i don't know about monster, but i think we're all sinners, some with more consciousness than others.

Don't kid yourself. Unless you walk on water you are one of us. Welcome to the club friend.

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

I respectfully disagree. Between the two of us, I'm not sure who knows more about my ethics and morals...but I suspect it's me.

I am not a member of your little "club" of folks that turn into monsters when the cops turn their head.

Please remove my name from your mailing list.

Do you guys wear T-shirts, or a uniform, or anything, so we'll be able to recognize you? Or will the fact that you'll be the ones running around raping, pillaging, burning and looting be enough?

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"You'll find a slight squeeze on the hooter an excellent safety precaution, Miss Scrumptious."

"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong." -- Richard Feynman

How can a second-hand hearsay "report" about what a reporter supposedly said turn into a multi-page thread? Not even the reporter's name is in the post, and even so, like every dopey reporter chooses his words properly when reporting live from a scene.

"The reporter went on to explain how many, if not most, of the bodies had been mutilated after their death! Please explain how as a human being you can do that to another?"

That's easy, it was a bunch of liberals mutilating the bodies of dead conservatives. They get emotional like that. I heard that Michael Moore organized the whole thing and he's making a documentary about it.

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**All of these words finding themselves together were greatly astonished and delighted for assuredly, they had never met before**

I am completely with Xenu on this. (I have the disconcerting feeling that I may even agree with Vitus, but I'm sure our differences will become apparent.)

The notion that we are all savages held in check by the rule of law is not just an appallingly bleak view of your community, it also shows a frightening self-image. It's also bad jurisprudence - where I live the police population is less than 0.2% of the general population and society is structured on the confident assumption that the overwhelming majority of people will do the right thing almost always.

I think if you find yourself thinking "I mustn't do that because if I do I could go to jail" then something is already seriously wrong. Like Xenu, I can't think of much in my life that is directed by law; I can't easily think anything I would wish to do that is illegal.

I was NOT raised to obey the law. I was taught that if I chose to live a life in which I lied and cheated and stole, then I could probably get away with it most of the time (some people do). I was taught that the most important decision in life is what kind of man i would be, and the only true contentment in life is respecting the guy who looks back at you in the shaving mirror.

I feel sad for anyone who sees life very differently.

I heard or read just 3 or 4 people died at the Superdome (I think the crowd killed one guy who raped (and?) killed a girl) and another 3 or 4 died at the Convention Center, not bunches as people envision.


CORRECTION: Just read an article in the NY Times that states 10 people died at the dome and 24 died at the convention center, but the causes of some of the deaths were not clear ... So many of the stories that emerged are proving true, especially how the few dozen national guard and police at both places had no control after the power went out. Sorry to dispense bad info.

But the point I think you are missing is that without rule of law what law(s) would you follow? Would you expect everyone to adhere to the law as it was before life went to hell? Heck, not everyone does that today judging by our jail cells. Without law and order (which was the topic that got us started BTW) you make your own laws.

Some people would certainly act "better" than others but up to what point? If you ran out of food and your family was starving or they were being threatened what would you do? Me, anything to protect/ feed them. Even if I broke a thousand laws I would protect them at all costs. And you are telling me you would act different? You would let your families die before you broke the law? And you wonder why I question your credibility?

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

With respect, I think it is you missing the point. I don't expect that everyone obeys the law. You'll see that I noted that some people lie and cheat and steal their way through life, despite the potential consequences, because largely they can get away with it. The point in contention was if 'most' people are savages or 'most' people are decent. I believe that I, and most people are decent. If you have a problem with the credibility of that, then that is a reflection on you, not me. As I said, that is sad for you.
The prison population, even at the extraordinary levels in the US, is an indication of the actions of a minority, not the "all of us" referred to above.

Your example about feeding a starving family is actually a perfect illustration of my point. Regardless of what the law says (to rule the savages), the reason I don't steal is because I am not the kind of prick who takes things he doesn't own. If in extreme circumstances I had to steal to save my family then regardless of what the law says I would, because I am not the kind of prick who would let my family starve. It's a moral distinction, not a legal one.

The law is a blunt instrument (and I am a qualified lawyer). As my father always said "Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the observance of fools". By all means note what the law has to say, but I obey morals and principles. The law doesn't much come into it.

It was on a CNN broadcast. It was whomever the white haired, male reporter of the hour was. I didn't mean to start trouble. It just seemed strange to me.

All I know is that the dead don't give a damn about anything anymore. Only the living.

I've seen firsthand that kind of vicious behavior in a few other parts of the world, and it doesn't surprise me that it'd occur here once the thin veneer of civilization is scratched away. How else to explain the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. Stalin and Mao Zhedong and their own mass murder programs. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The list is sadly and depressingly endless when it comes to man's inhumanity to man.

T.

why are they showing these poor deceased people on the news? that is grossly insensitive and inhumane.

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Birth and death are hidden /covered with sheets, in our society .All the cowboy come back to life after the gun fight . Perhaps if more kids , drunk drivers , gang members saw more of reality ,they would think about the finality of disasters , gun play and violent acts .less of these type of deaths would happen.

That being said, given the right circumstances , Mother Teresa would cut people in half with a chain saw , we all have it in us. It just takes a bit of coaxing. Oh yeah

Cable is nice , more educational , but you will have 5 of 60 channels you watch.

Clinton and Rwanda.

I almost forgot about that ;-) How do we explain that to the rest of the world, when we've made this big hooraw about going into Iraq to help prevent Saddam from killing any more of his people? He must've still felt burned from staying in Somalia, post-Bush 41.

T.

One of my mom's teacher frineds has a daughter that leaves in NO. The daughter explained to the mom, "it's even worse than what you see on TV" ... and she is "outside" and the downtown area.

I simply cannot imagine what that situation is like. Perhaps we are not as sophisticated and restrained as we would like to think. Perhaps this is how mankind acts "in nature".

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-- Every morning brings opportunity;
Each evening offers judgement. --

i dont think it is a statistics game (1 in 8 sickos, 1 in 3). I think like kityycat said, we all carry within us (deep down or on the surface) the full genetic (or spiritual) spectrum from perfect goodness to perfect evil.

In our quietest moments I imagine that many of us, seriously or not, have caught ourselves thinking quite disgusting and disturbing things. Violent thoughts, hateful thoughts, disgusting thoughts. Good and evil, to be trite, battles within us all. (For every priest that has raped a small child, how many do you think there are that have thought about it, if just for an instant, before running to confessional in shame and disgust?)

Whether goodness will predominate in a particular individual may be a question of evolution/genetics (maybe in 10,000 years we will lose the violence gene?); It may be due to culture and society (certainly there is a contagious quality to violence and chaos - Rwanda, Serbia, etc., and certainly violence predominates among the poor and disenfranchised); Or it may be divinely ordained (karma, predestination).

But, as usual, the religious bunch say it most powerfully... we are wayward children, fallen, lost, struggling to get home.

Personally that overriding spiritual metaphor or image is why I find it so hard to "be in the world" and do ordinary things like get a 401k and shop at the pottery barn and fight for promotion to be regional manager. (Vanity of vanities...) The thin veneer of society. What does it gloss over and hide? ... What is the truly important imperative in life? ... (FWIW I have narrowed it down to 2 (not necessarily exclusive) possibilities: Love, Or the simple proposition that "existence precedes essence"...)

I also like Nietzschean/Borgesian image of eternal return, of continually becoming...

"the world is a circular movement that has already repeated itself infinitely often and plays its game in infinitum."

"What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!" Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?...
OR HOW WELL DISPOSED WOULD YOU HAVE TO BECOME TO YOURSELF AND TO LIFE TO CRAVE NOTHING MORE FERVENTLY THAN THIS ULTIMATE ETERNAL CONFIRMATION AND SEAL?"

Perhaps the reason you don't steal is you don't have to to feed your family. However, if you were in a situation where you needed medicine or food for your family or they would die, and would not do whatever it took to obtain it then what does that say about your love for your family? I guess you you would say you value law over life. I would say that all law is made up and that life is more important then law. I go back to Maslow and our survival instincts that are well documented.
Do a quick search on atrocity in Google and you will see our past. Remember Hitler and the gas chambers? Not too long ago the world allowed this to happen.

BTW save your pity for someone that needs it in NO. We are talking abstractly about a situation we both hope will never happen.

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

If you treat people like animals for long enough some of them will inevitably start behaving like animals.

What is the bigger crime? A government allowing refugees to starve to death in the middle of an American city in 2005, or the mutilation of some of those dead bodies.

Ethics 101.

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"A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy."
John Sawhill