shuggy's blog
Shuggy, Most people would be reluctant to acknowledge any/many prejudices in the narrow pc sense of the word as it could likely result in them loosing their jobs.
Prejudice in the wider sense really mean having made up your mind on a subject before hand. This is actually probably a survival mechanism that allows one to make a decision quickly in an emergency without having to mull it over, that could prove fatal when being chased by a bull for example.
We appear to be designed to mentally categorise things and assess their pros and cons in relation to ourselves. Hence we might identify the tiger as a distinct thing and member of a group of similar distinct things. One might identify from information acquired from others or at first hand that they can be dangerous. Hence we would for a pre conception we might apply the next time we met a tiger.
The same is true of apples.
The problem comes when we miscategorise, use faulty logic or are misinformed, or try to apply it too generally. It may be that what works in a relatively unpopulated wild environment, which after all is what we spent most of history in, does not necessarily work quite the same in a modern urban multiracial society like the uk.
Hatred is an extreme and often irrational bolt on. Class hatred, as an example, is an almost tribal (and dare I say outdated) thing often programmed in to pliable children by adults.
Also, something we should not loose sight of, is that it is perfectly possible to think someone is an arse and say so, even if they are posh, working class (what is that these days?) black, white, socialist, liberal, etc, etc. without actually being prejudiced against one or all of the categories they happen to fall into.
It may be one just doesn’t like that individual, their manners, or their ideas.
I think it is a misunderstanding or, at least, a wrong emphasis to say that Daily Mail types hate the poor. What they do it fear the poor, not because they think the poor are coming to get them but because the typical Daily mail reader is not economically or socially secure enough to be sure that they wil not or would not have ended up in the situation of poor people, which is indeed frightening. It is not the otherness of poor people that underpins the vehemence of their animus, but the likeness.
I agree with you about hanging, by the way. There is no real argument in principle against it. But there is a sort of 'aesthetic' aversion that is hard to shake and which does seem to be, in part, a badge of belonging to a prticular social grouping.
"as far as I understand it most of the anti-death penalty arguments are based on utilitarianism"
To me the most important argument is to do with the important difference between a conviction or belief and a certainty.
We may be convinced or believe that a person is rightly convicted but very rarely can we be absolutely certain.
Unless you accept that a large proportion of innocents will die, and thus accept that two wrongs DO make a right, the argument for absolute punishment seems to me predicated on a shift between a conviction or belief and an absolute certainty.
Looking at how DNA evidence has overturned huge numbers of convictions of hundreds on US death row, underlines just how flawed a human legal system is.
We simply cannot have such absolute certainty in our convictions.
Supporters of the death penalty are like the religious who, unlike the rest of us, seem full of such 'certainty'.
"dysgenic breeding of the feckless poor"
Sounds like the first line of a poem - or the last line of a Yeats poem.
"People for the most part who don't have any power. Chris, on the other hand, chooses a representative from a group that does." That won't do, Shuggy. They were picking on a silly 19 year old when their target should have been his father or the editor of the nurdgaia (who has the wit to have his children use their mother's maiden name as their surname when he employs them, allegedly). In fact, I think you're showing prejudice - judging the youngster before you've much evidence about him as an individual based on a group he belongs to. Or you were being ironic and I fell for it.
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