If your life is sh*t, do you have less regard for other peoples' lives?

experiMental

This question has been troubling me for a while. If a person is experiencing prolonged difficulty and has no means or ideas of solving his problems, does this make him more hostile towards other people, and more mistrustful as well?

nyarlothothep

It depends on what difficulties and the circumstances though if your talking about being born in somewhere like Johannesburg or a broken family then yes probably.

Its an interesting conundrum, if you have bad experiences you can easily see the world (of people and the laws of existence) as being bad. Imo its down to what you make of it, though sometimes the circumstances can be so bad its difficult to see whether certain people ever had a choice to begin with, the unfairness of life essentially, balanced out by gradations of luck, which are all unfair relative to each other but offset by their inherent positive values.

This kind of veers into is the world a good or bad place. I'd say if one has the means not to become mistrustful and resentful, the constant attempt at not allowing oneself to become misanthropic is success enough. As a result negative experiences, while they may exert an influence, no longer control the individual though their attempts to fashion a more positive existence. I don't really see misanthropy as being a philosophically justified position in this respect, although the sum of human history is certainly compelling toward that end, but transcendence through resistance of cycles of hatred is not only rewarded by nature, its also more logically sound.

Offalycool

This is a question for psychologists. Psychology may account for a behaviour pattern by analysing data. For Psychologists there is much assumption inherent in understanding freedom and responsibility. Regardless of this, it is not really important for psychology to have a holistic understanding of why we behave the way we do (what is the end result?), only to document causes (What circumstances preceded the event).

Behaviourism is really only dealt with in a theoretical sense by philosophers e.g. is a person determined or free? To assume a person behaves in a certain way under certain circumstances tends to presuppose determinism. From a philosophical view point the question is more fundamental. Are we affected by circumstance to the point of having no choice? Are we free to make choices regardless of circumstance?

Offalycool

P.S. IMO If I were you, I would hold him responsible. What kind of a world would we live in if we are not responsible for outcomes? What kind of life can an irresponsible person live? We are always free to fulfil our promises to some extent, if not as intended, then to the next best end. Likewise, we are always free to forgive others, thereby freeing others from determined outcomes. Give him hell for his own good.

Joycey

nyarlothothep wrote: »

I don't really see misanthropy as being a philosophically justified position in this respect, although the sum of human history is certainly compelling toward that end, but transcendence through resistance of cycles of hatred is not only rewarded by nature, its also more logically sound.

A perspective on life or mode of living can only be "logically sound" to the extent that it is the result of some illogical or irrational goal which is then reached rationally. To say that misanthropy (or anthropy if its a word) is illogical is a misunderstanding of logic as an end as opposed to a means.

As regards the question of the thread, someone's life being **** requires some value judgement to be made by someone as to the ****ness of the individual's life relative to someone else who's life isn't **** or is less so. You then need to quantify what "regard for someone's life" is and work out whether the person's interactions in the world are such that they could be described in this way.

It seems to me that if you intuitively want to answer yes to the question, as I felt I did, then what you really want to say is something like: if a person has had a **** life, then future actions taken by that person should not be judged as harshly by society because some altering of choice and perspective has taken place in the individual due to circumstances (presumably) outside of their control. But if you accept that such a mitigation of responsibility is possible, and should become an institutionalised practise in the legislation surrounding societal misdeeds, then you are left with two problems:
1. what do you do with the individual if not punish them?
2. at what point does the cutoff point come, where either personal responsibility asserts itself over structural influence, or the horrific nature of the act outweighs the fact that responsibility didnt exist (im thinking of this thread )

Joe1919

experiMental wrote: »

This question has been troubling me for a while. If a person is experiencing prolonged difficulty and has no means or ideas of solving his problems, does this make him more hostile towards other people, and more mistrustful as well?

My initial response is to agree with you in that despair can eat away at the spirit and can change the way we view the world.

However, there is always 'Hope' in some shape or form. You never know what's around the bend or can happen in the future. The only certainty in life is change.
I love the quote from Forrest Gump, 'Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.'

It's also the case that there are times when life may be going bad and we have no freedom to change the situation. However, no matter how bad life gets, we always have the 'last of the human freedom... to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.....to choose one's own way.'
(Viktor Frankl ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man's_Search_for_Meaning

nyarlothothep

Joycey wrote: »

A perspective on life or mode of living can only be "logically sound" to the extent that it is the result of some illogical or irrational goal which is then reached rationally. To say that misanthropy (or anthropy if its a word) is illogical is a misunderstanding of logic as an end as opposed to a means.

As regards the question of the thread, someone's life being **** requires some value judgement to be made by someone as to the ****ness of the individual's life relative to someone else who's life isn't **** or is less so. You then need to quantify what "regard for someone's life" is and work out whether the person's interactions in the world are such that they could be described in this way.

It seems to me that if you intuitively want to answer yes to the question, as I felt I did, then what you really want to say is something like: if a person has had a **** life, then future actions taken by that person should not be judged as harshly by society because some altering of choice and perspective has taken place in the individual due to circumstances (presumably) outside of their control. But if you accept that such a mitigation of responsibility is possible, and should become an institutionalised practise in the legislation surrounding societal misdeeds, then you are left with two problems:
1. what do you do with the individual if not punish them?
2. at what point does the cutoff point come, where either personal responsibility asserts itself over structural influence, or the horrific nature of the act outweighs the fact that responsibility didnt exist (im thinking of this thread )

I bow to your superior logic.

I guess I'm going on the hunch that its encoded into the universe that the more positively sentients behave, like humans, the more rewards we get long term, greater stability, improved chances of survival, increased overall happiness etc, its more a belief than anything else and the implicit idea that it could be a kind of axiom in the respect that more civil we act the more rewards we get, which is predicated on the idea that a law exists in the first place to facilitate this behaviour and which is directed towards some purpose for humanity to elevate itself. But this would basically go back to what you said so I can't say my position or any other has any inherent logic.