A normal kid would catch it once or twice, and then target some other fish, or move on to proper fishing. They would not ‘harass’ the same fish constantly, nor parade it about for attention while alive, before returning it to the pond to torment again. Nor is it necessarily the case that these campers were catching fish in general—like at my Boy Scout camp, it was expected that you wouldn’t catch many fish (if any), and if you managed to catch one worth cooking & eating or worth entering in the camp-wide contest, it would be a topic of conversation. And you definitely wouldn’t release it just to catch it again—you’d either kill it quickly and cleanly, or you’d make a little water pen in the rocks to keep it alive in reasonably non-cruel conditions until you dealt with it. (The lake was stocked, but it didn’t go very far.) The point was more to enjoy the process and unwind in front of the lake for those who didn’t want to rush out & about hiking or merit-badge-maxxing.
Further, you’re ignoring the context. When two people do the same thing, it’s never the same thing. The import of an action is not what it resembles on the surface, but what it reveals about the person. When an angry kitten tries to nom you, it is adorable and amusing and is extremely unlikely to succeed at hurting you; but it reminds you that adult cats can and do send people (like my grandmother) to the emergency room; and it further reminds you of what happened to Siegfried & Roy… (This sort of insistence on the most superficial interpretation possible of an action, and judging every action in isolation without any consideration of patterns of behavior or what it implies about the future, is a classic legalistic trick used to cover one’s tracks.)
This “patterns of behavior,” “what the action reveals about the person” smacks of Richelieu’s “six lines” quote: what you say you’re condemning him for is an excuse, not a reason.
Hastings had a lot of more instances of his behavior to judge him then the isolated incident. The incident is not the reason but the observed behavior in total. This incident is just an example.
A normal kid would catch it once or twice, and then target some other fish, or move on to proper fishing. They would not ‘harass’ the same fish constantly, nor parade it about for attention while alive, before returning it to the pond to torment again. Nor is it necessarily the case that these campers were catching fish in general—like at my Boy Scout camp, it was expected that you wouldn’t catch many fish (if any), and if you managed to catch one worth cooking & eating or worth entering in the camp-wide contest, it would be a topic of conversation. And you definitely wouldn’t release it just to catch it again—you’d either kill it quickly and cleanly, or you’d make a little water pen in the rocks to keep it alive in reasonably non-cruel conditions until you dealt with it. (The lake was stocked, but it didn’t go very far.) The point was more to enjoy the process and unwind in front of the lake for those who didn’t want to rush out & about hiking or merit-badge-maxxing.
Further, you’re ignoring the context. When two people do the same thing, it’s never the same thing. The import of an action is not what it resembles on the surface, but what it reveals about the person. When an angry kitten tries to nom you, it is adorable and amusing and is extremely unlikely to succeed at hurting you; but it reminds you that adult cats can and do send people (like my grandmother) to the emergency room; and it further reminds you of what happened to Siegfried & Roy… (This sort of insistence on the most superficial interpretation possible of an action, and judging every action in isolation without any consideration of patterns of behavior or what it implies about the future, is a classic legalistic trick used to cover one’s tracks.)
This “patterns of behavior,” “what the action reveals about the person” smacks of Richelieu’s “six lines” quote: what you say you’re condemning him for is an excuse, not a reason.
Hastings had a lot of more instances of his behavior to judge him then the isolated incident. The incident is not the reason but the observed behavior in total. This incident is just an example.