[Avodah] torture in halacha???

[Zev Sero]

On 15/05/2012 7:45 PM, hankman wrote:
>
> CM responds:
> Not obvious to me. If the purpose is fulfilling my satisfaction, need or desire (which must be why I am doing this) then why is that not purposeful - and that will always be the case? That was the point of that list of cases in the previous post. what is the difference between my DESIRE for food, money, joy in a horn trophy on my wall,  warped psychological joy or need to see pain. The purpose will always be my satisfaction from the pain not the pain itself.

With that attitude how could there ever be a davar hamiskaven on Shabbos?
I cooked soup?  My purpose wasn't that the soup should be cooked, it was
that I should enjoy the sensation and satisfaction of eating hot soup!
I sowed a seed?  My purpose wasn't that the seed should grow, but that
I shouldn't be hungry next year!  Clearly your definition of "purpose" is
defective.  If I cook soup my immediate purpose is to have soup.  If I sow
a seed my immediate purpose is that it should grow.  And if I cut the head
off a bird because I want to eat the bird, for which it must be dead, then
my immediate purpose is the bird's death.  But if I cut the head off because
I need the head itself, and it's of utter indifference to me whether the
bird lives or dies, then its death is not my purpose at all, and it's davar
she'eno miskaven, except that it's psik reisha so it counts as miskaven.

-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
zev at sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
		 are expanding through human ingenuity."
		                            - Julian Simon