Bog Bodies

[Rex Somnorum]

Rather than the "child sacrifices", I was referring to Lancel's analysis of Polybios and others, but I suppose those accounts were biased. Just like other cultures observed in our days...
Letting aside that imo you are following the very same Roman view that: my own morality defines humanity.

It's obviously true that morality is relative. But it's just as plausible to suggest that some universal values constrain human actions. Take, for instance, the innate value of human life. In times of extreme stress- famine, drought and war - these values can be eroded, but they persist mainly because no society can survive in their absence. They encourage the interaction and cooperation that are the hallmarks of an organised culture.

Abraham's story as you've put it, or Kierkegaard really, has validity for the modern values in western society...

Which is strange, considering the story of Abraham predates the development of modern western philosophy by several thousand years.

[Arjos]

Which is strange, considering the story of Abraham predates the development of modern western philosophy by several thousand years.

You've missed the point: the emphasis Kierkegaard saw on the human drammatic choice has a certain relevance for us...
For all we know in the past it was seen as human total devotion being rewarded...
Also other cultures can perceive it in a completely different manner...

At the same time, nothing precludes certain values to last for millennia...

Take, for instance, the innate value of human life. In times of extreme stress- famine, drought and war - these values can be eroded, but they persist mainly because no society can survive in their absence. They encourage the interaction and cooperation that are the hallmarks of an organised culture.

So this is innate and an hallmark of organised culture, because soon as said society is threatened it's immediately dropped? Thus having kept that moral in an abstract plain, has ensured that said society survives...
Yup, unbiased logic without any idealisation XD

Your very example shows how certain societies survived without it: interaction and cooperation do not equal the sanctity of life...

[Rex Somnorum]

You've missed the point: the emphasis Kierkegaard saw on the human dramatic choice has a certain relevance for us...
For all we know in the past it was seen as human total devotion being rewarded...
Also other cultures can perceive it in a completely different manner...

I understand that, but I still find it hard to believe that a community's natural (read "biological") affection - let alone a parent's - for children would permit child sacrifice to occur routinely when the survival of the collective was not at stake. In extraordinary circumstances, yes. On a regular basis, no.

[Arjos]

In extraordinary circumstances, yes. On a regular basis, no.

And when did I ever said that it occurred regurarly? lol
GSG was stating how it is impossible for humans to act without "humanity" and, as you apparently agree, there have been and are episodes in which that is not the case...
So, at least imo, there should be no problem in seeing certain sacrifices as "inhumane", but rather signs of social desperation...

If anything killing one own's children, could be seen as an even greater involvement/committment by the religious/political figure...

Cooperation implies a certain amount of respect - which is only a step removed from sanctity of life - for fellow human beings. In other words, empathy.

Not even close, cooperation implies a shared goal and the mutual understanding of either the impossibility to achieve it alone or the greater ease a coordinated action allows...
Obviously human beings then feel/develop particular emotions related to the acts performed, but it's not what motivate them:

Firefighters do not work in a team because they respect eachother, but because putting out a fire with a bucket is counterproductive.
Then through life experiences, helping eachother, especially the realisation (conscious or unconscious) of how camaraderie ensures a safer environment for each member, these "feeling beings" grow attached to one another...

But the idea that one respects another, therefore is drawn to perform alongside him is, imo, a fallacy...
No one goes to a workplace out of the love he feels for his co-workers, but the workplace exists (is established) because the worker cannot complete (in a given time) a task alone. Then if they became friends/lovers or simply respect one another the better. At the same time anyone can hate the other's guts and together professionally do the best work possible and achieve their common goal, as good (and possibly even better) as respectful co-workers...

[Rex Somnorum]

And when did I ever said that it occurred regurarly? lol

When did I ever say that I was contradicting you? I was merely elaborating a point.

Not even close, cooperation implies a shared goal and the mutual understanding of either the impossibility to achieve it alone or the greater ease a coordinated action allows...
Obviously human beings then feel/develop particular emotions related to the acts performed, but it's not what motivate them:

Firefighters do not work in a team because they respect eachother, but because putting out a fire with a bucket is counterproductive.
Then through life experiences, helping eachother, especially the realisation of how camaraderie ensures a safer environment for each member, these feeling beings grow attached to one another...

But the idea that one respects another, therefore is drawn to perform alongside him is, imo, a fallacy...
No one goes to a workplace out of the love he feels for his co-workers, but the workplace exists (is established) because the worker cannot do the task alone. Then if they became friends/lovers or simply respect one another the better. At the same time anyone can hate the other's guts and together professionally do the best work possible and achieve their common goal, as good (and possibly even better) as respectful co-workers...

The primary cause of disagreement here is our clearly differing definitions of "respect." Apparently for you, "respect" means "love" or admiration. For me, it means due consideration - the recognition that another human being has some power or capability that may harm or help us; hence it must be accommodated. Personally, I believe that abstract notions of love are rationalisations of practical relationships, however, it's vital never to underestimate the moral factor in decision-making.

[Arjos]

For me, it means due consideration - the recognition that another human being has some power or capability that may harm or help us; hence it must be accommodated.

Personally I think that belongs to the classification between a "me", "them" and "us" and I do not see it operating during every single action/choice. Followed by the +/- "can do" this or that...
It's all "superstructure" of the reason applied in space and time...

As for moral factors in decision-making, imo, morality isn't a primary feature in play, but an "acquired" feature...
Naturally or instinctively the directive seems to be "what helps/favours me", while humans developed ideals that apply to others...

For example, there's also to consider the (usually unconscious) egocentrism or notion of one's superiority, or even nihilism, in play with altruism: "I did that, because I am an hero", "I did that, because I am the one who can", "I did that, because I thought I would've died"...
Other choices like "doing the right thing" probably hold a deeper level of "if I do this, I will be judged this or that way". So again not really a very moral decision...

Morality is a cerebrally developed trait, with no absolute whatsoever, whose limits are usually socially determined...
Right now I can't think of a morally determined action for morality's sake, but if you can come up with an example I'd love to discuss it :)

[Rex Somnorum]

Right now I can't think of a morally determined action for morality's sake, but if you can come up with an example I'd love to discuss it :)

Save the pandas. Consider for a moment the vast sums of money and resources expended to save a species that in no way benefits the survival and perpetuation of human beings - individual or corporate. In fact, destroying the habitat of pandas would undoubtedly yield material dividends. It may just be an anomaly, but it's still seems a moral decision.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

And when did I ever said that it occurred regurarly? lol
GSG was stating how it is impossible for humans to act without "humanity" and, as you apparently agree, there have been and are episodes in which that is not the case...
So, at least imo, there should be no problem in seeing certain sacrifices as "inhumane", but rather signs of social desperation...

I didn't state anything of the kind. The proposition 'they practice human sacrifice' is clearly distinct from 'under stress they, and any society, can commit acts we would consider inhuman'. You mentioned young children being exposed because of deformities yet...one of the examples within this discussion was of an older person who had been cared for who had deformities - in other words there was a value placed upon that life that was distinct from a society who would have exposed it. That is morality - a set of shared conceptual values. In that case something must have changed for that value to have become altered.

But with that last sentence I have made an error. That last sentence presumes a community wide alteration of value - you should recognise given your stance on morality. But, given all you have said regarding morality how does the sentence " but for its survival it seems that certain members are/were willing to sacrifice themselves..." make any sense?

When we have confirmed incidents of sacrifices there is something to be taken into account. It is outsiders who are sacrificed. The Romans sacrifice a Greek and a Gaulish couple when under the stress of Hannibal's attack on Italy. Caesar's ambassadors were due to be sacrificed by Ariovistus' men.

I don't understand how you can suggest that a community could operate without a set of shared values, and a community is not a work place. As work places go, though, it is one of the first impetuses of training within armed forces throughout the world and throughout history to form brotherly bonds within the ranks.

You say that morality is about us and them mentalities, and I agree; so there must be some value that makes a member of the community 'us' instead of 'them' that is bought into by the members of the community (and we see these values codifoed into law in later times, delineating the rights of free and slaves, for example). Would there be enmities and resentments within these communities? Almost certainly, communities are places of competition as well (vying for status) and in times of stress that competition might break out into violence, or status and power may fall into the hands of men whose solution to that stress involves playing out their animosities and resentments.

The story of Abraham is significant because it informs us of a strong, clear social taboo within the community it derived from about killing one's children. God even stops his hand (a sign that their god would not have it done), and it is a clear moral dilemma for Abraham. This predates our apparently modern sense of morality. The story of Joshua - there Joshua orders his men to go back and kill the women and children, which they are unhappy about. Again, a clear signal that such was regarded as aberrant, unnatural behaviour within the community that story derives from.

I have had the misfortune to watch a video of a 'witch-burning' in Africa. The victims are bound, beaten, stabbed, slashed and then burnt in a frenzied attack by five men while the village watches on. Did the whole village partake in this 'sacrifice', one cannot tell if they are in agreement or not (fearful of involving themselves). There is nothing 'communally ritual' about this killing.

My concern with the idea of ritual sacrifice as an aspect of 'Germanic' or 'Celtic' societies is that notion of shared ritual killing as a normalised aspect of those communities (in other words, the idea of the community as a whole, unified participant in the ritual, ordered killing of individuals from within their own community) which is what the Roman and Greek writers are implying - for politicized propaganda purposes, clearly speaking to a taboo within their own communities. As opposed to what such a 'sacrifice' would more likely represent - a stress and fracturing of a community, perhaps involving outsiders

As I said earlier, there is a distinction between the notion 'they perform human sacrifice' (suggesting a normalised, ordered ritual in which the community as a whole participates) and 'under stress any community may react in ways we might consider inhuman'. I have a feeling that when we talk of bog bodies being sacrificial offerings it is the former that is being suggested.

[Arjos]

I have a feeling that when we talk of bog bodies being sacrificial offerings it is the former that is being suggested.

I understand now thanks ;)

Like my previous example (the Karthadastim) what comes out from the very ancient accounts, and I do not know whether the writer had it in mind or not, it was a choice within the family nucleus and the killing happened for the communal good. To which the "killers" felt an obbligation to. And it would fall in what we've determined as "under stress"...

As for the bog bodies, it is possible that they were ritual (from what I gather, there's a lot of religious symbolism in play) and the victims could've been at least foreign in origin (like you mentioned often slaves/captured people were sacrificed)...
If they were "acts of desperation" it would mean a rather formal and institutionalised way of expressing desperation imo: getting all the way to a bog, following a precise killing procedure, dressing up and apparently diet prior to the act. That's too contrite imo, the awful example you just mentioned seems to speak for an acute fear by those men, but I don't see much "preparation" in it, rather frenzy...

Of course we cannot exclude that such was the case with bog bodies as well, but from the scant informations we have (spanning down to the Viking Age) in the Kelto-Germanic sacrifices there was a lot of dancing, singing and copulating, which are rather communal and shared in character. Of all the explainations, a religious ritual seems to be the likeliest answer...

[Rex Somnorum]

So this is innate and an hallmark of organised culture, because soon as said society is threatened it's immediately dropped? Thus having kept that moral in an abstract plain, has ensured that said society survives...
Yup, unbiased logic without any idealisation XD

Your very example shows how certain societies survived without it: interaction and cooperation do not equal the sanctity of life...

Cooperation implies a certain amount of respect - which is only a step removed from sanctity of life - for fellow human beings. In other words, empathy.