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From: jeff@rtech.ARPA (Jeff Lichtman)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion,net.flame
Subject: Re: A Question!
Message-ID: <206@rtech.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 4-Mar-85 04:32:01 EST
Article-I.D.: rtech.206
Posted: Mon Mar  4 04:32:01 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 6-Mar-85 05:54:02 EST
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Organization: Relational Technology, Berkeley CA
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> 
> A person who, not so long ago was the idol of millions poised a question
> that I would like someone to answer please.
> 
> "Why shouldn't human beings be as cruel as nature is?"
> 
>                               - Adolf Hitler
> 
> Ken Arndt

Nature is neither cruel nor kind.  It doesn't have the capacity.  Cruelty
implies intent, which implies conciousness.  Human beings have conciousness,
whereas nature as a whole doesn't.

One might interpret "cruel" in the above statement by Mr. Schickelgruber to
mean "giving pain to others" without any component of intent or conciousness.
In this case my answer is that the world is more pleasant if we aren't cruel;
since our conciousness gives us the ability to make choices, why not choose
to be happy instead of miserable?  The obvious answer to this is that cruelty
causes unhappiness in others, not in the one who is cruel.  My rebuttal is
that this ignores the pleasure and satisfaction one gets from loving one's
fellow human beings, and also that a cruel person is likely to suffer cruel
retaliation.
-- 
Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.)
aka Swazoo Koolak