who the hell are kids, and they do they warrant this treatment?
These are some arguments I’ve had cited to me in real life:
You’ll create monsters in the future. Really? Some people are naturally abusive personalities. Many children who are abused today don’t turn out as monsters. In fact, part of the psychiatric coping process is to say not to take out their abuse onto others. What makes people do bad things is complex, and not solely or predominantly down to abuse. A person who abuses others due his or her own history of abuse is a weak personality, and lacks coping skills in summation.
It’s unkind and kids are innocent. So what? Respecting “innocence” is largely a function of personality. Not every goes ga-ga at seeing a child or baby, and it’s not because they necessarily detest the person, or because they are a “bad” person.
Because the majority of people are partial irrational and are steered by inner selfish desires, compulsive behaviour and group think.
To fit into a society most have group think values applied to their behaviour, thus they will do whatever the majority/society dictates as “right”, it is considerd abominable to be abusesive to children thus some will be more or less phobic and act irrational, thus do EVERYTHING and overcompensate to do the exact opposite.
This seems strange to me. Why should we be nice to people who are not nice to children?
Whatever your arguments are for why one need not be nice to children, will apply to not being nice to adults (who are not nice to children).
I find I am not ga ga when I see someone be abusive to a child or read someone saying it is OK.
Why should anyone expect others to live up to a standard they themselves cannot?
But then the OP is placed in the negative, why should one take on this idea of treating children nicely? - in general, since there are few who advocate always being nice to children. The core answer is we are social mammals, protective of our young and the young in general. Or on the individual level, we tend to react with empathy to children - must one really go into mirror neurons? It seems to me someone saying there is something wrong with what tends to be our nature bears the burden of proof, and given their arguments, cannot expect being treated well themselves.
It is society that says we should be nice to children. And how are we protective of the young, or “young in general”? is this even “young” we have no connection to?
I personally don’t care if people are not “nice” to children.
Whether or not you like children, they are there, they are part of our social reality and will be so for the foreseeable future. If only parents are nice to children, they are more likely to become maladjusted sociopathic monsters than if the society to which they are expected to contribute one day takes a responsible attitude toward them, like a village full of aunts and uncles, some closer, some more distant. It is your decision whether you want to contribute to creating a socially destructive or to a socially productive future citizen, and that choice says a lot about your own character.
Morality is anything one makes it. I thought everybody knew that. Besides, if you all deem morality to be subjective, you cannot assert any state as more or less inherently desirable.
Further, people denied ME my RIGHT to be treated nicely as a child, so people are fucking hypocrites if they then extend this to all. It’s their broken skull at the end of the day (as punishment for denying it to me when it’s a supposed innate rule, as you all say), so not my immediate concern.
If I like strawberry ice cream, then I can desire a state of affairs where strawberry ice cream is available to me. If there are others who also like strawberry ice cream or if I can convince enough people that strawberry ice cream is enjoyable, then we can create a town with strawberry ice cream factories, mobile trucks, convenient store locations and ultimately subsidized or free strawberry ice cream. We can also enact laws which forbid the manufacture and sale of chocolate ice cream. The harshest penalties will be reserved for the purveyors of butterscotch ripple ice cream who are corrupting our youth.
Society does tend to say this, but that doesn’t make it causal. We are social mammals with mirror neurons and vulnerable young.]
We are more protective of even the young of our enemies than we are of out enemies. Soldiers are less likely to shoot children, for example, even of hated enemies of another race. It happens of course, but there is something built into us to not treat children cruelly. When we do this, we generally do this at a distance - for example policies that hurt children. You are assuming that the only cause is culture, which needs to be demonstrated somehow and seems ridiculously unlikely. Even animals will take care of the young of other species in many instances. Where they would do nothing to help adults of the same other species.
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So it would not bother you to see someone beating a two year old with their fists.
Sure. Just like some of the social skill lacks of people with Aspberger’s you have traits that might be diagnosible. I am not talking morally, I am speaking clinically.
Is there any reason we should be unaccepting of people with Aspberger’s?
I notice you did not address the other issues I raised.
A lack of empathy can be a part of one. Not being bothered by someone beating a child with their fists is unusual. Just as some of the traits in the pattern called Aspberger’s. You seem to understand this in relation to Aspberger’s but not in relation to your lack of empathy.
Interestingly you interpret this lack of empathy as not liking children. Does this mean that if you saw a much larger man beating a smaller man or a woman with his fists, you would as a rule feel empathy for the person being beaten, but when it is a child you do not care?