Happy birthday Elcap. He's a top bloke.
While there are unconcious attributions made to people in regards to their traits, more often than not, people will use ad hominem arguments, whether for good or bad, to get their point across or to win an argument. As a psychology student, this fundamental attribution error (FAE) (albeit a slightly different concept from ad hominem) has really caught my eye.
Next time you're talking to your friends, see how many times you get cheered up by them or pissed off by them and then praise or vent them. If your friend (A) wins a prize to go to Fiji for five nights and can take one person, and he takes your other friend (B), who you thought was a lesser friend than you to A, you will no doubt get angry at A and possibly B just for 'being bad people'. It's an innate human thing to do. I call lots of people bad people to give a reason, though I'm aware of my FAE, hell, I use it on myself just to get out of arguments with people of lesser intellect who wont understand the situation (eg "I punched her in the eye because I'm a bad person") behind it. She may have wanted to get some injury time off work, or make use of her private health benefits, but no, people will see the man behind the action, and it's best not to argue with such people.
But onto the case of these errors in the big bad world. Racism is probably the lowest form of ad hominem (and being the bad person I am, I love using racism). Recently, you may have followed the news and heard that Andrew Symonds is blowing up about being called a monkey by the Indian spectators. As a result, there have been many "no no, we can't have this, cricket is a gentlemans game" and "Andy Symonds is an easy victim". Well tell the fucken monkey to go back to the Windies where he was born then. The point is, it really has nothing to do with Andy Symonds. An adopted Carib living in outback Queensland will get his fair share of racism, and adoption jokes (why doesnt the crowd use those?). He has played international cricket for nearly a decade. He has copped much worse than being called a monkey. Yet the media and the audience is only responding to this. Symonds being called a monkey is exactly the same as Andre Nel being called a "Kaffir lover". But because the media are unaware of other nations being able to provide racial taunts, voila, stop the game! More so, the situation has only become big because of the initial taunts made by Indian bowler Sreesanth, and while Andy Symonds probably dishes A+ material out of audioshot to the microphones, he has got the monkey situation captured on video to work in his favour.
End point being, because an Australian is the victim in something not normally attributed to Australians (being victims of crowd racism), it's ad hominem in two ways, Andrew Symonds is a top bloke who deserves to play the game, and Indian spectators are shit people.
Now let's look at another case. Nazis. Yes, they were responsible for many many deaths, and in no way do I personally condone that. But studies have shown that obedience is a uncontrollable human response and lots of the SS guys who committed the killings were under orders. Of course, most people would say thats 'weak', and that 'clearly killing people is enough to make you turn away'. Surely, but if you were put in the situation with the additional threat that if you did not carry out that task you and your family would be thrown in for gassing, you would probably be like the SS folk. "But no Bookie, I would sacrifice myself for the greater good". What greater good? There were 2 million SS officers. One would sacrifice themself, and another would just take his place and be given the same orders. And 2 million SS officers would not sacrifice themselves, I assure you that much because then there would be no greater good. You can't blame 92% of the Nazis (the proportion on avergae of the human population that will obey orders from authority). The other 8%, yeah maybe they were bad folks. That may be due to physiological imbalances which caused them to be psychopaths, but there were probably reasons nonetheless that external observers wish to disregard when taking the big picture into account.
You can blame it on eugenics of course, because eugenics is a shit idea amirite? Yes, Hitler condoned it, so it's an absolutely shit idea. Sure, Hitler did do a bad thing in trying to force negative eugenics by killing the 'inferior' types - but his actions have led most of the world to believe that eugenics would result in genocide etc. This has also led to the concept of positive eugenics to be ignored. Look at eachand every business in the world, and they will inform you that their goal is to "better the lives of others". Better the lives? Does this mean you wish everything to be better, i.e. make a fitter group of peoples? Darwin's theories state that we are ever evolving, and that those who can withstand and adapt to the changing environment will survive longer. Our environment has in it science labs which can alter chromosomes to reduce the chance of defects. Stem cell research can do wonders, but due to conservative leaders (lulz ad hominem), we are stuck in a world which will remain the same.
Positive eugenics can lead to a super race. While people may think the concept a tad elitist, a super species of humans is much more likely to survive over a long term whereas an average race such as at the moment, will not. While those with higher intellects do reproduce, and good looking people reproduce more often than dumb-smart and ugly-hot couples (only because of cirumstances eg models work together, university educated work together), something is being done. However, there is nothing being set by authorities. And fair enough, love and reproduction should be a natural process unhampered by intervention. But were there to be segregation between better and not so better people, then the superspecies would overtake the homo sapien race anyway, and again everyone would be equal. But the new species would be something above human - EVOLUTION IN MOTION, YO. Harder better faster stronger.
On a closing note, I just wish more people would start to not generalise and start looking at situations beyond face value. This would lead to less emotional strife, as well as a more positive appreciation of friends. Everyone does good and bad things, but there are usually good motivations behind it.
Many young women complain, like the rest of the civilised human population, about Adolf Hitler being a bad person and that he should be poked to death by a stick (though he did worse to himself, I'm quite sure). However, many young women also want a VW Beetle. Pity they don't ever associate that with it's inventor.
