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There is a question, however, that must be answered before this synthesis is attempted, namely, which are the social tendencies that are general human characteristics？ It is easy to be misled in this respect. Much of our social behavior. is automatic. Some may be instinctive, that is, organically determined, much more is based on conditioned responses, that is, determined by situations so persistently and early impressed upon us that we are no longer aware of the character of the behavior. and also ordinarily unaware of the existence or possibility of a different behavior. Thus, a critical examination of what is generally valid for all humanity and what is specifically valid for different cultural types comes to be a matter of great concern to students of society. This is one of the problems that induces us to lay particular stress upon the study of cultures that are historically as little as possible related to our own. Their study enables us to determine those tendencies that are common to all mankind and those belonging to specific human societies only.
Another vista opens if we ask ourselves whether the characteristics of human society are even more widely distributed and found also in the animal world. Relations of individuals or of groups of individuals may be looked at from three points of view; relations to the organic and inorganic outer world, relations among members of the same social group, and what, for lack of a better term, may be designated as subjectively conditioned relations. I mean by this term those attitudes that arise gradually by giving values and meanings to activities, as good or bad, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly, purposive or causally deter mined. Relations with the organic and inorganic outer world are established primarily by the obtaining of sustenance, protection against rigor of the climate, and geographical limitations of varied kinds. The relations of members among the same social group include the relation of sexes, habits of forming social groups and their forms. Obviously, these phases of human life are shared by animals. Their food requirements are biologically determined and adjusted to the geographical environment in which they live. Acquisition and storage of food are found among animals as well as in man. The need of protection against climate and enemies is also operative in animal society, and adjustment to these needs in the form. of nests or dens is common. No less are the relations between members of social groups present in animal life, for animal societies of varied structure occur. It appears, therefore, that a considerable field of social phenomena does not by any means belong to man alone but is shared by the animal world, and the questions must be asked: what traits are common to human and animal societies？
Our social behavior. is ______.
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Another principle commonly appealed to a freedom. That government is said to be best which governs least. The freedom, which is, maximized by a good government is not, however, the freedom, which is at issue in a science of behavior. Under a government, which controls through positive reinforcement the citizen feels free, though he is no less controlled. Freedom from government is freedom from aversive consequences. We choose a form. of government, which maximizes freedom for a very simple reason: aversive events are aversive. A government, which makes the least use of its power to punish, is most likely to reinforce our behavior. in supporting it.
Another principle currently in fashion is security. Security against aversive governmental control raises the same issue as freedom. So does security from wants, which means security from aversive events which are not specifically arranged by the governing agency-from hunger, cold, or hardship in general, particularly in illness or old age. A government increases security by arranging an environment in which many common aversive consequences do not occur, in which positive consequences are easily achieved, and in which extreme states of deprivation are avoided. Such a government naturally reinforces the behavior. of supporting it.
The "fight" of a ruler was an ancient device for explaining his power to role. "Human rights" such as justice, freedom and security are devices for explaining the counter-control exercised by the governed. A man has his rights in the sense that the governing agency is restricted in its power to control him. He asserts these rights along with other citizens when he resists control. "Human fights" are ways of representing certain effects of governing practices——effects which are in general positively reinforcing and which we therefore call good. To "justify" a government in such terms is simply an indirect way of pointing to the effect of the government in reinforcing the behavior. of the supporting group.
It is commonly believed that justice, freedom, security, and so on refer to certain more remote consequences in terms of which a form. of government may be evaluated. We shall return to this point in section Ⅵ, where we shall see that an additional principle is needed to explain why these principles are chosen as a basis for evaluation.
It is generally admitted that a government roles in order to see ______.
Why did Leanna shout at Glenn, "Because we are human beings ! "？
(Relying on) these convenient metaphors, politicians and military commanders do not see, or do not want to see, what these metaphors (hide): the reality of pain and death, the long-term health effects (for) (the injury), the psychological effect on ve
Finding something new to say about America's love affair with the death penalty is not easy. The subject not only amuses intense emotions, it has produced an ocean of comment from lawyers, judges, politicians, campaigners, statisticians, social scientists and quite a few demagogues. Nevertheless, Franklin Zimring, one of America's leading criminologists, has managed to rise above this cacophony to write a thought-provoking and genuinely original book, 'The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment', which deserves to become a classic.
Mr. Zimring tackles head-on the most puzzling question of all: why are Americans so determined to keep the death penalty when nearly all other developed democracies have given it up, and now view it as barbaric？ In the past two decades, attitudes in America and Europe have diverged so much that any dialogue on the subject has been replaced by blank incomprehension, and America's retention of capital punishment has become a significant diplomatic irritant. For European governments the abolition of capital punishment is a human-rights priority, and they have expended valuable political capital in trying to achieve it. American governments, Republican and Democratic, insist that the death penalty has nothing to do with human-rights, and deeply resent European efforts to make its abolition an international norm.
The difference between European and American attitudes, says Mr. Zimring, is not the breadth of support for the death penalty, but its depth. At the time of the death penalty's abolition in each developed country, a majority similar to America's, currently 65%, wanted to keep it, according to opinion polls. But when European political elites turned against it after the second world war, electorates acquiesced. Today most Europeans probably would not want it back.
The death penalty is a far more contentious issue in America, says Mr. Zimring, because the debate about it draws on a cherished American political tradition which does not exist anywhere else: vigilante justice. Many death-penalty supporters see executions not as acts of a distant or unreliable government, or even as a crime-control measure, but as an instrument of local, community justice, a form. of vengeance on behalf of the victims' relatives.
In a startling analysis, Mr. Zimring shows that most executions are performed in a few states in the south and south-west where, the lynching of African-Americans, other forms of mob violence and six-shooter justice were most endemic at the end of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. Opinion-poll support for the death penalty may be fairly uniform. across America, and 38 states have the death penalty on their books, but many states hardly ever execute anyone. The vast bulk of executions take place only where the values of the lynch mob have endured, he says.
Many people will find this linkage distasteful. But Mr. Zimring marshals a powerful ease for it, and sceptics will have to reply to his evidence, not just brash the argument aside. Americans, distrust of overweening government power is as deeply rooted a tradition as vigilante justice, Mr. Zimring concedes. However, when it comes to the death penalty, this distrust is manifest not in an abolitionist movement, as in other countries, but in the maze of legal-appeals procedures which mean that most murderers condemned to death spend years, even decades, on death mw. More death-row inmates are likely to die of old age than by execution. Neither supporters nor opponents of the death penalty are happy with this odd result.
What Americans really want is an error-free death penalty, but this can never be guaranteed, as the recent spate of death-row exonerations has shown. Moreover, Mr. Zimring argues that Americans' am bivalence about capital punishment can never be resolved. Sooner or later, one of these competing traditions——a regard for careful legal processes to seco
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