Had to get up last night and before going back to bed I turned on the TV to see what was on. The anime Cowboy Bebop was playing and running the episode titled Pierrot le Fou which is about an insane assassin who targets one of the main characters of the anime. Near the end one of the characters makes the statement that the assassin's mind has been regressing to the point that he is a child and that "Nothing Is More Cruel Than A Child."

Philosophically speaking do you agree with that statement?



As I see it a child will always continue playing a game they find fun because they will call it their "Favorite Game". However once that child gets hurt it is no longer their favorite game and they want to never play it again because they got hurt.

If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that empathy is a learned trait.

kids are ferocious little bastards.

Joseph Mengele was crueler than a child, ergo at least one thing is crueler a child.

EDIT: Also, screw you Godwin's Law.

Is there on on Soviet Russia? If not, Lavrentiy Beria.

:lol: this. some are eerily smart, too...

I vote maybe.

And WTF is "cowboy bebop"? sounds like the strangest show I've ever heard of....

Children are products of their environment. I don't believe in the ideology in being 'born' evil.

I will say society as a whole (imho) is losing it's foundation in common courtesy, with a greater shift in self preservation.

Some place partial blame on the anonymity of the Internet. A blanket statement to be sure, but one I tend to agree with.

No. I don't think that they have the life experience to sympathize with most pains, but I consider cruelty to include a sympathy (just no empathy, with enjoyment).

Technically, the only thing provable there is that he had more resources than a child. I have roughly zero doubt that if you had a button that would magically kill as many people in the same way, and you did your best to completely explain to a child exactly what would happen, there are plenty who would immediately hit the button if in exchange they got a toy they wanted.

Children are closer to the animals that we all are. They're more likely to act as they want to and not how society wants them to. It's not about being cruel, intentional or not. To them, it's just being.

But is that cruel? They're not doing it to cause pain, or suffering, they just don't understand, and can't empathise with, their own actions.

No. The human race is cruel in general. Of course, not everyone is, but it's not just children who have "evil" tendencies. At above, some children can understand and can empathize. But truly, yes, children are very susceptible - if they in fact don't understand, they can do terrible things, but that doesn't make them evil. The cruel figure is whomever manipulates them.

Kids speak their minds and don't think about political correctness or anything, so potentially yes, they can be very hurtful because you know that whatever they're saying is the truth. Sometimes the truth hurts.

Cruelty is generally just causing pain and suffering knowingly, and without caring. You don't have to enjoy it, or do it JUST to cause pain. Cartoonish villainy in which people are evil just for the sake of evil tends not to exist in real life; even Mengele was doing what he did to further his own research, not so he could dim the lights and laugh maniacally. If the child has been fully explained to what the button will do, I would say it's cruel to press it.

Part of it is just the way people develop; when you're born you don't understand that other people are "people", like you. It's sort of like an animal seeing its reflection, and whether it understands what it is. The concept that other people suffer and matter is gradually learned and understood, but done during and after a time as infants when every need is attended and you get almost anything you want just because you yell for it. Children enter a stage where they generally understand what they want, and what other people are, but still have a blurred grasp of empathy. They will hurt others for their simple whims and wants, know that they're hurting them, and not care, because it's what THEY want. Whether it counts as cruelty on the child's part is debatable, but I consider it more important what the results are.

No, there are plenty of things more cruel than a child.

They may not be intentionally cruel, but they are very self-centered and haven't learned to care about the effect on others.

An interesting note, van Helsing called Dracula a child in the Bram Stoker novel. He said that his enemy had a child-like mind, and when he was done with something he threw it away and ran back home like a child, and that was how they could figure out his next move and also save Minna Harker.

Dracula certainly wasn't an actual child, being hundreds of years old, but he had certain traits attributed to children. Whether or not this was one of the causes of his cruelty I don't know.

Another example is Lenny in Of Mice And Men. Lenny had the literal brain of a child, and unintentionally killed various small animals and even a woman. He didn't have the innate monster-like qualities of Dracula, but still had the childlike cruelty.

So who was more cruel? I would say Dracula was more cruel, because it was the childlike attributes that served as an amplification of his evil. He was "the devil incarnate", but it was magnified by the idea that he also thought like an irrational, selfish child instead of a nobleman, and in the end when Dracula was killed you felt relief that the terror was over.

Lenny killed living things, but he did so through pure ignorance, and you felt bad for him when he had to be shot in the end. His actions lacked what I would call "cruelty", because they were almost unconscious. There was nothing evil to be magnified by his childlike brain, and so all of the events that happened were seen more as an unfortunate accident than a cruel action.

As an aside: Maybe children, and child qualities, act as magnifications for other things as well. The love and adoration of a child, the insight of a child, and the cruelty of a child...it's like saying it's of a child makes it more than it's natural state.

Children are not, in my opinion, cruel out of general malevolence in the first few years of life - but once you get to the age of 5+, then they certainly can be malevolent.

Stop whatever it is you are doing and go buy the DVDs. Now.

The plaintiff would like to draw attention to http://img.timeinc.net/time/100books/100_books/lord_flies.jpg

We are not born empty, but we are not born with a set pattern of being evil or good either. The only part where a child can be more cruel as a grown up is that he/she lacks judgement and the knowledge of consequences. An advlt can, however, use that knowledge for either even more evil or for good. Thus, the statement "Nothing is more cruel than a child" is false, because of the nothing part.

Maybe that is what makes them so innocent.

Children are like Gage Creed from Pet Sematary.

You know, that'd be a pretty interesting social experiment (and one that I'm certain has been done)


... of course with the button not actually doing anything, just to see how many kids press it.

I strongly disagree. Sure, children are incredibly cruel, they tend to gang up and tease other children but first of all they're too young to realise that something like that can cause serious mental problems for the kid being teased and second I think that what grown-ups can do can be much much worse, in wars and otherwise. And if you say that in recent Middle Eastern wars it is not uncommon to see children carrying guns and shooting, that just proves my point because it was grown-ups who did that, not children.

Of course, that, and probably the majority of this thread, would need a better definition of "child". An eight year old might be selfish and reckless, but is also old enough to understand it's wrong and choose not to. A two year old will beat you to death with the button for not giving them the toy immediately.