Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
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ORIGINAL: StrangerinBlack
You seem to be missing the point. The question of sanity and consent is about the other party. Most murders are consentual on the part of the killer.
This was not ruled a murder, but voluntary manslaughter.
As for his sanity and consent, it seems passable to me, but standards of both vary.
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Like this whole paragraph was unneeded. But I was talking more about the way you constantly compliment yourself and talk about how great your understanding is, yada yada yada.
If you take it as compliments, that is your reading. I've made it abundantly clear elsewhere that I have more than my fair share of flaws and issues, and see no reason to be apologetic about anything I have said that might have been taken as you have. If you really think I've done so without a purpose, and will use the quote function properly, I'll be happy to explain what my intentions have been on a case-by-case basis. If I find I agree with your assessment in any of those cases, I've no problem admitting that. It wouldn't be the first time I admitted a mistake on the boards.
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No I mean that you talk like your the descended master coming down the mountain and like everyone else is a child. The amount of respect you actually hold for the ideas of others becomes clear.
I believe that is pretty much what I said: the amount of respect I hold for your ideas is porportional to their merits as I see it. Which is not to say that I am a descended master of anything, least of all cannibalism, nor that I hold disagreement with some subset of your ideas against you as a person. Moreover, I don't see you as a child.
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I can solve that one for you, you have no idea whatsoever what your talking about.
Thanks for clarifying, and my apologies for any incorrect guesses.
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I find it amazing how many times the word research has been used without a single piece of it being presented.
My sources are not available to you. But you have made claims to the effect that there is necessarily a pathology underlying every case of cannibalism, on the part of both of the participants. And I have pointed out that this is certainly not the case, and offered the results of my research (which you can probably duplicate closely enough for the discussion by searching for the court transcript) to support that.
A point I would appreciate if you clarify before proceeding, however, is whether your claim only pertains to cases where the donor dies as a consequence or requirement of the process, or whether it also applies to those where the donor may die without that being the intent, and/or those where the donor remains in otherwise good health, and/or those where the donor is already dead. Specifically also whether the claim is different for the donor and recipient in any of those cases.
That makes a significant difference in the debate, IMO.
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Which tells us nothing we need to know.
How does the professional evaluation of the sanity of both donor and recipient tell us nothing we need to know in evaluating the accuracy of your claim that they must both neccessarily have been mentally ill?
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And since you have provided nothing from it which backs you up, I find this to be a empty point.
I'm not spoonfeeding you. I have provided you with a summary of what it says, and my German is too slow and laborious to go back for the exact wording so that you can save yourself time in acquiring familiarity with a case you have already made a claim that applies to. You will find that there are plenty of online translation services that will make the job of backing up the applicability of your claim a great deal easier.
You forwarded an assertion, and I provided a counterexample with the info you need to verify it.
This is one of those cases where your response (to this point) will affect how I see you as a person.
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So your not even willing to entertain the idea that someone who wanted his penis cut off and ate may have had a mental illness?
Of course I am. I am not stupid.
I know full well that a lot of people want to do things out of a mental illness. My contention is that your assertion that a mental illness is neccessarily part of the story can be dismissed. I certainly don't think everyone who signs up for such a thing is sane, or even has half a clue what they are doing. Neither do I think everyone who signs up for BDSM, having kids, getting a driver's licence, skydiving and so forth will be.
I'm simply saying that it's possible to have, and even indulge in, such a kink without a pathology.
And that it's possible to adequately comprehend what one is getting into.
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What would you say the odds were?
I don't play the odds, but I would guess that he was initially sufficiently able to grasp it.
The jury would seem to be inclined to agree, as that is why Meiwes was not charged with murder.
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You have a wonderful talent for avoiding the issue actually being discussed.
I wish. I am addressing the fundaments, the assertions made in the course of the discussion, and the provided examples. When an invalid claim is made, it is not avoiding the issue to point that out instead of proceeding as if the claim were valid, or proceeding with some "is not!" retort. When the example is inadequate to the task of supporting the assertions made in the OP, it is not avoiding the issue to point that out. And when the conclusions do not follow the premise due to an underlying implication, it is not avoiding the issue to note that.
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And yes, in most cases, strong suicidal tendencies is a sign of mental illness.
Certainly.
Whether it is a cause, or an effect, however, is relevant. And in those cases where euthanasia is permitted, it is generally not related to mental illness, but rather to physical illnesses that have moved into the palliative care phase (which tends to be a slow form of doctor-assisted suicide anyway, though there are plenty of ways that one can rationalize it as people are wont to do).
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Why don't you try providing a medical viewpoint (or even a rational one) that disagrees.
I did, above, in reference to palliative care patients.
I would also say that it is rational to consider it euthanasia when a mental illness causes suffering that is of comparable magnitude to those somatic illnesses and where one has abandoned attempts at effective therapy and the patient expresses a desire to die that isn't rooted in a disturbance of reasoning due to the illness, but rather rooted in pain caused by the illness and a rational desire to end that pain.
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We normally reserve the word euthanasia to refer to very sick and suffering people who would die anyway, not every two person act that results in a corpse.
I'm fully aware of that. Which is why I objected when your definition was so wide as to include it.
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Not that it is any way relevant to this argument, but I am a Student of Psychology currently studying at UC Berkeley. (upper division) If you want, I can provide you the emails of some experts in the field and you can ask them yourself what they think of the matter.
If you could provide me with the emails to those who deal in the field of cognitive psychology who are interested in (and have the time for) exchanges on such topics, I would be most grateful for that. That is, as shown in comparative studies, the only subfield of psychology that really qualifies as a science, let alone a form of medicine, which I hope you'll agree with.
As you've probably noted, I have a fair bit of interest in the field, but in Norway, you need to become a doctor in order to specialize in psychiatry, and that requires passing the surgery exams, which my tremors do not allow. The profs are looking into whether there's any loopholes to bypass that problem, but in the mean time, I'm stuck working together with others to get things done, or playing at TA.
If you're interested, that's one of the fields I like to PM about, by the way.
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The desire to cause massive and permanently debilitating harm to yourself in order to somehow please another is inherently not healthy.
The rub here being that you are setting aside the right to choose, as well as positing that physical harm is neccessarily the most important thing, and also positing that it must all flow from the desire to please. The first of these, I find very objectionable, and it is the same reason that I reject e.g. fascism: individual sovereignty. The second I find less so, except that it overlaps with the former; I am not the only one to be more concerned with damage to my mind than damage to my body. The third, I'll assume was simply a generalization or somesuch; certainly, most I've spoken to desire the thing itself.
To use a less loaded example case, my beloved grew up with a friend who had to care for her countless siblings. The reason for this is that they were in one of the accepted religious organizations that encourage a certain number of kids. The mother was sickly, and the elder daughter cared for the younger ones. The doctors were pretty clear that she was going to kill herself at some point before they reached the target number, yet they were both determined to get to that point. Were the father, mother and eldest daughter necessarily mentally incompetent, or even mentally ill? Was their desire to pursue this physically unhealthy goal overall something other than the most healthy life option for them? And to get right to one of the points I've made: is there a right for society to prevent them from choosing this lethal course of action?
People get to risk driving, diving, skydiving, cosmetic surgery, natural childbirth, alcohol use, becoming police officers, firefighters, soldiers and so forth. Granted, those are also cases where death is a risk and not a certainty, but surely risking death to the extent that a soldier (or someone undergoing unneccessary and complicated surgery) chooses to do involves a similar process that starts out with a desire, proceeds with a careful weighing of potential consequences insofar as one can comprehend them, and then culminates with a decision.
Up to the point where the deed is complete in cases such as that forwarded by the OP, the donor is free to step off that path. Even at the last stage, the donor can decide that she wants to call the emergency medical services instead of going through with it, most likely (if she's going to do it herself, she needs an appendage to do it with, absent some custom made automated rig, and that appendage can be used to handle a phone). Thus, it remains an increasing risk that is comprehensible.
Bear in mind that soldiers are allowed to decide to die, too. To make a last stand, or as some did in the USSR army by running into a minefield to clear a path for the rest of the troop. And a mother in labor (how's that for a clearheaded evaluation) can decide that the doctors should save the child, rather than her.
In each of those cases, we are dealing with one person making a sacrifice for someone else.
How is love more pathological, or less acceptable, or less moral as a reason?
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I challenge you to come up with a reasonable definition of mental health where this does not apply.
Possession of the ability to perceive one's circumstances and options with a reasonable degree of accuracy (i.e. within a few sigma of the average), to contemplate the possible consequences to a reasonable extent (same range from average) with no more influence from emotions than is usually the case in making important decisions (same range), and to arrive at a conclusion from this process.
No reliance on asserting culture-specific axioms, including values, mores and so forth.
That is not the common definition, true, but you will hopefully agree that both the field of psychology and the field of psychiatry has a tendency to make society the patient as much as the patients themselves, in that it isn't a matter of whether a patient has the mental equivalent of a broken bone, but a matter of whether that broken bone is socially unacceptable in some way.
I prefer to deal with the patient, in a culturally- and temporally-invariant manner.
The common paradigm is not universal in nature, and I find that problematic:
If it's not universal (i.e. objective and independent), what is it then?
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You seem to be making my position to be somehow uncommon or on the fringe, when in fact you are the one with the extreme minority view which currently lies totally unsubstantiated.
I did not mean to imply that your position is uncommon or fringe.
I simply stated that some of your claims don't hold unless you take the position that the mainstream view is authoritative. I further noted that by that position, a large portion of what otherwise comfortably fits under the umbrella of BDSM is subject to the same claim. And that doesn't quite account for your presence here, does it?
Current DSM-IV-TR and ICD-10 criterion are sure to undergo revisions over time.
My position is that objectivity is future-proof, and these criterion are not.
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You tell us how its healthy and sane, ill be happy to disagree.
First I will need you to clarify the scope as I asked earlier in this post.
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I would say that this has nothing to do with BDSM. The founding tenants of what we do are "Safe, Sane, and Conentual"
That is not correct, and if you research that, you will find that SSC was originally simply a slogan back when BDSM was considered the unsafe and non-consensual excesses and perversions of a mentally ill segment of the population. The slogan gradually then became a mantra, much as with political rhetoric about being "un-American" and so forth, and now it has become something some believe themselves constrained by.
You will also find that many subscribe to RACK instead, and that is also considered BDSM by most.
I would posit that it's hard to get more risk aware than knowing the outcome with certainty.
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I would say that none of these have been established, and that you will never argue safety.
The lack of sanity and consent has not been established, either.
But, no, I would obviously not argue safety, even as relative as that term is.
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BDSM is about power exchange
That's another gross simplification. I wish it were, as it would leave more potential play partners for me (this stuff isn't something I do, just a kink I don't find worth indulging in; D/s and M/s is my gig). However, it encompasses Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission (power exchange), Sadism and Masochism. You'll note that the latter two are the subject of some campaigns like ReviseF65 or whatever it's called.
I'll also note that, up here, 24/7 relationships are generally thought to be a fantasy only by the community.
That should give some impression of the universality of power exchange...
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about both partners becoming more, not one less at the expense to the other.
To which a number of us have asked how others get to determine for them what makes them more?
As have others, I would say that is just non-consensual dominance exerted over them.
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This is a complicated issue frequently addressed when talking about sexual behavior in the mentally ill. It is usually agreed that consent can be given, as long as no harm results, and that the party is aware of potential long term consequences. This story does not fall into this category. I'm surprised this isn't familiar to you already.
I'm quite familiar with what is usually agreed.
Go back some years, and it was usually agreed that black slaves who tried to run away were mentally ill for trying to do so. Less years, and it was usually agreed that gay men were mentally ill for not being heterosexual. Not too long ago, something like the ASD spectrum would get you subjected to the same sort of guardianship and second guessing of your ability to (in effect) be your own person and make your own choices.
The POV that I am forwarding may not seem like a civil rights issue to you right now.
Your grandchildren may see it differently; norms change.
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I gave you several, mine, the dictionary, the DSMIV. How about you give me one that allows such activity.
Didn't see those posts. In the limited view of harm you take, it is indisputably harmful.
In the view of harm I take, your view of harm may well be harmful. 
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I agree that all behavior is a spectrum.
Glad we could agree on something.
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One side is generally healthy, the other sick.
Generally, yes. However, if you review what I said about a more invariant definition of mental health, the behavioral axes are relegated to classification and selecting treatment options when the etiology is unknown, as the matter becomes one of whether a person is equipped with the faculties to make the choice.
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If you want to you can draw a line down the middle.
If you provide points of reference with a reasonably fine granular spacing along various behavioral axis, perhaps.
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Now, I would place this kind of mutilation so far into the destructive side, that the light generated from the dividing line will take several years to reach it.
Which again relies on interpreting destructive externally from the person (which pretty much presupposes mental illness), and also constrains it to discussing the physical health and bodily integrity of the patient. You may also note that certain forms of elective surgery associated with body modification, gender reassignment surgery, male circumcision, and so forth, are on par with what Amy gave as an example here in that regard.
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You don't need to speak in terms of black and white to know that something like that is yucky.
The number of shades you need depends on the shades of responses. You "know" that it is yucky (i.e. it's condemned by your culture), while some of your contemporaries and many of your ancestors "knew" that it wasn't. I'm pretty sure you "know" that it is yucky to crucify someone, but there's people doing it as an act of Imitatio Iesu without being deemed mentally ill for it, and the Romans had a habit of doing it to deserters.
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I mean by your logic we could all go rape and murder each other, while crying "Who are you to judge? Who are you to judge?"
By my logic, it is not a given absolute that it is wrong (I reject moral absolutism, and that's not exactly novel in the ethics field). But a society could not work if it did not take steps to prevent that. A society can, however, work with no difficulties at all from allowing people to participate in sexual or ritual practices that render damage unto their bodies. Thus the functional argument is missing, too.
Depending on what your curriculum covers (and what your hobbies are), you may be familiar with self-organizing systems. Ponder that humans, like all social animals, have such a system wired into them. That provides a natural response to jungle law: some cluster behind and support those with the ability to protect them from others, and in time, some less fit groups will die off. Which is just a sidebar, though, since the issue is one of whether memetics make an acceptable substitute for morality.
I'm not advocating nihilism. I'm simply advocating integrity. Carrying the processes and values that underlie modern thought and its evolution from its predecessors to a natural and coherent conclusion. And one of the values in question is that of freedom, which is being compromised in the interest of ideas that are contingent on the prevailing memes in a society in the absence of potential harm to others. Considering that black slavery was abolished on the grounds that their freedom outweighed the potential harm of the loss of that arrangement, one may infer a vector that converges somewhere. Along it, one finds the freedom to engage in such acts as these.
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Only if you play meaningless games with words, instead of addressing real life consequences.
I never play meaningless games with words. And depending on the directions your studies go, you may well find that words and their underlying representation (what you'd perhaps call our memetic bodies, i.e. our concept pool) are all that provide any differentiation between a feral child and modern man. If you want to disregard words and focus on real life without them, feral children is the model for that sort of real life.
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I'm not applying a single standard to anything. That behavior is unhealthy, by many, many sensible standards, most of which have been established by experts.
Standards have been forwarded here that do not deem it neccessarily unhealthy for everyone.
Are you fine with those standards being applied to certain people?
Or must one apply one from a specific set?
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I think that was plenty wordy, thanks.
Did it adequately answer your question, content-wise?
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So, basically you have never done this, and the doctor thinks you never will.
So, basically, I have never crossed a major line and the various pros don't think the circumstances where I might are sufficiently plausible to make a difference from the background risk associated with any human being unless something truly extraordinary were to occur. I have no moral problem with the act (my morals are of a very different culture from the one I was raised in), but it is not attractive enough to be worth jail time, and I also have commitments that morally trump whatever desire I might have where those commitments are contingent on staying out of jail, among other things.
In short, I'm not irrational, delusional, psychotic, amoral or sociopathic, and have above average moral fortitude.
But like has been the case for many sane people over the years, my chosen values are at odds with the society I reside in.
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I don't know how you think he would feel the same way if he thought you were going to act on your impulse.
As I noted, four psychiatrists, two professors, one double doctorate, and a spattering of neurologists, doctors and psychologists. Their responses would vary, but I am certain that all would have the professional integrity to act as demanded by the codes of their profession. I do know that more than one of them would regret it on some levels, but it is inevitable that there are limits to the extent of moral friction that can occur without that keeping those regrets confined to those levels.
Which is good. Most of them are good, solid people. I wouldn't like them to lose sleep over it.
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I really dont even get your motivation for being in this conversation at all.
The conversation interests me. The thread topic interests me. The example activity interests me. Speaking in favor of freedom, sovereignty and personal accountability interests me. Expanding people's horizons interests me. The human mind in general interests me (finally something we have in common?). Morals, ethics and philosophy interest me. Gray areas interest me. Speaking in favor of tolerating the fringes interests me.
Do I need to provide additional reasons for being in this conversation, or will those do?
Besides, it is one of the better threads I have seen recently.
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PS: I know it wasnt directed at me, but the Millgram studies have NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the subject at hand. Kindly stop name dropping, it doesnt make you look impressive.
They have nothing to do with the subject at hand, agreed.
They were a sidetrack that addressed some things that poster said. You're no doubt familiar with their outcome, and we can no doubt agree that human behavior is usually flexible beyond their moral bounds as they believe those to be. That poster took a simplistic position on a complex issue, and Milgram was mentioned to give him something to look into that illustrates a few things about human nature that he seems to deny (which, if memory serves, Milgram himself pretty much also did, until afterwards).
I hope that clarifies my reasons for mentioning him. He's not nearly obscure enough for name dropping.
P.S.: Sincere apologies for the mistaken assumption about your qualifications.
P.P.S.: I still maintain that the phrase that prompted the assumption was redundant.
P.P.P.S.: I frown at the length of the post, as it precludes doing quite as much review/editing as I'd like, and is not to your liking. I hope you'll not find it too cumbersome or disjointed, as there was simply a lot that I felt needed to be clarified.
Health,
al-Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: When does BDSM become unhealthy or destructive - 
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