Memetic Index
Yeah, you won’t catch me categorically poo-pooing the judicious and calculated use of highly circumscribed physical violence in bringing up children. It’s not a popular idea, and maybe it’s wrong, and I’m open to that.
The injudicious use, including emotional and sexual violence, against people beholden to you who have less power, whether they be children or slaves, is still more problematic. I find that dogmatic systems are full of justifications for this, eg, it’s okay to hit your kid if they do or say or don’t do or don’t say such and so, you can beat (the types of torture being specified) your slave in these cases, or rape your slave if your wife is barren, or you lay a sacrifice on the altar, or if the moon is full, or if you just feel like it.
In Japan, the ultimate bad thing for a child to do is bother other people.
I don’t know about a crack in the mouth for “talking back.” Maybe. Does hitting children make them better people, more godly? Maybe sometimes. It may often make them resentful, which is the opposite. Do you hit your kids because they make you angry or that you don’t deserve respect, or because it’s a last resort and you don’t think they’ll understand or respond properly to anything else?
Do you hit your children because you can, or because you must…or because whatever dogma you adhere to gives you a handy excuse to?
I’m not sure I buy this idea that “people who don’t know right from wrong just didn’t get hit enough.” You and I have both know a lot of people who got hit, a lot, as well as suffered a lot of other abuse, and still have a lot of problems with right and wrong. I guess if you hold to some kind of strict interpretation of the concept of original sin, then maybe that means a person must have morality beaten into them, along with a genuine empathy and love for others which they also wouldn’t have.
One thing about children (unless they have severe disabilities) will eventually grow up and move out, and if the household was abusive they may never look back. The love of a child is innocent and trusting, and you have to be a truly horrible parent to crush that.
It’s not true of a slave—they never move out. Except in Islam, of course, where slavery only lasts seven years. They will always resent their captivity, because it is immoral, and so in a sense any violence used against them will always be cruel, sinful.
I guess to paraphrase the shopworn adage, “apply the rod and not necessarily save the child “
=====================
I reckon that a lot of memes like this are just cheap attacks against something that everybody knows is true. Also, I like this site a lot for random questions like this: https://www.gotquestions.org/beating-slaves.html
https://www.gotquestions.org/beating-slaves.html
I mean, it's like disciplining children with physical punishment, nowadays many people see this as the most horrible thing a person can do, but for ages this is how children have learned right from wrong. Nowadays increasingly people don't understand right from wrong (because they were never taught, because no one ever gave them a good slap in the face when they talked back to their parents)
Yup. the reasons we do things are very important. In the Holy Bible slaves were set free after 7 years unless they wanted to stay with their master (which they often did), in which case a hole would be driven through their ear to mark them as permanent property of the slave-owner.
There is a whole set of instructions regarding this in the Old Testament (including specific regulations regarding whether the slave had children while he/she was with the master)
Regarding rape and the bible: https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-rape.html
What does the Bible say about rape? | GotQuestions.org
https://www.gotquestions.org
No comments:
Post a Comment