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"the vast majority of us are straight up sociopaths" Society can't function without socially acceptable outlets for this and other anti-social behaviors. That

"the vast majority of us are straight up sociopaths" Society can't function without socially acceptable outlets for this and other anti-social behaviors. That is the best justification I have found for a long list of things that don't seem to make sense in an enlightened society. What would the world be like if we didn't have the Army and NFL? A lot of people would find new, more chaotic outlets for their aggression.

munin 15y ago
I think fewer people would have a problem with this if the outlet for sociopathic aggression didn't involve detonating women and children
- skeltoac 15y ago
  Few people will like this, too, including myself, but the truth is that as long as they aren't "our" women and children... I'm kissing my hard-earned 198 away here by speaking truth. Hate the truth, not the speaker.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    One thing I vividly remember from the Iraq war was how much everyone seemed to care about a couple thousand US casualties, and how little everyone seemed to care about a hundred thousand Iraqi casualties.
    - lotharbot 15y ago
      One thing I remember is how accurate the US casualty number was -- we had names and hometowns for every US casualty, and usually a cause of death. In some sense, this is to be expected, as we have records of everyone who gets shipped out, and most have at least some family or friends who awaited their return. We weren't even sure how many Iraqis had died, nor how they died. Some of the more common estimates of Iraqi deaths vary by a factor of ten or more. Records in Iraq are spotty, at best. Most Iraqis don't have a great deal of family and friends in the US, so we don't feel their loss in quite the same way.
lhnn 15y ago
There are much cheaper, better ways to let out anti-social behavior and violent action between consenting fucked-up people. 4chan, fight clubs, boxing, BDSM, etc. Shit, we could fund the entire country going crazy on $3,000,000,000,000 or so.

munin 15y ago

I think fewer people would have a problem with this if the outlet for sociopathic aggression didn't involve detonating women and children

skeltoac 15y ago
Few people will like this, too, including myself, but the truth is that as long as they aren't "our" women and children... I'm kissing my hard-earned 198 away here by speaking truth. Hate the truth, not the speaker.
- philwelch 15y ago
  One thing I vividly remember from the Iraq war was how much everyone seemed to care about a couple thousand US casualties, and how little everyone seemed to care about a hundred thousand Iraqi casualties.
  - lotharbot 15y ago
    One thing I remember is how accurate the US casualty number was -- we had names and hometowns for every US casualty, and usually a cause of death. In some sense, this is to be expected, as we have records of everyone who gets shipped out, and most have at least some family or friends who awaited their return. We weren't even sure how many Iraqis had died, nor how they died. Some of the more common estimates of Iraqi deaths vary by a factor of ten or more. Records in Iraq are spotty, at best. Most Iraqis don't have a great deal of family and friends in the US, so we don't feel their loss in quite the same way.

lhnn 15y ago

There are much cheaper, better ways to let out anti-social behavior and violent action between consenting fucked-up people. 4chan, fight clubs, boxing, BDSM, etc. Shit, we could fund the entire country going crazy on $3,000,000,000,000 or so.