not identified the suspect although they do have a suspect description.”
Maybe the locals can organize a posse
Suppose the description fit that of a giant squirrel. Well who could possibly want to jail a squirrel? Wikipedia examines the case for cuteness as a survival trait.
Cuteness is usually characterized by (though not limited to) some combination of infant-like physical traits, especially small body size with a disproportionately large head, large eyes, a pleasantly fair, though not necessarily small nose, dimples, and round and softer body features. Infantile personality traits, such as playfulness, fragility, helplessness, curiosity, innocence, affectionate behavior, and a need to be nurtured are also generally considered cute.
Most people go all limp at the sight of cute things because they stir up protective emotions in us. For that reason we hesitate to hurt or even inconvenience them. Cuteness, the New York Times argues, often trumps beauty and even reason. For example, giant animals can be cute, simply because of how they look.
Cuteness is distinct from beauty … many Floridians have an enormous affection for the manatee, which looks like an overfertilized potato with a sock puppet’s face, Roger L. Reep of the University of Florida said “they watch this soft and slow-moving animal, this gentle giant, and they see it turn on its back to get its belly scratched,” said Dr. Reep, author with Robert K. Bonde of “The Florida Manatee: Biology and Conservation. That’s very endearing. So even though a manatee is 3 times your size and 20 times your weight, you want to get into the water beside it.”
But the problem with cuteness as a defense is that it seems to have no hold over evil. For example, the Nazis had no qualms about killing children. They made a careful catalog of the cute, beautiful, pathetic and pitiful individuals they were about to exterminate without a single shred of remorse. For Nazis, cute didn’t mean squat.
Please don't hurt me mister
In fact it may even accelerate their evil passions. Persons like Jimmy Savile whose recently uncovered pedophilia is now shaking the BBC appears to have felt a particular thrill in preying upon the helpless, the under-aged, retarded or disabled simply because they could not fight back.
Come with me to the abusement park
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the cuteness defense works only with those with a certain fineness of sensibility. In general neither Nazis nor a hardened pedophiles — and any others of that sort — are susceptible to pity or appeals to high principle.
This poses a problem to those who imagine that terrorists, for example, will desist from attacking them after they have foresworn Christianity or even Western civilization, or perhaps have abjected themselves to such a degree as to be pathetic. The idea is that if one bows often enough in apology then the malicious will pass you by. This argument assumes that stone killers care about things like the “moral high ground”.
John Howard did not believe they did. When asked by an interviewer whether defending Australia aggressively might not be a ‘provocation’ to he argued that such men responded to an entirely different set of incentives.
If you imagine that you can buy immunity from fanatics by curling yourself in a ball, apologizing for the world – to the world – for who you are and what you stand for and what you believe in, not only is that morally bankrupt, but it’s also ineffective. Because fanatics despise a lot of things and the things they despise most is weakness and timidity. There has been plenty of evidence through history that fanatics attack weakness and retreating people even more savagely than they do defiant people.
He was of course, roundly reviled for these backward notions. This was regarded as “dehumanizing” the enemy. In the view of the enlightened, the enemy was just a person with another point of view. Seen a certain way you could always sympathize. Nazis and pedophiles were simply individuals who had been blighted by bad childhoods. Therefore ideas like Howard’s were simplistic.
But does he have a point? Howard’s basic idea was that there was one type of discourse which applied to civil society and another sort of discourse for persons whose idea of politics was the car bomb and beheading knife. They were to some degree disjoint sets. You could not treat one like the other.
That falls short of “dehumanizing” the enemy. Rather it recognizes a duality in man; the presence within the human race of what is conventionally called good and evil.
Where does this leave us with giant squirrels who steal lots of nuts? I leave it to the reader to decide.
He must have been nuts
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Any old tomcat ought to suffice.
I agree with Mr Howard.
Different cultures have different standards. The West is objectively superior in general, but to deal with those of other cultures, you have to understand them enough to see the handles.
Simonbob,
I think it is more than just different standards. They have different ways of childrearing that rob their children of basic human instincts. The children come in second to their honor/shame values.
Necla Kelak, Turkish-born German sociologist, reported in her book The Lost Sons of visiting young Turks in German youth jails. She asked them how it was being in jail, and one replied that it wasn’t so bad; it was the first time anyone paid any attention to him.
The point is, when attacked, the best short-term strategy is almost always to dehumanize YOURSELF. Especially if you have an overwhelming position of strength.
Long-term optimizations generally include the option of making your enemy your friend. It is such an optimal position that it is worth taking some losses to even try to achieve. But that does not make it constitute a defense.
It is also a characteristic especially of Western Christianity to try, or at least to keep it maybe a little further up the options list than it would be in almost any other culture.
And of course it depends on your enemy. In the case of Islam, it has a long history and doctrinal position of seeking and dishonoring attempts to befriend it, while it necessarily responds to power.
Who was that wild boy who was out living with the grizzlies and making friends with them – and ended up eaten by them, to absolutely nobody’s surprise?
Besides, I don’t doubt that giant squirrel is good eatin’.
Boys who are cute with each other don’t want competition. It’s bad for “cohesion”, may lead to girlfriends…
“In the view of the enlightened, the enemy was just a person with another point of view.”
Close but no cigar. In their view the external enemy is just a misguided potential friend or future customer/sponsor/partner in a client/patron relation. You and I and most of us around PJM on the other hand are the enemies within. As far as they are concerned we are TWANLOC. For us they resort to the full panoply of dehumanization.
Cute and Pity can work.
“He would have finished Goddam off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. It’s a pity I’ve run out of bullets, he thought as he went back up the tunnel,”
- Dildo Bugger, “Bored of the Ring”
There has been plenty of evidence through history that fanatics attack weakness and retreating people even more savagely than they do defiant people.
……
This actually describes predictor prey relationships. The woman in the following video demonstrates this by walking into a pack of cheetahs in the wild. They cower as long as she stands upright and advances. The instant she runs away they attack. Until the moment she turns and faces them. Then they again halt and cower.
A brave woman teases wild cheetahs(Marlice Van Der Merwe)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLZ6FgYkYzQ
The best way to get attacked and eaten by a predator is to act like prey.
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4. Josh
The point is, when attacked, the best short-term strategy is almost always to dehumanize YOURSELF. Especially if you have an overwhelming position of strength.
………..
However, the typical stratagems of predator organizations is to first dehumanize their their enemies. Salafists and Kohemenists for example are fond of saying the Jews are descended from monkeys and pigs.
Of course, its always helpful to know the kinds of preditors a person or people face. You would treat cheetahs very differently than a bear. Except if you had a big gun. Then its all the same.
Wretchard says: But the problem with cuteness as a defense is that it seems to have no hold over evil.
That’s supported by the comment found on a number of blogs in the dextrosphere that Teh Won could kill a kitten onstage and eat its brains from the skull of a freshly slain puppy, and the lefties would still adore him.
And of course the New York Times, that PC arbiter of cuteness, has gone all in for that cute little guy in the White House:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/10/30/new-york-times-sunday-review-goes-wall-to-wall-for-obama-reelection/
VDH has written a number of times about his measure of the decline of civil society – the increasing amount theft he’s experienced at his and his neighbors’ farms (even these walnuts perhaps). Where once upon a time doors were left unlocked and errant children were disciplined by any adult in vicinity. A loss of perhaps the most important design-margin.
I don’t know how to get it back save at the point of a gun since the law is lost to us (note that it (in the form of the FBI) does get sent to Benghazi to capture the “criminals” – talk about a world upside-down).
Wretchard.
You so like cultural references, maybe it was the lack of an existing clip from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome that you didn’t show that segment where Max defeats Master Blaster but is, in the end, subjected to punishment by the angered crowd for breaking the rules (2 men enter, 1 man leaves). Max defeats Blaster, but refuses to kill him when he discovers that Blaster is little more than a man-child (with a cute face once his ferocious mask is stripped off) with developmental disabilities.
Parallel? There is a scene in Leon Uris’ Mila 18 where the Nazis deliberately send into the Warsaw Ghetto a hulking thug/retard who’s been riled up against the Jews. When those who are attacked attempt to defend themselves, the SS rounds up 2 dozen ghetto residents at random and “executes” them for harming a Polish citizen. The problem is not the cuteness, nor creatures of diminished capacity — it’s the deliberate set-up by the authorities in order to ratchet up their controls (and terror) on the subjected population another notch.
What additional parallels are needed?
about cuteness:
“Raccoons introduced by the Nazis have officially occupied Germany after experts admitted they are there to stay.
The German Hunting Federation say the animals, introduced by Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering, will never be ousted.”
http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Nazi_racoons_take_over_Germany
7. Charles
“A brave woman teases wild cheetahs(Marlice Van Der Merwe)”
How interesting that the cheetahs respond to her individualy, not as a pack.
Of course the cheetah isn’t the master of his environment, the lion or the hyena ,I believe, can rob them of their kill.
In the Torah Amalek attacks the stragglers, women, elderly, and children. For this it is characterized as the quintessential enemy. In an enigmatic commandment we are told to blot out the name of Amalek so we can forget him, and then are told to be sure to remember.
The Left doesn’t believe in Amalek — unless their Amalek is someone or something that can’t fight back, like Global Warming or second hand smoke.
Every mugger knows that the easiest mark is the person who is walking with head down and tentative gait. The good thing about strength and confidence is that if you have it you are less likely to need to use it, for both the big and small Ameleks are more likely to leave you alone.
PS It is impossible to make friends with Amalek despite our wishful thinking.
W, please disabuse yourself of the notion squirrels are “cute”. They are rodents. They look and behave like rodents, including scavenging their ailing “mates”. They are only “cute” to the unaware.
California has more than enough nuts. I say let the squirrels run with it a while longer.
I had a girlfriend once who refused to accept that squirrels were rodents. “They’re in the cute category!”, she argued.
Cuteness absolves a lot, to certain way of thinking.
“another sort of discourse for persons whose idea of politics was the car bomb and beheading knife.”
What sort of discourse is for persons whose idea of politics is a never ending “war on terror” that encompasses kill lists and drone assassinations conducted by teenage video-game jocks from deep inside the Nevada desert? What sort of discourse for persons whose idea of politics is a never ending “war on drugs” that locks up and hardens millions of young men for a victimless crime?
I fear the US government far more than Islamic terrorists.
batman@13
The Left doesn’t believe in Amalek — unless their Amalek is someone or something that can’t fight back, like Global Warming or second hand smoke.
…or unwanted infants born alive after botched late-term abortions.
And yes, the inversion is deliberate. What Obama said in opposition to the Illinois BAIPA was his openly transparent superimposition of the faces of clinic-bombing bogeymen over the faces of newborns. No good lefty could possibly have a problem with abandoning Eric Rudolph to die in a closet—alone save for the dirty linens surrounding him. It worked for Bobby Boucher in Waterboy.
Do I dehumanize? Yes and no. It is superimposition again. Dehumanization vectors are like humiliation vectors. They superimpose rather than sum head to tail. There is little reason not to dehumanize another adult any less than he dehumanizes himself through his words and actions. In fact, the Christian impulse of ascribing human values to a monster endangers everyone.
Regarding John Howard’s quote: “There has been plenty of evidence through history that fanatics attack weakness and retreating people even more savagely than they do defiant people.” Of course they do. It has always been thus. The problem we have in our modern culture is that our popular entertainment has made a fetish of irony. Every story has to have at least one twist or else it is not commercially viable. This relentless assault on whatever neural receptors are stimulated by irony has made us forget what made irony ironic in the first place, and the resulting disconnection from reality is a cultural and civilizational deathwish.
In a different age, young boys were taught by their fathers to stand up to bullies; even, in some cases, by their mothers.
Missing maple syrup in Canada. Missing walnuts in California! Look among the celebrity chefs for your culprit.
What could be more cute than children playing in a playground with a big colorful caterpillar?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/israeldiplomaticfellowship/3819114007/
Only this one is a bomb shelter in Sderot to protect them from the very real monsters who live next door. I think the image speaks for itself.
LMAO at the picture. I still think it is a bad idea for uniformed members of the Army to take trophy pictures. It could too easily end up on the internet and we all know what that portends.
Legions of crazed individuals worked up to a frothing madness informed by their lady parts and their corporal beta-men standing at the ready to yupp their every utterance. Should there be any press involved the homosexual goon squads will soon enter stage left and take up league with the vanquished squirrels in inveigled vigils against childish male oppression in a stand for universal mutant rights.
I for one look forward to serving our new squirrel masters. It is time they have a chance having their rich cultural history become ascendent having been squelched for so long. If you disagree you are a racist homophobe.
re 22
“LMAO at the picture. I still think it is a bad idea for uniformed members of the Army to take trophy pictures. It could too easily end up on the internet and we all know what that portends.”
It will be a dark day for America when GI Joe gets a courts-martial for the now infamous squirrel picture.
@22 or ‘Rodentophobe’ LOL
Rumor has it that the Obama distraction campaign tactic of “Look! a squirrel!” has not been working with the jaded likely voters. However a small secret group has prepared for this and has bred really large squirrels. The group has had to conceal their funding which is why they stole all those nuts. The squirrels may not be ready in time because another rumor has it that one of the squirrels ate and devoured a handler, apparently it couldn’t tell one kind of nut from another.
A 17 HMR, a crockpot, and thou.
#26;
Mmmm, Brunswick stew.
Josh #4
Christianity is not a survival strategy. It is a way of interacting with the spiritual realm.