Hi GRIM,

In the past, everybody who has propagated the notion that health is something more than just the absence of disease has turned out to be a quack. I am reasonably sure that those scholars who now claim that peace is something more than the absence of war, let me call them the ‘peace and harmony mafia’ for short, will similarly turn out to be the intellectual equivalent of quacks.
Gods! I love it! I am definitely going to have to read more of Van der Dennen's work!

Quote Originally Posted by GRIM View Post
Thanks marct. There is really a wealth of information by Van der Dennen that would make for some very interesting discussion for those who are interested here. His letter ( http://rint.rechten.rug.nl/rth/dennen/letter.htm ) is a fine example of the pariah status immediately granted those in this area of academia with interests in violence. While I respect the researchers he mentions, read quite a bit of their work at one point, and even contacted De Waal for advice concerning graduate work, I still am critical of the points where the more PC "side" of things seem to be talking past the issues.
The radical PC side has, to my mind, conflated morality with ethics (i.e. confused immediate wish state proscriptions with the "operational rules of reality"). On a purely personal level, I dislike violence. That doesn't mean that I don't know how to defend myself should the situation arise. Maybe it's just a reflex habit inculcated in me by the Baden-Powell mythos of the Boy Scouts, but I do like to "be prepared" .

I have long held a suspicion that the desire to find a "peaceful way of life" amongst many intellectuals is a result of a radical agnosticism that inverts Christian beliefs and emotionally "requires" them to "find" a "heaven on Earth": a requirement to find the "Peaceful Savage" to warp Rousseau's phrase.

Marc