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Originally Posted by mrklixx
Now I'll turn your question back on you. Would you be willing to carry out your proposed studies........in your home? Is it important enough to you to find the "answers" that you that you would be willing to expose yourself and your family to them and become there caretaker? Because a sanitized clinical study wouldn't be nearly thorough enough. One would actually have to be able to observe the interacting 24/7 much like Jane Goodall did with the animals she studied.
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I would carry out the studies suggested if it were within my expertise to do so, but I don't know why you suggest doing so in my home. It would be of benefit to do so in an environment conducive to such a study.
A sanitized clinical study is what we have to work with; I say work with it. You say torture them. I simply disagree.
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Originally Posted by LoganSnake
Get back to me when humans have come a long way from barbarism, then we'll talk about being humane. Nothing has changed since thousands of years ago, so why should the punishment methods change?
Humans have and always will be animals. The only thing that separates us (hell, not even all of us) from people of old is a layer of societal mentality that represses our urge to dominate and kill. We just find the outlets in different methods, but the urge is there and always will be.
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Humans are animals, yes. Humans are capable of suffering and causing suffering, yes. But we have changed over the years. If you think life now is like it was even in 1008 A.D., you are probably mistaken. Do you know what it's like living under a monarchy or imperial rule? Are you familiar with the caste system? Feudalism? You shouldn't undermine modern democracy and other social advances. Our genetic makeup might be relatively unchanged, but our social minds have made leaps and bounds. But this was not borne out of repression of basic instincts, it was based on our ability and desire to reason: a need fulfilled of the establishment and stabilization of wider societies. If things were as you say they are, our language would not have grown past the Old and Middle Languages, and we wouldn't understand one another for regional dialects. It would be a much more fragmented world.
While you might see the benefit of publicized drawing and quartering, many contemporary minds view that as unnecessarily and historically barbaric. Most would rather post-Freudian methods or modern incarceration practices.
I agree that a relative urge to dominate and kill remains within us, but I choose not to give up on the progress we have made in spite of it. The fact that we all have this capacity should encourage us to learn more about ourselves, which is why I take the stance I do.