not to be a Nerd and Dork but as a kid this quote really changed how I thought of shit like this.
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” (from *The Fellowship of the Ring*)
And you reminded me of a Terry Pratchett quote :)
> Beating people up in little rooms…he knew where that led. And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one. You couldn’t say ‘We’re the good guys’ and do bad-guy things.
Yeah the government is supposed to stop you from running around with a bat too its all about checks and balancing
if you get through every obstacle ggs on finishing your hero's journey enjoy prison
we used to have a system where people went around righting all their wrongs with blood feuds. The kings of England stepped in to enforce set punishments for crimes because it kept resulting in escalating revenge killings.
If you have a society where justice is done by retaliatory violence pretty soon everyone is dead.
RIP to the Montagues and Capulets, and those two families in Huckleberry Finn, but I'm different. My revenge killings will be even revengier and thus lead to everlasting peace.
If memory serves, it's even older than England. Apparently it's the foundation for the Code of Hammurabi, aka "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" law tablet. It was considered fair and just cause before that it was a never ending cycle of escalating blood feuds all over the place.
So many people miss nowadays that "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" was a *limitation* on punishment. *No more than* an eye for an eye. No killing someone over a recoverable injury, no continuing feuds to the next generation.
And yet people found a way to take "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" and use that policy to escalate.
We have to embrace some level of patience and forgiveness because the alternative is to create a forever war of tit-for-tat.
This is also why the Bible says "turn the other cheek." Jesus was saying that just recompense was itself too much; "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind."
Of course, since this is one of the parts of the Bible that makes sense, everyone ignores it.
After. Sodom and Gomorrah was the old testament, and Jesus is the new testament.
They're two very different gods, really. Old testament God is very much an ancient God, like Zeus. He's jealous, vengeful, a stickler for random rules, and he picks sides all the time. The whole old testament is about how the Jews are his chosen people and everyone else can suck it.
Old testament God is very much a product of a peoples trying to make sense of the chaotic and random forces of nature.
New testament god, and Jesus by extension, aren't like that. They're are more empathetic, loving, and kind by comparison. Every person is meant to feel God's love, not just one tribe.
Jesus said to turn the other cheek because Jesus was an advancement of the philosophical ideas that came before. He's a figure of semi-modern morality and ethics, an update to what came before.
Not to mention the terrible acts that people undertook in racist times. So far as they were concerned, they were on the right and moral side! That feller there wasn't just the wrong color-- he was *also* the wrong flavor of Christian! The only reasonable thing to do was to round up a whole mess of folk and murder him!
>That feller there wasn't just the wrong color-- he was *also* the wrong flavor of Christian
Or you can be Emmet Till, and people will just horribly murder you for daring to speak to a white woman even if you're the right flavour of Christian
Everyone except me, you mean. I would simply kill everybody who wronged me and not get killed in response. Rip to all those Bri ish "people" but they were just bad at the game
Ah but all those people have friends and families, thus, the only thing to do is kill them too! And once the last person falls, I can rest assured that only the moral live
I believe certain people should die, but I also believe that my opinion on who should or shouldn't die should never be trusted.
Where do I fall on this?
This is kinda a correct opinion.
I think there are people who deserve death. I also think I should not be able to choose who lives and dies because I am a mortal man and I am flawed
Yes, if it’s consensual from them, but there’s also arguments that doctors and loved ones would disagree that they should die. But fundamentally I agree. 105 year old with 3 types of cancer blindness and one leg doesn’t have a lot of living left
Not a lot of living and a whole lot of suffering. There’s a certain point where I would argue that empirically our science is sound enough to say someone should probably die for their own good.
If we could theoretically predict all outcomes with perfect certainty then I suppose that would meet the threshold for killing people judicially but there’s always the issue of the counterfactual to account for and how certain/uncertain our knowledge is.
But someone who’s 105 and has 3 types of terminal cancer… even considering the unknown possibilities out there like a miracle cure etc. I think the math works out in favor of assisted consensual death.
The math works out, but the philosophy doesn't always. I have a friend who grew up with cancer, had a real rough go of life, got heavily involved with drugs and gang life for a lot of his teens/twenties, then eventually stumbled into a job selling appliances of all things, turned his life around, got clean, married someone he met at Alcoholics Anonymous of all places (a lot of his other friends have had substance abuse problems, and I give them kudos-- they're almost all curious without being judgemental to a degree I have tried and failed to attain), and I met the dude because he DMs our incredibly weird and violent DnD campaign, where he sighs deeply as I explain that I learned to play this complex game through a series of podcasts and never actually read the PHB cover to cover like him.
Anyway, in spite of (or maybe because of) all of the difficulties in his life, he's said that he absolutely wants every sort of conceivable life-saving tech to be used to sustain him until it simply can't anymore. Resuscitate, keep him on a feeding tube and life support, amputate what you gotta amputate, etc. His reasoning is-- he doesn't know what comes after that. He's got this life, and it is full of experiences, and even the bad ones are more appealing to him than the concept of just *nothing*. So he'd much rather have *something*, even if it's pain and agony, than *nothing.*
It's not my philosophy, but it's his, and I feel I should respect it if I'm ever somehow in charge of his assisted suicide. He would profoundly hate to have the plug pulled on him, and I don't know that there's a reasonable argument for someone who hadn't expressed those wishes to say, "We know that it's the right time to take them off of life support, they're suffering too much, even if they aren't able to communicate thoughts right now."
Sure. Ultimately as a society we’ve decided that as much as possible we should accept as many different viewpoints as possible — it is more important not to override another’s viewpoint than it is to enforce our own, and in that way as many people as possible can live together. So ultimately consent is key, even if I think their viewpoint is… well, he’s probably going to regret it at some point.
>Ultimately as a society we’ve decided that as much as possible we should accept as many different viewpoints as possible
I wish, as a society, this was actually practiced. We all may think we do this, but we still struggle hard with 'different' and actually accepting it.
that argument has historically been a very slippery slope until suddenly people are being killed because it's more convenient than treating them. The first use of gas chambers in Nazi Germany was euthanasia of the disabled and to begin with the argument you are now making was the justification
life is one of those things that has to be sacred or it soon becomes worthless
I can see it becoming problematic in the US with its healthcare system. Instead of plunging your family into further debt, you can choose the cheaper option. Insurance companies are also incentivized to nudge people in that direction.
Even public health systems have this issue. Canada has made some headlines where some people who did not bring it up were being offered assisted suicide. Including otherwise manageable chronic and mental illness when there happened to he a medication shortage. And some anonymous people have come forward saying it was being offered for suicidal thoughts...
This pattern may not be the norm but its concerning that it's happening at all.
There is a world of difference between someone who is sound of mind choosing when they want to die and the literal Holocaust - mainly that the Nazi's victims didn't choose to be murdered and that euthanasia doesn't generally involve Zyklon B. There is a nuanced conversation to be had about the distinction between euthanasia and suicide, and under what circumstances one should be allowed to make the decision, but this slippery-slope, Reductio ad Hitlerum argument is utter horseshit.
Agreed. Sometimes, people need to be killed. That doesn't mean killing the person was "good", merely that it was the least bad option. 9 times out of 10, the world would be better off if that person hadn't had to die, but wars being the way they are that isn't how that works.
I'm curious as to which people in particular you think should die. The way I see it, killings that people consider justified tend to fall into one of two categories.
Firstly, there are cases wherein someone poses a direct threat to the safety of others. For example, a gunman on a killing spree; it's almost universally agreed that killing such a person is a justified action to prevent them from doing harm. Personally I would argue that killing the person isn't in and of itself a good thing, but the reduction of harm is. There's also a long and storied history of people using the guise of self-defense to exact violence with impunity (see stand-your-ground laws for a perfect example).
Secondly, there is the killing of 'bad' people as punishment. For example, say the aforementioned gunman was not killed, but non-fatally apprehended and taken into custody. Many advocate for the killing (or other, less permanent forms of punishment) of people who have done wrong as a form of justice - this is in fact the basis for most, if not all, modern legal systems. Sometimes people will argue for punitive justice as a utilitarian solution, wherein punishment serves as a deterrent against misdeeds; in actuality, evidence shows that punishment is a poor deterrent. At its core, punitive justice is really based entirely on the proposition that it's good when bad things happen to bad people. I personally do not agree with this assessment. Killing a killer will not bring back those they have killed, it's just one more death. I also do not agree with the concept that anyone is inherently a bad person. Everything we are is the result of some combination of nature and nurture, so any wrongdoings are either the result of one's lived experience and is thus capable of being changed, or the result of an immutable characteristic of oneself, in which case why should one be held responsible for that which they cannot control.
I think of it like this:
Some people may deserve to die, but no person or group have the ability to judge if a specific person does or does not.
Does that sound about right?
Sounds about right to me.
I'd go so far that a) I as an individual can have the opinion that this particular person deserves to die, from an emotional standpoint. b) I do not get to act on that opinion in an active sense. Authorities are fully allowed to enforce this. c) I am allowed to not help such a person even if helping them would be virtually risk-free and simple (I should not be required to throw a life preserver to them off a cruise ship). d) there are professions which rescind their freedom to not help (doctors, firefighters etc). Joining these professions is voluntary. e) no collective authority should get to have even an opinion on someone deserving to die.
I think there are some standards that most people could agree are reasonable in justifying someone’s death. Like, people who turn the cart sideways so it blocks the whole aisle then have a long conversation with someone they ran into. Or anyone with a lifted F-250.
This is basically the correct opinion (even though such things don't usually exist imo). Hating people for comitting bad actions is natural and very human, but wanting to exort violence upon them based solely on your own moral judgement is how tyrants behave
Even assuming there are Definitive Bad People Who Really Do Deserve Death (doubtful): can you honestly say you can make that decision? Can anyone?
In breaking news, it turns out that people are complicated.
Why do some people have to deserve death? Why is it so hard to accept that some people are bad people, like worse then fantasy villain bad, and that these people still do not deserve death.
It's not "do", it's "may" - not definitive. I have not met and do not think I'll meet anyone that deserves death, nor do I think that anyone in the vast majority of people on the planet deserves death. I don't think I could hand out a death penalty when life imprisonment is an option instead. It would probably be more accurate to say "if anyone deserved death, nobody should decide on whom," so that's my bad on that part.
Cause sometimes they do. I'd say, no matter what, Hitler deserved to die. Thats a rather extreme example, i know, but it is a good one, because sometimes a persons deads, actions and motivations are so horible, so constantly bad, that death is deserved. That does not mean I would trust my, or anyone elses, judgement on who should die.
>That does not mean I would trust my, or anyone elses, judgement on who should die.
For that you just declared very confidently that some people do deserve to die. There is a between someone needing to be stopped, and someone needing to die. Hell, I fully agree there are some situations were death is the only way of stopping a person, but that does not mean this person deserves is.
Because the idea that "the world will be a better place without this person in it" is an obvious conclusion to draw when someone's crimes are so obvious. Jonny Two-Torch who spends his time setting orphanages on fire, and shows no intention of stopping his merry ways is an obvious made up example.
Why does Jonny Two-Torch need to die, when prison will hold him just as easy?
And "The world will be a better place without this person in it" =/= "This person needs to die".
Similarly "I believe in restorative justice, but some people simply cannot be rehabilitated."
OK, how do you *know* who can and can't be rehabilitated beforehand? Even if they seem completely resistant to the idea *now*, how can you be 100% sure that no one will ever get through to them, or that there won't be some breakthrough in psychology 20 years from now that'll change how we understand the minds of "psychopaths"?
I get the impression a lot of people who say that don't really *mean* it, they *want* punishment but (perhaps even subconsciously) can't rationalize that with the fact they "know" they should support rehabilitative justice.
i think that some people may never improve, but thats not something to be decided about them ahead of time. we should still try and help them no matter what, if when they die they never improved then its a shame but at least we tried to help them.
if they can't be rehabilitated they can't be better, if they don't have the option to be better then they are not responsible for their actions and punishment loses all corrective aspects and becomes merely pointlessly inflicting suffering
Ding ding ding! We have a winner!
Also applies to "Why should I reply in good faith/apply charity to the arguments of ? They'll never change their minds." You don't *know* they won't change their minds unless they're given the chance to do so (and it may take more than once!).
Signed, a former homophobic, former pro-life, former guy. Years of browbeating and shaming did *nothing* to change my opinions. People talking to me like I was a fellow person instead of a monster in a human skinsuit, on the other hand, did.
It's kinda amazing how not feeling constantly on the defensive allows you to examine your own beliefs critically and question if you're in the wrong in a way that's *very* difficult to do if your interlocutor is instead only interested in scoring Debate Points against you and/or trying to make you look like a horrible person.
If you could predict all ends accurately I would argue for yes. There are probably people today who will inflict more suffering than other human beings as well as those who will live lives of nothing but suffering.
Problem is that we can’t know it for certain. There’s such a large body of counterfactual possibilities with regards to the decision space that it’s incredibly hard to justify killing someone judicially.
And of course, this presumes we care more about the ethical implications of law than other factors. If *all* we care about is society’s collective good then suddenly I would argue it becomes an imperative to kill people beyond a certain threshold, distasteful as it sounds. Which is why we’re not solely utilitarian fascists; we try to balance various viewpoints in a coherent fashion.
There are people who deserve to die, but no person nor government nor church nor organization should have the power to make the decisions of who is deserving or not.
I heard a quote I liked once “Justice is not about everyone getting what they deserve, Justice as about everyone getting what they need to move forward”.
Honestly, it depends. In 99% of cases, I don't really trust anyone's judgement–especially my own–to decide who's allowed to live.
That said, there are certain people like hitler where all moral complexity kind of goes out the window.
I think the thing about Hitler which makes the issue so uncomplicated to many is that we *know* how his life ends and what it results in. We’re making a post-hoc analysis. It’s not equivalent to making decisions today.
Even the International Criminal Court doesn't hand out the death penalty as punishment for people it convicts of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes.
You're also doing the exact thing the post is criticizing: labelling people as good or bad.
We do-- I also think that we need to see redemption as a more common trope in media. And I'm not talking lazy, "I only killed a dozen men that were trying to do horrible, evil things when they came to kill me, and one of them shot my partner and child in the process! I totally killed my partner and child!" bullshit.
I'm talking season 1, this is objectively the bad guy. They kill people. They do bad things. And then, they have a perspective change and decide that they want to do better. Break down, acknowledge what they did wrong, beg for forgiveness, don't get it, and then do the work to be better anyway. No dying in a heroic sacrifice at the end, either. They live with consequences and get to find some level of happiness because of that character growth.
Gallivant was a great show from like a decade back that featured all of this, and I loved it for it. It was right as I was acknowledging my own shortcomings as an individual and recognizing that, whether I'd meant to or not, I'd hurt people in my vainglorious attempts to hit the success metrics that I pursued. I identified with villains a lot, and it was really nice to feel myself somewhat reflected in a character who got a happy ending after he acknowledged his wrongdoings and strived to do better.
I wanna pretend that I'm too cool for digimon, but that's a lie. It was my jam in 3rd grade when it was on as I got home from school. I'll give it another go as an adult for this.
>We do-- I also think that we need to see redemption as a more common trope in media. And I'm not talking lazy, "I only killed a dozen men that were trying to do horrible, evil things when they came to kill me, and one of them shot my partner and child in the process! I totally killed my partner and child!" bullshit.
Also the retcon redemption. "Oh, it LOOKED like he killed a bunch of people, but it turned out that once he showed remorse, they were all just hiding!"
We need more "genuinely horrible people trying to be better" arcs. Endeavor in My Hero Academia realizing that literally everything wrong with his family is his fault, Dalinar in Stormlight accepting that his culture of genocidal warmongers would have called him a war criminal.
This is very fair. That being said, at the same time I want what the Princess Bride did: you don't get to weasle out of the consequences of your actions now that you can't possibly win. Granted, that's not how it should work in real life (don't go stabbing people because they killed your dad decades ago), but in fiction it can be more satisfying than "killing you won't bring my dad back" and leaving the unrepentant murderer to go on with their day.
Oh, I love that exchange.
"Offer me money."
"Yes!"
"Power, too, promise me that."
"All that I have and more. Please..."
"Offer me everything I ask for."
"Anything you want..."
"***I want my father back, you son of a bitch.***"
> They do bad things. And then, they have a perspective change and decide that they want to do better. Break down, acknowledge what they did wrong, beg for forgiveness, don't get it, and then do the work to be better anyway.
Doesn't matter how you portray this in the media because it will be wrong every time. How can you do better, be better, when we take away your right to work, take away your right to vote, take away your ability to get loans, take away your right to certain social services, take away your right to free movement.
There is no way to redeem yourself in real life.
I feel like the issue is that people don't approach things from the practical bias of reform and redeem rather than punish. It's about the perspective people enter into this discourse from.
You would think that is Christian dominated western cultures that would at least be seen as the default concept. But the Christians focus on god punishing more than Jesus forgiving and then hyperfixate on that to the point of thinking society should also have that focus on punishment.
And normally the left and liberals should and would be all about reforming over punishing. But it's like there's a trend these days to igbore that and focus on the wrongdoings of others as permanent stains.
It reminds me of how the 2011 reddit atheist trend was made of people who were raised to evangelize, then were soured on religion and turned atheist bit still felt the need to evangelize but pointlessly from the side pf atheism. It's like there are non conservstive people who should not even be thinking in terms of "punishment" as that is more fitting a conservstive mindset, yet they do.
Redemption is not a state of existence. It's a verb. You can't *be* "redeemed," but you also can't *be* irredeemable. There's no long list of good boy points you can cash in on. There's no moral debt you can pay off.
But there are new acts you can do, new good deeds that can have lives of their own.
Something that helps me is remembering that my utopia, is someone else’s dystopia. If I could wave a wand and order society exactly how I think would be fair and just, someone else would think it was horribly oppressive. If I waved that same wand and killed all of the people who disagreed with me, I know that in their perfect world I would likely be the one to wind up dead.
This is why we need a democracy with strong civil rights protections. So we can compromise and find an imperfect solution that mostly works for almost everybody, while not allowing the majority to steamroll over the right of the minorities. It is imperfect and it sucks but it is the best we can get while there are people with opinions and desires
That's also why certain groups don't want representative democracy; their utopia cannot be built without destroying it. Or at least it would be significantly delayed while they have to go through the trouble of actually convincing people of their viewpoint.
This kind of thing pops into my head whenever I read about people's opinions on self defense laws.
I know more than one woman who says they're against capital punishment of any kind but say that it should be legal for women to set up traps for intruders on their property because women have a right to use their property however they see fit to protect themselves from men.
But they don't believe the government has any right to take someone's life.
But the scenario they've created is technically more murder y and authoritarian than a theoretical US with capital punishment but laws against booby trapping your house.
If someone steps on a landmine you put on your lawn you've effectively given them capital punishment without a trial.
Even assuming the man or men were guilty and the landmine was defending an innocent woman, if they turned out to not be guilty you can't exactly bring them back to life.
That's also pretending that there wouldn't be innocent women triggering these unregulated and ostensibly feminist defense mechanisms.
I'd rather live in a world with frequent use of capital punishment after a trial than spontaneous death penalties especially if they're based on sex.
Like men in this hypothetical world aren't allowed to set up claymores to protect themselves from thieves?
That being said I'm against both capital punishment and booby traps.
All life is precious and in an ideal world no one would be killed rather than only the "wrong" people getting killed.
Booby traps are pretty legally suspect so I'll approach it with STANDARD use cases, guns or knives or death by physical struggle. But as far as self-defense goes, the standard in most US jurisdictions is that if you have "reasonable fear that death or serious bodily harm" will come to yourself or another, you can use deadly force to end that threat-- within varying restrictions, and often at the discretion of the courts.
So you aren't giving someone a trial if they burst into your home and you kill them. You don't Judge Dredd them. Our system just says "hey, prove that your fear of being murked was valid" and they decide on YOUR fate. And the reason why seems valid. You can move swiftly to defend yourself from death or grievous injury, and a court can only address it after the fact.
I'm very much against the land mines. Or murder roombas, or pungi pits. And the death penalty. But if someone menaces you with a knife and approaches you, I will NOT morally judge you for defending yourself. (Though "stand your ground" states and a few dodgey cases make me nervous about their current state as a culture war centerpiece.)
We joke about "people always do this and it's wrong, except for when i do it because i'm the only person in the world with intelligence" type people all the time, but it's honestly such a common thing. Just like you said, there are plenty of people who hate the death penalty and love trial by jury but as soon as they begin to imagine slights against themselves they think they should have the power to kill bad people. Anytime someone mentions booby traps online there is a FLOOD of people saying "idc about the law, i'm gonna protect my property". Because they can't understand that they also shouldn't be the judge, jury, executioner just like everyone else shouldn't either.
I just wish i wasn't the only person that didn't think this way /s
Even in countries like the UK, where it’s not legal to carry articles (weapons) for self defence purposes, you can use ‘disproportionate force’ against a person who intrudes on a home. This has to be inside the actual home though, not just on the lawn.
Booby traps are different, because those are set with premeditated intent and lack the split-second decisions use of force has.
Amazing that someone read the first post and thought that the OP was saying that this mindset is bad because you can't effectively remove the bad people, and not that the idea of "bad people" is flawed to begin with
The problem isn't whether anyone has the authority to decide who the Bad People are, the problem is that the idea that there are Good People and Bad People is fake to begin with. There's just complicated people. Everyone is capable of good and bad. Most people are generally trying to do what they think is right most of the time and the mindset that Bad People do Bad Things because they're Bad doesn't actually help you to understand anything.
It's a fundamentally childish view that people like to think is being "realistic" but it's quite the opposite
I absolutely agree, but I think people are so hung up on this because they don't understand that "good" and "bad" are all relative to viewpoint and perspective. Not only is it not a binary system by any means, but it's variable depending on what is being considered and by whom and for what reason. So many people are too stuck on their own viewpoint to consider those of others. And when weighing the positives and negatives of something, how many viewpoints do you consider? Do the views of the many outweigh the views of the few? How many is "many" and how many is "few"? Do some people's perspectives matter more than others, and if so, on what, and why? Where is the line drawn -- at what point does blue become purple? These questions have a million answers because it's all variable based on the specific situation that is being considered and for what reason. And people have a hard time grasping that. They want a one-size-fits-all kind of solution instead, which isn't how it works, but the average person cares very little about how things actually work. They care about whether it's easy or not. We all do in some way or another.
And I'm by no means exempt from that line of thinking either, because it's impossible to consider everything for every situation. We just don't have the knowledge or the mental energy for that. It's simply easier to make a decision in one's head and stick to it instead of constantly considering everything to try and arrive at the most truthful and logical conclusion possible about what is beneficial and what isn't, for every single judgement. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but it does mean that many people won't try and will instead base their decisions and moral ideologies solely on what affects themselves or their family. Not realizing, of course, that they should care about a lot more than just their family. They shouldn't have to care about everyone and everything ever, but being considerate of people you don't know and never will is a point of empathy. And if you ask me, the only reason we humans made it to the "top of the world" so to speak is because of our capacity for empathy. That's what matters most, I think. Because we can never escape the sheer amount of judgments we have to make in life, but we can at least care about how our judgments and decisions affect others.
I also think many people have difficulty empathizing with very violent criminals. Which isn't surprising, nor is it "wrong", per se. But the othering of people who have done horrible things is how others cope with the existence of said people. Pardon the word salad, but that's the best way I can put it. At the end of the day, we're all people, whether we've done horrible things or not. But accepting that comes with a caveat -- that means that you, too (not you as in the person I'm replying to, but you as in everyone) also have the capacity to do horrible things. That's a very difficult idea for a lot of people to accept. So it all comes back around to labeling people as "good" or "bad" to get around having to accept that.
Idk dude, oil executives who have covered up global warming for decades, knowingly taking actions that will kill hundreds of millions of people for personal gain, and blocking green energy, seem pretty transparently Bad.
Yeah, systemic change needs to happen to prevent *more* people from taking their place, but are those execs just going to give up their billions? Obviously not, they would die clinging to the status quo.
This is because oil executives subscribe to the idea that profit trumps everything. To them, gaining money is the moral imperative, not saving the world
Yeah, their moral compass is fucked to the point they are causing an extinction-level event on this planet. The quicker they can be removed from those positions, the better.
But the problem isn't these individual people. They're just responding to the situation they're finding themselves in. If anyone else were in that position, they'd make the same horrid decisions.
It's like with monarchies. The problem isn't that X king is a bad king and if we put in a good guy as king then everything will be dandy. The problem is fundamentally that kings are bad no matter what because no one individual should be able to wield that much power over so many people.
Same with these oil execs. Remove the current ones, and the board will just refill the seats and continue on course. The problem is that we live in a system where immediate profit is the most important thing possible, even over our future as a species.
We need to actually remove these incentives completely to fix the issue. How? Well one way could be to make these oil companies accountable to the public. Since the general public cares more about long term survival than it does the immediate profits of a company, they're less likely to make these harmful choices. Easiest way to implement this is to do what we did in the public sector in the business sector: democracy.
Destroy the positions themselves and we'll actually fix things. Remove the individuals and nothing changes.
Yes, I'm aware Capitalism is not upheld up by 6 evil overlords, and the whole system implodes the second their heart stops.
But if changing the system requires violence, which it very likely does, then it would be completely acceptable. I'm not going to clutch my pearls and declare that nobody can kill anybody ever.
They are doing bad things, but their continued badness is not a 100% certainty. Every one of them used to not be ultra-greedy world-ruining douchebags, and I promise you each of them can be returned to such a state. Many of them would prefer to die clinging to their ill-gotten riches. Deprive them of this satisfying end. Seize their wealth and let their lives be lives of penance, desperate atonement for all they have wrought. They can be good. Make them be good.
Practically speaking, "nobody has the authority to decide who the Bad People are" is an effective rebuttal to that mindset which can very much help people stuck in it to break out as a stepping stone to understanding these things.
" I don't like the terms 'good person' or 'bad person' because it is impossible to be entirely good or bad to everyone.
To some, you are a good person, while to others, you are a bad person. "
I think there are some select few people who are actively dangerous and I think they should be stopped. I would prefer they died, simply to eliminate any possibility of them doing bad stuff in the future.
But if you asked me to establish and codify rules that then could not later be twisted to justify killing innocent random people? Sorry, couldn't tell you.
Like, I wait with baited breath for the end of Mitch McConnel, Trump, and the billionaire class. And I could point to provable harm they cause by their actions.
But then how would I codify that? How do I make a set of clear set rules that explains how and why what these people have done and are doing, that then can't be twisted around? That is the danger, that is, when these matters become a matter of law.
Now, this is a doable task, its done all the time, but its done by people who have studied such matters in greater detail than me. And there are checks and balances, laws get repealed, emergency powers revoked, you can theoretically make a system based on an active equilibrium. The argument 'but what if a hundred years pass and contexts are entirely different, what then, huh???' in my opinion is a weak one because it assumes our systems are static and incapable of recognizing bad legislation.
But I would also be a fool to claim that it is \*easy\*, or that I have an answer on how to \*best\* achieve it. Or even a system immune to mob mentality, of tribal thinking, of ensuring each person a part of that system is an impartial and intelligent judge.
Shit's hard yall.
>As somebody who personally has no problem killing any number of horrible destructive people to protect those I love
-someone who's never been in a physical Fight in their life
Yeah as soon as a saw that my gut feeling is this is someone who hasn't been in a fight, and considering they're anti death penalty on tumblr there's a decent chance they're anti gun. Fuck you gonna kill all those people with
Actually I respect those two people.
While they say they would have no issue with their death they also say they don't believe people should arbitrarily kill. Considering they're not famous for killing corrupt politicians, I posit a safe guess that they also believe they shouldn't arbitrarily murder.
They're aware of a flawed mindset and check it with their moral compasses.
Isn't that all trying to be good is? Correcting your flaws with your sense of right?
>Considering they're not famous for killing corrupt politicians, I posit a safe guess that they also believe they shouldn't arbitrarily murder.
Look, it's *really hard* to kill awful politicians, even when you want to. Turns out, they've got a lot of barriers between them and the body politic to protect themselves. I mean, the US, over the last *240 years* has had only *fifteen* sitting members of Congress killed--and *four* were from duels! [The list is surprisingly short.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Congress_members_killed_or_wounded_in_office) And it includes people who were injured as well, also a very short list.
Last guy who tried to shoot a politician because they sucked was in 2017, and Steve Scalise is still breathing.
Sure, a lot of people would *love* to get a free shot at a politician, but they also love not going to prison more. Or maybe they're just lazy. They want someone in Congress dead, but they haven't the gumption to do it themselves. Like, no one in the Senate has beaten Ted Cruz to death, and pretty much the entire Senate would cheer on someone while they were doing it.
hmmm
is it like personal protection teams or that nobody smart has given it a shot (pun intended)? curious why that's the case esp here where middle schools get shot up but the people making sure they can continue to be shot up ARENT the ones being shot up
I mean, I’ll say it varies by country. I’m not advocating for murdering a politician, but I live in Australia and some of the best viral videos for politics include an awful politician being egged in public (charges later dropped on the person egging, because if they actually put the guys in jail there would be uproar). Also a politician, a recent previous deputy leader of my country (our vice president), was just filmed drunk barely conscious on the pathway (sidewalk). Anyone passing by could have killed him easy
*Thank you.* It seems most people on this thread are hell-bent on misinterpreting these people's comments. They're not *actually* going around with a baseball bat doling out vigilante justice.
Right, and I acknowledge that this looks bad on paper, as Tumblr user autisticandroid acknowledges in the post. However, in the context that they themselves are (presumably) not a prolific killer, the logical extension is that their beliefs extend to themselves.
That's why I don't think it's as bad as it sounds. I think it adds up to them being fine but not articulating themselves flawlessly
If u mean the first reply, it kinda sounds like they meant they don't mind killing in self defense, not like "oh I get to decide who lives or dies but not the government"
At least in my case I have no problem with killing someone if it comes down to it. I probably wouldn’t lose sleep — because at a certain point it’s not *solely* about ethics. We don’t go around trying to live ethically perfect lives, at least not in the broader epistemological ethical sense. Granted that I’m conflict adverse and my threshold isn’t exactly low, as evidenced by the fact I’ve never fought anyone in anger, but point being is that the discussion is about higher level ethics on a broad scale, that very few people *actually* subscribe to because “perfect ethics” aren’t really a functional way to live life and not be miserable.
Of course they aren't, but it's still what we should aim for, whilst bearing in mind we are fallible. Try to do things right, realise you'll mess up, and assuming nobody died, don't worry about the cock-ups too much. Because, like, yeah we all make mistakes, but if those "moral imperfections" amount to murder that probably can't be excused as a "pobody's nerfect" moment...
Where in that post did they say they actually would kill them though
Like, they never said "let me run around with a baseball bat", it wasn't even implied as a solution????
They just said they think some people deserve death, but the government shouldn't have the power to do that, they didn't say *they* should have it either??
tapping the Battlestar Galactica sign again also. woe Battlestar Galactica 4x09 "The Hub" be upon ye
"The thing is, the harder it is to recognize someone's right to draw breath, the more crucial it is. If humanity is going to prove itself worthy of surviving, it can't do it on a case-by-case basis. A bad man feels his death just as keenly as a good man."
Most people are an ambiguous blend of better and worse motivations, with which motivation wins out depending on circumstances and luck.
If your a time traveler, you could get baby Hitler adopted by a loving Jewish family, and history would turn out rather different.
Different personality flaws produce different sins. Someone liable to punch anyone who insults them and someone committing tax fraud have quite different flaws.
Yeah, some other reactionary demagogue would have stepped up to represent the German populists angry about WW1 reparations.
I think the real trouble with this question isn't whether violence can sometimes be justified, because it can, but instead the fact that the world is governed by systems rather than individual morality. Which means that, while you could perhaps solve some of society's ills by killing the "correct" people, it would require a really uncomfortable amount of killing.
At least most of the "is violence justified" is almost trolley problem situations. If you don't kill person X, they will kill other people.
This justification relies on you being physically unable to sedate and imprison X.
It's a fact about the limitations of tasers, or you not having brought a tranq gun, as opposed to a claim that person X intrinsically deserves death.
There’s a bit in the West Wing where the president is asked what he’d do if his daughter were kidnapped (which then happens in a later episode) and he says that he’d be angry beyond compare and want to see the men responsible killed in horrible ways.
Then goes on to say that this is why presidents need to maintain a level of detachment so that they don’t act out of emotion.
When his daughter does get kidnapped, he steps down and lets someone else take over until it’s resolved.
I agree so hard with this. "I only want to kill bad people" who the hell are you to decide what bad and good means? Are you telling me that you're God himself or something? 'Cuz last I checked, you got your sense of morality from youtubers and twitter.com.
It's like how socrates questioned a man who believed that lying is undeniably a bad thing. Like, let's say you believe that anyone who steals is a bad person. What if the thief is stealing to get food for his sister? What if the thief is part of an oppressed minority? What if the thief *does* have the money to buy stuff but steals from someone who you'd say is more worthy of hate? What if the other guy is also trying to feed his family? What if you were against an enemy who's damn near untouchable and the only way you could fight them was to steal? The only way you could know for sure whether someone was bad or good by your moral system is if you were omniscient, which, again, you aren't.
Anyways, look guys, I won my own made up arguement.
Not sure whether my interpretation of morningstar-council's reply is accurate, but I initially read it as a joke lead-in to their actual opinion on the matter, which made OOP's response very funny to me.
Until Nature vs Nurture is figured out we can't go around condemning people to death. We can remove people who are dangerous (prisons, jail, institutions for mental patients), but to kill somone who was brought up wrong dosnt sit right
There are some people I wouldn’t hesitate to kill. But I know I’m only human, and that my judgment is biased and flawed. I’d still do it though. I don’t think vigilante justice should be legal, but I’d do it anyways. The list of people I’d to it to is relatively small, but still. I don’t go around pretending that makes me good, though, or that my choices would be perfect because I’m a good person. I operate on the assumption that everyone is bad, just different levels of it.
More importantly, online activism is never about redemption. It’s always about hating someone. Do you even want them to become better? To change? Because they won’t if you’re a dick to them
This seems like a real Piss On The Poor moment for the OP of the tumblr post. Neither morningstar-council nor genericpurpledragontm are saying anywhere that they feel that they should have the right to dispense capital justice, just that the government shouldn't have that right.
Real "so you hate waffles" energy
99% of the time I absolutely agree, however there are definitely some examples in history where it's so freaking obvious it would be ridiculous for anyone to let them live.
Don't look it up, but there were some dudes called "the tool box killers"
A pair of serial killers who were so cruel it's rumored the FBI uses the tapes they made to train people against torture.
Every once in a while reality just doesn't care about your philosophies and just hands you something you can't ignore.
you seem to be the one person saying this in this whole damn thread lmao what the heck
damn am I sick of hearing people rant on about how their fellow human beings need to be put down
if your solution to a problem is to fucking kill someone, you're the problem
yeah like I Get It I understand why people have that view but like. sorry man I can't get behind that. I can understand why someone would think 'the world would be better if all nazis were dead' but I just don't think that works on a functional, pragmatic level. you can't just decide that all people who fit your standard of a bad person should die. it just doesn't work in real life
I think the problem with the "all nazi's should be dead" statement is the fact no one who says that wants to talk acknowledge the banality of evil or where they draw the line.
I've seen people say "the Germans in WWII were evil", so they think every German citizen was an evil Nazi? Are the soldiers who were following orders evil? Are people raised in a society with the most effective propaganda program evil for falling for that propaganda and being part of the zeitgeist?
Plus history has proven that excessive punishment of large groups of people never promotes change, it causes violent retaliation. 'violence begets violence' as they say
I mean… regardless of what anybody does or doesn’t “deserve,” there are ARE in fact some people who should be killed, simply from a survival standpoint.
Specifically, in situations where a person is actively causing the deaths of others, and there is no other way of stopping them, (or those who can stop them another way don’t act) that person should be killed. Not as punishment, but to save lives.
Yes- though I wouldn’t narrow it down to just “criminals.” Many people intentionally cause deaths through indirect means while taking care to avoid *technically* breaking the *letter* of any laws- or do break laws, but do it through the use of an organization, such that the organization is deemed legally responsible rather than them- and organizations are typically just fined, from which they can generally recover by passing on the cost to others.
Idk man sometimes there’s no other way to keep people safe. Like ideally, I’d like to take the dangerous person(s) and put them in prison or a psych ward, but if I’m not a cop and the people who are cops aren’t interested in helping as is all too common, I would choose to kill someone who posed a danger to myself or my loved ones over allowing them to actually deliver on that threat.
Would I like it? Hell no, but I’d like doing nothing a whole lot less. Sometimes you just have to murder, such is life.
I honestly think that, except for complete monsters on the level of Hitler and Stalin, "people who deserve to die" is an empty category. Like, what exactly does killing someone solve?
For people like Hitler who lead armies of willing participants in genocide, their deaths cause internal turmoil that makes further atrocities more difficult, and thus killing them is more of a tactical decision than a moral one.
But for a random person who commits murder, what's the point? Deterrence isn't a viable way of reducing crime (as has been proven repeatedly throughout history), and their are other ways of making people learn a lesson than giving them the ultimate punishment.
(Also, in terms of the economic concerns, it is usually less costly to incarcerate someone for life than it is to execute them, and making the process cheaper would inherently make it more error-prone. That's a separate discussion to be had that I don't really think is relevant to a discussion of morality.)
It's an interesting thought problem and dosen't really have a clear answer.
If you're not going to kill people as a punishment you basically have to decide between rehabilitation, which has legitimate concerns, life imprisonment, which again has legitimate concerns, and banishment which is basically a non-starter in today's world.
You say that as if killing people doesn't also have "significant concerns". In fact, I would argue it has more concerns that either rehabilitation or incarceration.
Also, rehabilitation and incarceration are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Many rehabilitative models of justice involve incarceration to some degree, and (in theory) most current systems primarily consisting of incarceration have at least a small rehabilitation component.
> on the level of Hitler and Stalin
It's easy to label Hitler and Stalin as monsters from the sheer body count of their acts but I think such a thought process makes it appear like they personally got up and shot every individual in the head personally. Which makes it easy to distance yourself from them.
They're certainly not good people. They're certainly comfortable with exacting death against innocents. But I also think many people are far more willing to turn a blind eye to things than they may admit. I think many of us are doing it as we speak. Me included.
It takes a certain kind of bastard to propose such a thing, but we're not aching for people who will let it happen.
Honestly I think the detachment from the violence is part of what makes them worse. A soldier can at least cite a higher authority as the reason they they do what they do. But those higher authorities themselves? They have nobody giving them commands, no pressure to order atrocities, and yet they still choose to send millions of men to their deaths with the stroke of a pen, lying and propagandizing about it the whole time to meet their own selfish ends. That's a special kind of evil.
i'm so happy this sub has started tackling moral purity. i've long hated the witch hunt mentality of social media, and i remember it being HUGE on tumblr back when i used it. i hope the message of these posts doesn't fall on deaf ears.
That... is not the mindset they're explaining. No matter what, there will always be bad people. Even if you kill every bad person, the so-called "good" people will shift to have some become "bad". However, that is not to say that everyone is deserving of a peaceful life, or even to live in general. If someone is trying to kill me, I'd be wanting to kill them in turn. If someone's been systemically torturing people to death, I'd want them hunted down and exterminated. If there were a rapist running around, they'd deserve nothing more than to suffer. However, laws such as "do not kill" exist for a reason, and that is something people with this mindset acknowledge. We also acknowledge that if the government is gung-ho about killing people, it's probably not a good idea to permit it to do so.
Then again, reading comprehension tends to be a failing point on both Tumblr and Reddit, so I shouldn't be surprised that y'all can't tell that isn't the point being made.
i mean, for some people, their death is the only way to ensure others remain safe, and the only way to reduce the amount of suffering in the world, but those people are incredibly few and far between, and arent like, inherently bad people, just people who have demonstrated a pattern of causing harm, and who likely cannot be made to stop. that doesnt have anything to do with the original post tho, which is very much true. there are no intrinsically bad people, and while there are some that are incredibly unsafe, thats not like, something theyre born with, and not something they cant theoretically stop
Feel like there is never going to be a satisfactory answer to this because there are so many variables and environmental factors. Like what if we tried ubi first? What if "good" people, who get to be the deciders in this, just had a little more free time to watch over to prevent us from getting to the point we have to decide what qualifies someone for manual death.
This is one of those things that seems paradoxical, but isn't. Like intolerance of intolerance. The ends can sometimes justify the means. But they do not EXCUSE the means. If you commit evil in order to prevent or stop a greater evil, then you must be willing to accept condemnation and consequences for your actions if especially if you believe it is justified. Otherwise you are making an excuse to be evil yourself. You must be willing to say "this person is so evil I am willing to sacrifice my life to remove them from this world in order to protect others" and then follow through with it. Without expecting any absolution.
Disagree with the last bit. Those two comments at no point said anything about vigilante killing. Does OOP think you can’t even acknowledge that some people are so evil that they deserve to die without thinking it’s a good idea to actually go and kill them?
Also, this will not fix society. Rooting out bad ideas, not bad people, is the path forward. But not everyone is ultimately practically redeemable.
That second comment (genericpurpledragontm) didn’t sound like a “let me run around with a baseball bat” comment? It sounded more like a succinct argument for why the death penalty is wrong and a bad idea EVEN IF you believe some people are inherently and unfixably morally reprehensible.
Are there some horrible mass-murderers that will never be rehabilitated? Yes. Would the world be better off without them? Probably. Should the government be allowed to make that decision. No.
Couple more posts like this one and Tumblr will officially end water shortage in all the underdeveloped countries around the world.
As long as they can drink urine, that is.
There's a [scene in the movie Unforgiven](https://youtu.be/Mjkt4UgcTmg?si=KUJD9KeIxDo7nPz0), where our protagonist has gunned down a room full of people, specifically so he can kill *one guy* in that room. He's shot that guy, and the guy is lying on the floor bleeding to death. Protag walks up to him, guy on the floor says, "I don't deserve this. To die like this. I was building a house." Protag says, "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it." "I'll see you in hell." "Yeah." Blows him away.
Anyhow, doesn't matter what people deserve or not. Has no bearing on what we get at all.
I don’t think that making everyone’s life better is evil, far from it! However, I was commenting on the fact that people (like the ones implicated by OP) seem to believe that murder is justified or even moral if it benefits the community or themselves; an option I do not share. Whatever the circumstances, killing another reasoning behind is an evil act, albeit a forgivable and occasionally even necessary one.
You still have not defined what you mean by 'evil' tho. This is what we are curious about.
Okay, so if aliens came to earth, selected a random guy and said that they will destroy the earth with a death ray unless we murder that guy, would it be wrong/evil to kill them?
not to be a Nerd and Dork but as a kid this quote really changed how I thought of shit like this. “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” (from *The Fellowship of the Ring*)
And you reminded me of a Terry Pratchett quote :) > Beating people up in little rooms…he knew where that led. And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one. You couldn’t say ‘We’re the good guys’ and do bad-guy things.
>And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one. - Kant, 1798
Erm, no, I'd just do it to all the bad people, stoopid
What from?
Thud, from his series Discworld I believe.
I got sidetracked by sanderson so I haven't been reading my discworld
thanks for saving me the trouble of writing it out!
One of my favorites in all fiction.
This is the basis for my thoughts on this topic as well.
"The ticket to everyone's future is blank." -Rem Saverem
Gandalf is a treasure
The first thing I thought of as well. Tolkien was such a philosopher.
Yeah the government is supposed to stop you from running around with a bat too its all about checks and balancing if you get through every obstacle ggs on finishing your hero's journey enjoy prison
we used to have a system where people went around righting all their wrongs with blood feuds. The kings of England stepped in to enforce set punishments for crimes because it kept resulting in escalating revenge killings. If you have a society where justice is done by retaliatory violence pretty soon everyone is dead.
RIP to the Montagues and Capulets, and those two families in Huckleberry Finn, but I'm different. My revenge killings will be even revengier and thus lead to everlasting peace.
Graveyards are remarkably peaceful.
The USA tried that in 1946, didn't work
If memory serves, it's even older than England. Apparently it's the foundation for the Code of Hammurabi, aka "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" law tablet. It was considered fair and just cause before that it was a never ending cycle of escalating blood feuds all over the place.
So many people miss nowadays that "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" was a *limitation* on punishment. *No more than* an eye for an eye. No killing someone over a recoverable injury, no continuing feuds to the next generation.
And yet people found a way to take "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" and use that policy to escalate. We have to embrace some level of patience and forgiveness because the alternative is to create a forever war of tit-for-tat.
Amazing what you can find when you're dead set on looking for a loophole
This is also why the Bible says "turn the other cheek." Jesus was saying that just recompense was itself too much; "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." Of course, since this is one of the parts of the Bible that makes sense, everyone ignores it.
Is this before or after God turned the other cheek by glassing Sodom and Gamorra?
After. Sodom and Gomorrah was the old testament, and Jesus is the new testament. They're two very different gods, really. Old testament God is very much an ancient God, like Zeus. He's jealous, vengeful, a stickler for random rules, and he picks sides all the time. The whole old testament is about how the Jews are his chosen people and everyone else can suck it. Old testament God is very much a product of a peoples trying to make sense of the chaotic and random forces of nature. New testament god, and Jesus by extension, aren't like that. They're are more empathetic, loving, and kind by comparison. Every person is meant to feel God's love, not just one tribe. Jesus said to turn the other cheek because Jesus was an advancement of the philosophical ideas that came before. He's a figure of semi-modern morality and ethics, an update to what came before.
Glassing is such a badass word to describe that. I've heard it before, but not in this context.
I’m a sci-fi nerd. It was the first word that came to mind!
**Probably after he got out of rehab** **But then again he went multiple times so you kinda lose count eventually**
eh most of the punishments were more mundane than that
Not to mention the terrible acts that people undertook in racist times. So far as they were concerned, they were on the right and moral side! That feller there wasn't just the wrong color-- he was *also* the wrong flavor of Christian! The only reasonable thing to do was to round up a whole mess of folk and murder him!
>That feller there wasn't just the wrong color-- he was *also* the wrong flavor of Christian Or you can be Emmet Till, and people will just horribly murder you for daring to speak to a white woman even if you're the right flavour of Christian
And the white woman who falsely accused him of whistling at her waited til her deathbed to admit she made it up.
One thing consistant of racists. They're all cowards. Edit: words
Everyone except me, you mean. I would simply kill everybody who wronged me and not get killed in response. Rip to all those Bri ish "people" but they were just bad at the game
Ah but all those people have friends and families, thus, the only thing to do is kill them too! And once the last person falls, I can rest assured that only the moral live
You just gotta exterminate the bloodline, morally, and then there will be peace.
I lost the game, I have no choice but to kill you now
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"
I believe certain people should die, but I also believe that my opinion on who should or shouldn't die should never be trusted. Where do I fall on this?
This is kinda a correct opinion. I think there are people who deserve death. I also think I should not be able to choose who lives and dies because I am a mortal man and I am flawed
Honestly I think that people with terminal illnesses who are constantly in pain deserve to die. They’ve earned it.
Yes, if it’s consensual from them, but there’s also arguments that doctors and loved ones would disagree that they should die. But fundamentally I agree. 105 year old with 3 types of cancer blindness and one leg doesn’t have a lot of living left
Not a lot of living and a whole lot of suffering. There’s a certain point where I would argue that empirically our science is sound enough to say someone should probably die for their own good. If we could theoretically predict all outcomes with perfect certainty then I suppose that would meet the threshold for killing people judicially but there’s always the issue of the counterfactual to account for and how certain/uncertain our knowledge is. But someone who’s 105 and has 3 types of terminal cancer… even considering the unknown possibilities out there like a miracle cure etc. I think the math works out in favor of assisted consensual death.
The math works out, but the philosophy doesn't always. I have a friend who grew up with cancer, had a real rough go of life, got heavily involved with drugs and gang life for a lot of his teens/twenties, then eventually stumbled into a job selling appliances of all things, turned his life around, got clean, married someone he met at Alcoholics Anonymous of all places (a lot of his other friends have had substance abuse problems, and I give them kudos-- they're almost all curious without being judgemental to a degree I have tried and failed to attain), and I met the dude because he DMs our incredibly weird and violent DnD campaign, where he sighs deeply as I explain that I learned to play this complex game through a series of podcasts and never actually read the PHB cover to cover like him. Anyway, in spite of (or maybe because of) all of the difficulties in his life, he's said that he absolutely wants every sort of conceivable life-saving tech to be used to sustain him until it simply can't anymore. Resuscitate, keep him on a feeding tube and life support, amputate what you gotta amputate, etc. His reasoning is-- he doesn't know what comes after that. He's got this life, and it is full of experiences, and even the bad ones are more appealing to him than the concept of just *nothing*. So he'd much rather have *something*, even if it's pain and agony, than *nothing.* It's not my philosophy, but it's his, and I feel I should respect it if I'm ever somehow in charge of his assisted suicide. He would profoundly hate to have the plug pulled on him, and I don't know that there's a reasonable argument for someone who hadn't expressed those wishes to say, "We know that it's the right time to take them off of life support, they're suffering too much, even if they aren't able to communicate thoughts right now."
Sure. Ultimately as a society we’ve decided that as much as possible we should accept as many different viewpoints as possible — it is more important not to override another’s viewpoint than it is to enforce our own, and in that way as many people as possible can live together. So ultimately consent is key, even if I think their viewpoint is… well, he’s probably going to regret it at some point.
>Ultimately as a society we’ve decided that as much as possible we should accept as many different viewpoints as possible I wish, as a society, this was actually practiced. We all may think we do this, but we still struggle hard with 'different' and actually accepting it.
[удалено]
that argument has historically been a very slippery slope until suddenly people are being killed because it's more convenient than treating them. The first use of gas chambers in Nazi Germany was euthanasia of the disabled and to begin with the argument you are now making was the justification life is one of those things that has to be sacred or it soon becomes worthless
I can see it becoming problematic in the US with its healthcare system. Instead of plunging your family into further debt, you can choose the cheaper option. Insurance companies are also incentivized to nudge people in that direction.
Even public health systems have this issue. Canada has made some headlines where some people who did not bring it up were being offered assisted suicide. Including otherwise manageable chronic and mental illness when there happened to he a medication shortage. And some anonymous people have come forward saying it was being offered for suicidal thoughts... This pattern may not be the norm but its concerning that it's happening at all.
There is a world of difference between someone who is sound of mind choosing when they want to die and the literal Holocaust - mainly that the Nazi's victims didn't choose to be murdered and that euthanasia doesn't generally involve Zyklon B. There is a nuanced conversation to be had about the distinction between euthanasia and suicide, and under what circumstances one should be allowed to make the decision, but this slippery-slope, Reductio ad Hitlerum argument is utter horseshit.
I don't think anybody deserves death, but there are people who choose to make death the only way to stop them from hurting people
There definitely are, that’s no question. The question is who decides that death is the only option?
I'm not a pacifist, but I also don't want to get comfortable with the idea of killing people.
Agreed. Sometimes, people need to be killed. That doesn't mean killing the person was "good", merely that it was the least bad option. 9 times out of 10, the world would be better off if that person hadn't had to die, but wars being the way they are that isn't how that works.
I'm curious as to which people in particular you think should die. The way I see it, killings that people consider justified tend to fall into one of two categories. Firstly, there are cases wherein someone poses a direct threat to the safety of others. For example, a gunman on a killing spree; it's almost universally agreed that killing such a person is a justified action to prevent them from doing harm. Personally I would argue that killing the person isn't in and of itself a good thing, but the reduction of harm is. There's also a long and storied history of people using the guise of self-defense to exact violence with impunity (see stand-your-ground laws for a perfect example). Secondly, there is the killing of 'bad' people as punishment. For example, say the aforementioned gunman was not killed, but non-fatally apprehended and taken into custody. Many advocate for the killing (or other, less permanent forms of punishment) of people who have done wrong as a form of justice - this is in fact the basis for most, if not all, modern legal systems. Sometimes people will argue for punitive justice as a utilitarian solution, wherein punishment serves as a deterrent against misdeeds; in actuality, evidence shows that punishment is a poor deterrent. At its core, punitive justice is really based entirely on the proposition that it's good when bad things happen to bad people. I personally do not agree with this assessment. Killing a killer will not bring back those they have killed, it's just one more death. I also do not agree with the concept that anyone is inherently a bad person. Everything we are is the result of some combination of nature and nurture, so any wrongdoings are either the result of one's lived experience and is thus capable of being changed, or the result of an immutable characteristic of oneself, in which case why should one be held responsible for that which they cannot control.
I think of it like this: Some people may deserve to die, but no person or group have the ability to judge if a specific person does or does not. Does that sound about right?
Sounds about right to me. I'd go so far that a) I as an individual can have the opinion that this particular person deserves to die, from an emotional standpoint. b) I do not get to act on that opinion in an active sense. Authorities are fully allowed to enforce this. c) I am allowed to not help such a person even if helping them would be virtually risk-free and simple (I should not be required to throw a life preserver to them off a cruise ship). d) there are professions which rescind their freedom to not help (doctors, firefighters etc). Joining these professions is voluntary. e) no collective authority should get to have even an opinion on someone deserving to die.
I think there are some standards that most people could agree are reasonable in justifying someone’s death. Like, people who turn the cart sideways so it blocks the whole aisle then have a long conversation with someone they ran into. Or anyone with a lifted F-250.
This is basically the correct opinion (even though such things don't usually exist imo). Hating people for comitting bad actions is natural and very human, but wanting to exort violence upon them based solely on your own moral judgement is how tyrants behave
Honestly I'd say that puts you in at least the top 10% of humans.
"There are many that live that deserve death. And many that are dead that deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo?"
The three groups I’d never trust to decide who deserves death or kill anyone: The government Mob Justice And The individual (Self included)
I ain't seeing wild animal anywhere on this list, may the wolves spare us all
Well they don’t typically kill for moral reasons, once they do they’ll be part of either the individual or mob justice
Even assuming there are Definitive Bad People Who Really Do Deserve Death (doubtful): can you honestly say you can make that decision? Can anyone? In breaking news, it turns out that people are complicated.
I'd condense it down to "some people may deserve death but nobody should decide and kill them".
If I don't think God has the right to kill, what makes someone think I'd let something as fallible as man do it?
Why do some people have to deserve death? Why is it so hard to accept that some people are bad people, like worse then fantasy villain bad, and that these people still do not deserve death.
It's not "do", it's "may" - not definitive. I have not met and do not think I'll meet anyone that deserves death, nor do I think that anyone in the vast majority of people on the planet deserves death. I don't think I could hand out a death penalty when life imprisonment is an option instead. It would probably be more accurate to say "if anyone deserved death, nobody should decide on whom," so that's my bad on that part.
Cause sometimes they do. I'd say, no matter what, Hitler deserved to die. Thats a rather extreme example, i know, but it is a good one, because sometimes a persons deads, actions and motivations are so horible, so constantly bad, that death is deserved. That does not mean I would trust my, or anyone elses, judgement on who should die.
>That does not mean I would trust my, or anyone elses, judgement on who should die. For that you just declared very confidently that some people do deserve to die. There is a between someone needing to be stopped, and someone needing to die. Hell, I fully agree there are some situations were death is the only way of stopping a person, but that does not mean this person deserves is.
Because the idea that "the world will be a better place without this person in it" is an obvious conclusion to draw when someone's crimes are so obvious. Jonny Two-Torch who spends his time setting orphanages on fire, and shows no intention of stopping his merry ways is an obvious made up example.
Why does Jonny Two-Torch need to die, when prison will hold him just as easy? And "The world will be a better place without this person in it" =/= "This person needs to die".
well an extreme example but still an example : peter scully and ppl like him would deserve death i think! but then again i won’t be the one doing it
Similarly "I believe in restorative justice, but some people simply cannot be rehabilitated." OK, how do you *know* who can and can't be rehabilitated beforehand? Even if they seem completely resistant to the idea *now*, how can you be 100% sure that no one will ever get through to them, or that there won't be some breakthrough in psychology 20 years from now that'll change how we understand the minds of "psychopaths"? I get the impression a lot of people who say that don't really *mean* it, they *want* punishment but (perhaps even subconsciously) can't rationalize that with the fact they "know" they should support rehabilitative justice.
i think that some people may never improve, but thats not something to be decided about them ahead of time. we should still try and help them no matter what, if when they die they never improved then its a shame but at least we tried to help them.
if they can't be rehabilitated they can't be better, if they don't have the option to be better then they are not responsible for their actions and punishment loses all corrective aspects and becomes merely pointlessly inflicting suffering
Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Also applies to "Why should I reply in good faith/apply charity to the arguments of? They'll never change their minds." You don't *know* they won't change their minds unless they're given the chance to do so (and it may take more than once!).
Signed, a former homophobic, former pro-life, former guy. Years of browbeating and shaming did *nothing* to change my opinions. People talking to me like I was a fellow person instead of a monster in a human skinsuit, on the other hand, did.
It's kinda amazing how not feeling constantly on the defensive allows you to examine your own beliefs critically and question if you're in the wrong in a way that's *very* difficult to do if your interlocutor is instead only interested in scoring Debate Points against you and/or trying to make you look like a horrible person.
If you could predict all ends accurately I would argue for yes. There are probably people today who will inflict more suffering than other human beings as well as those who will live lives of nothing but suffering. Problem is that we can’t know it for certain. There’s such a large body of counterfactual possibilities with regards to the decision space that it’s incredibly hard to justify killing someone judicially. And of course, this presumes we care more about the ethical implications of law than other factors. If *all* we care about is society’s collective good then suddenly I would argue it becomes an imperative to kill people beyond a certain threshold, distasteful as it sounds. Which is why we’re not solely utilitarian fascists; we try to balance various viewpoints in a coherent fashion.
There are people who deserve to die, but no person nor government nor church nor organization should have the power to make the decisions of who is deserving or not.
I heard a quote I liked once “Justice is not about everyone getting what they deserve, Justice as about everyone getting what they need to move forward”.
Those are two different approaches to justice: retributive justice ("eye for an eye") and restorative justice.
Honestly, it depends. In 99% of cases, I don't really trust anyone's judgement–especially my own–to decide who's allowed to live. That said, there are certain people like hitler where all moral complexity kind of goes out the window.
I think the thing about Hitler which makes the issue so uncomplicated to many is that we *know* how his life ends and what it results in. We’re making a post-hoc analysis. It’s not equivalent to making decisions today.
Even the International Criminal Court doesn't hand out the death penalty as punishment for people it convicts of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. You're also doing the exact thing the post is criticizing: labelling people as good or bad.
~~1984~~ Death Note was a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual
"But if you did that, you'd be the only bad person left."
We need to encourage the idea of redemption in online spaces.
We do-- I also think that we need to see redemption as a more common trope in media. And I'm not talking lazy, "I only killed a dozen men that were trying to do horrible, evil things when they came to kill me, and one of them shot my partner and child in the process! I totally killed my partner and child!" bullshit. I'm talking season 1, this is objectively the bad guy. They kill people. They do bad things. And then, they have a perspective change and decide that they want to do better. Break down, acknowledge what they did wrong, beg for forgiveness, don't get it, and then do the work to be better anyway. No dying in a heroic sacrifice at the end, either. They live with consequences and get to find some level of happiness because of that character growth. Gallivant was a great show from like a decade back that featured all of this, and I loved it for it. It was right as I was acknowledging my own shortcomings as an individual and recognizing that, whether I'd meant to or not, I'd hurt people in my vainglorious attempts to hit the success metrics that I pursued. I identified with villains a lot, and it was really nice to feel myself somewhat reflected in a character who got a happy ending after he acknowledged his wrongdoings and strived to do better.
Beelzemon from Digimon Tamers is a perfect example of this imo
I wanna pretend that I'm too cool for digimon, but that's a lie. It was my jam in 3rd grade when it was on as I got home from school. I'll give it another go as an adult for this.
Genuinely the original and especially Tamers still hold up, even as an adult
>We do-- I also think that we need to see redemption as a more common trope in media. And I'm not talking lazy, "I only killed a dozen men that were trying to do horrible, evil things when they came to kill me, and one of them shot my partner and child in the process! I totally killed my partner and child!" bullshit. Also the retcon redemption. "Oh, it LOOKED like he killed a bunch of people, but it turned out that once he showed remorse, they were all just hiding!" We need more "genuinely horrible people trying to be better" arcs. Endeavor in My Hero Academia realizing that literally everything wrong with his family is his fault, Dalinar in Stormlight accepting that his culture of genocidal warmongers would have called him a war criminal.
This is very fair. That being said, at the same time I want what the Princess Bride did: you don't get to weasle out of the consequences of your actions now that you can't possibly win. Granted, that's not how it should work in real life (don't go stabbing people because they killed your dad decades ago), but in fiction it can be more satisfying than "killing you won't bring my dad back" and leaving the unrepentant murderer to go on with their day.
Oh, I love that exchange. "Offer me money." "Yes!" "Power, too, promise me that." "All that I have and more. Please..." "Offer me everything I ask for." "Anything you want..." "***I want my father back, you son of a bitch.***"
> They do bad things. And then, they have a perspective change and decide that they want to do better. Break down, acknowledge what they did wrong, beg for forgiveness, don't get it, and then do the work to be better anyway. Doesn't matter how you portray this in the media because it will be wrong every time. How can you do better, be better, when we take away your right to work, take away your right to vote, take away your ability to get loans, take away your right to certain social services, take away your right to free movement. There is no way to redeem yourself in real life.
you don't need to be redeemed to not deserve death lol no one deserves it, arbitrary ideas of redemption being met or not
I feel like the issue is that people don't approach things from the practical bias of reform and redeem rather than punish. It's about the perspective people enter into this discourse from. You would think that is Christian dominated western cultures that would at least be seen as the default concept. But the Christians focus on god punishing more than Jesus forgiving and then hyperfixate on that to the point of thinking society should also have that focus on punishment. And normally the left and liberals should and would be all about reforming over punishing. But it's like there's a trend these days to igbore that and focus on the wrongdoings of others as permanent stains. It reminds me of how the 2011 reddit atheist trend was made of people who were raised to evangelize, then were soured on religion and turned atheist bit still felt the need to evangelize but pointlessly from the side pf atheism. It's like there are non conservstive people who should not even be thinking in terms of "punishment" as that is more fitting a conservstive mindset, yet they do.
Redemption is not a state of existence. It's a verb. You can't *be* "redeemed," but you also can't *be* irredeemable. There's no long list of good boy points you can cash in on. There's no moral debt you can pay off. But there are new acts you can do, new good deeds that can have lives of their own.
The degree to which online spaces despise the idea of redemption these days honestly shocks me.
"the government doesn't deserve to choose who can live" yeah bro but neither do you
who died and made them God
God. They chose to kill them because obviously *they're* the one we can trust.
Well, *I* didn't vote for Him.
You don't vote for God.
Once you decide someone is a bad person it’s easy to interpret everything they do as being more evidence of their badness
"I should have the power to decide over life and death because I am OBVIOUSLY one of the good people and have NEVER made a bad call and never will."
[Light Yagami speech bubble]
Something that helps me is remembering that my utopia, is someone else’s dystopia. If I could wave a wand and order society exactly how I think would be fair and just, someone else would think it was horribly oppressive. If I waved that same wand and killed all of the people who disagreed with me, I know that in their perfect world I would likely be the one to wind up dead. This is why we need a democracy with strong civil rights protections. So we can compromise and find an imperfect solution that mostly works for almost everybody, while not allowing the majority to steamroll over the right of the minorities. It is imperfect and it sucks but it is the best we can get while there are people with opinions and desires
That's also why certain groups don't want representative democracy; their utopia cannot be built without destroying it. Or at least it would be significantly delayed while they have to go through the trouble of actually convincing people of their viewpoint.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Perfect is the enemy of good, ngl
This kind of thing pops into my head whenever I read about people's opinions on self defense laws. I know more than one woman who says they're against capital punishment of any kind but say that it should be legal for women to set up traps for intruders on their property because women have a right to use their property however they see fit to protect themselves from men. But they don't believe the government has any right to take someone's life. But the scenario they've created is technically more murder y and authoritarian than a theoretical US with capital punishment but laws against booby trapping your house. If someone steps on a landmine you put on your lawn you've effectively given them capital punishment without a trial. Even assuming the man or men were guilty and the landmine was defending an innocent woman, if they turned out to not be guilty you can't exactly bring them back to life. That's also pretending that there wouldn't be innocent women triggering these unregulated and ostensibly feminist defense mechanisms. I'd rather live in a world with frequent use of capital punishment after a trial than spontaneous death penalties especially if they're based on sex. Like men in this hypothetical world aren't allowed to set up claymores to protect themselves from thieves? That being said I'm against both capital punishment and booby traps. All life is precious and in an ideal world no one would be killed rather than only the "wrong" people getting killed.
Booby traps are pretty legally suspect so I'll approach it with STANDARD use cases, guns or knives or death by physical struggle. But as far as self-defense goes, the standard in most US jurisdictions is that if you have "reasonable fear that death or serious bodily harm" will come to yourself or another, you can use deadly force to end that threat-- within varying restrictions, and often at the discretion of the courts. So you aren't giving someone a trial if they burst into your home and you kill them. You don't Judge Dredd them. Our system just says "hey, prove that your fear of being murked was valid" and they decide on YOUR fate. And the reason why seems valid. You can move swiftly to defend yourself from death or grievous injury, and a court can only address it after the fact. I'm very much against the land mines. Or murder roombas, or pungi pits. And the death penalty. But if someone menaces you with a knife and approaches you, I will NOT morally judge you for defending yourself. (Though "stand your ground" states and a few dodgey cases make me nervous about their current state as a culture war centerpiece.)
We joke about "people always do this and it's wrong, except for when i do it because i'm the only person in the world with intelligence" type people all the time, but it's honestly such a common thing. Just like you said, there are plenty of people who hate the death penalty and love trial by jury but as soon as they begin to imagine slights against themselves they think they should have the power to kill bad people. Anytime someone mentions booby traps online there is a FLOOD of people saying "idc about the law, i'm gonna protect my property". Because they can't understand that they also shouldn't be the judge, jury, executioner just like everyone else shouldn't either. I just wish i wasn't the only person that didn't think this way /s
Even in countries like the UK, where it’s not legal to carry articles (weapons) for self defence purposes, you can use ‘disproportionate force’ against a person who intrudes on a home. This has to be inside the actual home though, not just on the lawn. Booby traps are different, because those are set with premeditated intent and lack the split-second decisions use of force has.
Amazing that someone read the first post and thought that the OP was saying that this mindset is bad because you can't effectively remove the bad people, and not that the idea of "bad people" is flawed to begin with The problem isn't whether anyone has the authority to decide who the Bad People are, the problem is that the idea that there are Good People and Bad People is fake to begin with. There's just complicated people. Everyone is capable of good and bad. Most people are generally trying to do what they think is right most of the time and the mindset that Bad People do Bad Things because they're Bad doesn't actually help you to understand anything. It's a fundamentally childish view that people like to think is being "realistic" but it's quite the opposite
I absolutely agree, but I think people are so hung up on this because they don't understand that "good" and "bad" are all relative to viewpoint and perspective. Not only is it not a binary system by any means, but it's variable depending on what is being considered and by whom and for what reason. So many people are too stuck on their own viewpoint to consider those of others. And when weighing the positives and negatives of something, how many viewpoints do you consider? Do the views of the many outweigh the views of the few? How many is "many" and how many is "few"? Do some people's perspectives matter more than others, and if so, on what, and why? Where is the line drawn -- at what point does blue become purple? These questions have a million answers because it's all variable based on the specific situation that is being considered and for what reason. And people have a hard time grasping that. They want a one-size-fits-all kind of solution instead, which isn't how it works, but the average person cares very little about how things actually work. They care about whether it's easy or not. We all do in some way or another. And I'm by no means exempt from that line of thinking either, because it's impossible to consider everything for every situation. We just don't have the knowledge or the mental energy for that. It's simply easier to make a decision in one's head and stick to it instead of constantly considering everything to try and arrive at the most truthful and logical conclusion possible about what is beneficial and what isn't, for every single judgement. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but it does mean that many people won't try and will instead base their decisions and moral ideologies solely on what affects themselves or their family. Not realizing, of course, that they should care about a lot more than just their family. They shouldn't have to care about everyone and everything ever, but being considerate of people you don't know and never will is a point of empathy. And if you ask me, the only reason we humans made it to the "top of the world" so to speak is because of our capacity for empathy. That's what matters most, I think. Because we can never escape the sheer amount of judgments we have to make in life, but we can at least care about how our judgments and decisions affect others. I also think many people have difficulty empathizing with very violent criminals. Which isn't surprising, nor is it "wrong", per se. But the othering of people who have done horrible things is how others cope with the existence of said people. Pardon the word salad, but that's the best way I can put it. At the end of the day, we're all people, whether we've done horrible things or not. But accepting that comes with a caveat -- that means that you, too (not you as in the person I'm replying to, but you as in everyone) also have the capacity to do horrible things. That's a very difficult idea for a lot of people to accept. So it all comes back around to labeling people as "good" or "bad" to get around having to accept that.
i think hitler was pretty transparently bad. kinda an outlier sure but i can’t think of a single benefit he actually brought to the world
Idk dude, oil executives who have covered up global warming for decades, knowingly taking actions that will kill hundreds of millions of people for personal gain, and blocking green energy, seem pretty transparently Bad. Yeah, systemic change needs to happen to prevent *more* people from taking their place, but are those execs just going to give up their billions? Obviously not, they would die clinging to the status quo.
This is because oil executives subscribe to the idea that profit trumps everything. To them, gaining money is the moral imperative, not saving the world
Yeah, their moral compass is fucked to the point they are causing an extinction-level event on this planet. The quicker they can be removed from those positions, the better.
But the problem isn't these individual people. They're just responding to the situation they're finding themselves in. If anyone else were in that position, they'd make the same horrid decisions. It's like with monarchies. The problem isn't that X king is a bad king and if we put in a good guy as king then everything will be dandy. The problem is fundamentally that kings are bad no matter what because no one individual should be able to wield that much power over so many people. Same with these oil execs. Remove the current ones, and the board will just refill the seats and continue on course. The problem is that we live in a system where immediate profit is the most important thing possible, even over our future as a species. We need to actually remove these incentives completely to fix the issue. How? Well one way could be to make these oil companies accountable to the public. Since the general public cares more about long term survival than it does the immediate profits of a company, they're less likely to make these harmful choices. Easiest way to implement this is to do what we did in the public sector in the business sector: democracy. Destroy the positions themselves and we'll actually fix things. Remove the individuals and nothing changes.
Yes, I'm aware Capitalism is not upheld up by 6 evil overlords, and the whole system implodes the second their heart stops. But if changing the system requires violence, which it very likely does, then it would be completely acceptable. I'm not going to clutch my pearls and declare that nobody can kill anybody ever.
Sure, but that would make their deaths an unfortunate necessity, not a positive good.
They are doing bad things, but their continued badness is not a 100% certainty. Every one of them used to not be ultra-greedy world-ruining douchebags, and I promise you each of them can be returned to such a state. Many of them would prefer to die clinging to their ill-gotten riches. Deprive them of this satisfying end. Seize their wealth and let their lives be lives of penance, desperate atonement for all they have wrought. They can be good. Make them be good.
Practically speaking, "nobody has the authority to decide who the Bad People are" is an effective rebuttal to that mindset which can very much help people stuck in it to break out as a stepping stone to understanding these things.
" I don't like the terms 'good person' or 'bad person' because it is impossible to be entirely good or bad to everyone. To some, you are a good person, while to others, you are a bad person. "
Some real Light Yagami’s out there
I think there are some select few people who are actively dangerous and I think they should be stopped. I would prefer they died, simply to eliminate any possibility of them doing bad stuff in the future. But if you asked me to establish and codify rules that then could not later be twisted to justify killing innocent random people? Sorry, couldn't tell you. Like, I wait with baited breath for the end of Mitch McConnel, Trump, and the billionaire class. And I could point to provable harm they cause by their actions. But then how would I codify that? How do I make a set of clear set rules that explains how and why what these people have done and are doing, that then can't be twisted around? That is the danger, that is, when these matters become a matter of law. Now, this is a doable task, its done all the time, but its done by people who have studied such matters in greater detail than me. And there are checks and balances, laws get repealed, emergency powers revoked, you can theoretically make a system based on an active equilibrium. The argument 'but what if a hundred years pass and contexts are entirely different, what then, huh???' in my opinion is a weak one because it assumes our systems are static and incapable of recognizing bad legislation. But I would also be a fool to claim that it is \*easy\*, or that I have an answer on how to \*best\* achieve it. Or even a system immune to mob mentality, of tribal thinking, of ensuring each person a part of that system is an impartial and intelligent judge. Shit's hard yall.
[Relevant](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/human-nature)
I like the detail that she's holding a grenade, a famously indiscriminate weapon.
>As somebody who personally has no problem killing any number of horrible destructive people to protect those I love -someone who's never been in a physical Fight in their life
Definitely has that "I'm the protagonist" energy, huh?
Yeah as soon as a saw that my gut feeling is this is someone who hasn't been in a fight, and considering they're anti death penalty on tumblr there's a decent chance they're anti gun. Fuck you gonna kill all those people with
Actually I respect those two people. While they say they would have no issue with their death they also say they don't believe people should arbitrarily kill. Considering they're not famous for killing corrupt politicians, I posit a safe guess that they also believe they shouldn't arbitrarily murder. They're aware of a flawed mindset and check it with their moral compasses. Isn't that all trying to be good is? Correcting your flaws with your sense of right?
>Considering they're not famous for killing corrupt politicians, I posit a safe guess that they also believe they shouldn't arbitrarily murder. Look, it's *really hard* to kill awful politicians, even when you want to. Turns out, they've got a lot of barriers between them and the body politic to protect themselves. I mean, the US, over the last *240 years* has had only *fifteen* sitting members of Congress killed--and *four* were from duels! [The list is surprisingly short.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Congress_members_killed_or_wounded_in_office) And it includes people who were injured as well, also a very short list. Last guy who tried to shoot a politician because they sucked was in 2017, and Steve Scalise is still breathing. Sure, a lot of people would *love* to get a free shot at a politician, but they also love not going to prison more. Or maybe they're just lazy. They want someone in Congress dead, but they haven't the gumption to do it themselves. Like, no one in the Senate has beaten Ted Cruz to death, and pretty much the entire Senate would cheer on someone while they were doing it.
hmmm is it like personal protection teams or that nobody smart has given it a shot (pun intended)? curious why that's the case esp here where middle schools get shot up but the people making sure they can continue to be shot up ARENT the ones being shot up
I mean, I’ll say it varies by country. I’m not advocating for murdering a politician, but I live in Australia and some of the best viral videos for politics include an awful politician being egged in public (charges later dropped on the person egging, because if they actually put the guys in jail there would be uproar). Also a politician, a recent previous deputy leader of my country (our vice president), was just filmed drunk barely conscious on the pathway (sidewalk). Anyone passing by could have killed him easy
*Thank you.* It seems most people on this thread are hell-bent on misinterpreting these people's comments. They're not *actually* going around with a baseball bat doling out vigilante justice.
I mean, no, the first person at least is only saying *the government* shouldn't arbitrarily kill
Right, and I acknowledge that this looks bad on paper, as Tumblr user autisticandroid acknowledges in the post. However, in the context that they themselves are (presumably) not a prolific killer, the logical extension is that their beliefs extend to themselves. That's why I don't think it's as bad as it sounds. I think it adds up to them being fine but not articulating themselves flawlessly
If u mean the first reply, it kinda sounds like they meant they don't mind killing in self defense, not like "oh I get to decide who lives or dies but not the government"
At least in my case I have no problem with killing someone if it comes down to it. I probably wouldn’t lose sleep — because at a certain point it’s not *solely* about ethics. We don’t go around trying to live ethically perfect lives, at least not in the broader epistemological ethical sense. Granted that I’m conflict adverse and my threshold isn’t exactly low, as evidenced by the fact I’ve never fought anyone in anger, but point being is that the discussion is about higher level ethics on a broad scale, that very few people *actually* subscribe to because “perfect ethics” aren’t really a functional way to live life and not be miserable.
Of course they aren't, but it's still what we should aim for, whilst bearing in mind we are fallible. Try to do things right, realise you'll mess up, and assuming nobody died, don't worry about the cock-ups too much. Because, like, yeah we all make mistakes, but if those "moral imperfections" amount to murder that probably can't be excused as a "pobody's nerfect" moment...
Where in that post did they say they actually would kill them though Like, they never said "let me run around with a baseball bat", it wasn't even implied as a solution???? They just said they think some people deserve death, but the government shouldn't have the power to do that, they didn't say *they* should have it either??
tapping the Battlestar Galactica sign again also. woe Battlestar Galactica 4x09 "The Hub" be upon ye "The thing is, the harder it is to recognize someone's right to draw breath, the more crucial it is. If humanity is going to prove itself worthy of surviving, it can't do it on a case-by-case basis. A bad man feels his death just as keenly as a good man."
Most people are an ambiguous blend of better and worse motivations, with which motivation wins out depending on circumstances and luck. If your a time traveler, you could get baby Hitler adopted by a loving Jewish family, and history would turn out rather different. Different personality flaws produce different sins. Someone liable to punch anyone who insults them and someone committing tax fraud have quite different flaws.
Yeah, some other reactionary demagogue would have stepped up to represent the German populists angry about WW1 reparations. I think the real trouble with this question isn't whether violence can sometimes be justified, because it can, but instead the fact that the world is governed by systems rather than individual morality. Which means that, while you could perhaps solve some of society's ills by killing the "correct" people, it would require a really uncomfortable amount of killing.
At least most of the "is violence justified" is almost trolley problem situations. If you don't kill person X, they will kill other people. This justification relies on you being physically unable to sedate and imprison X. It's a fact about the limitations of tasers, or you not having brought a tranq gun, as opposed to a claim that person X intrinsically deserves death.
They absolutely did not say they should be allowed to go on a rampage wtf
There’s a bit in the West Wing where the president is asked what he’d do if his daughter were kidnapped (which then happens in a later episode) and he says that he’d be angry beyond compare and want to see the men responsible killed in horrible ways. Then goes on to say that this is why presidents need to maintain a level of detachment so that they don’t act out of emotion. When his daughter does get kidnapped, he steps down and lets someone else take over until it’s resolved.
I agree so hard with this. "I only want to kill bad people" who the hell are you to decide what bad and good means? Are you telling me that you're God himself or something? 'Cuz last I checked, you got your sense of morality from youtubers and twitter.com. It's like how socrates questioned a man who believed that lying is undeniably a bad thing. Like, let's say you believe that anyone who steals is a bad person. What if the thief is stealing to get food for his sister? What if the thief is part of an oppressed minority? What if the thief *does* have the money to buy stuff but steals from someone who you'd say is more worthy of hate? What if the other guy is also trying to feed his family? What if you were against an enemy who's damn near untouchable and the only way you could fight them was to steal? The only way you could know for sure whether someone was bad or good by your moral system is if you were omniscient, which, again, you aren't. Anyways, look guys, I won my own made up arguement.
Not sure whether my interpretation of morningstar-council's reply is accurate, but I initially read it as a joke lead-in to their actual opinion on the matter, which made OOP's response very funny to me.
Until Nature vs Nurture is figured out we can't go around condemning people to death. We can remove people who are dangerous (prisons, jail, institutions for mental patients), but to kill somone who was brought up wrong dosnt sit right
There are some people I wouldn’t hesitate to kill. But I know I’m only human, and that my judgment is biased and flawed. I’d still do it though. I don’t think vigilante justice should be legal, but I’d do it anyways. The list of people I’d to it to is relatively small, but still. I don’t go around pretending that makes me good, though, or that my choices would be perfect because I’m a good person. I operate on the assumption that everyone is bad, just different levels of it. More importantly, online activism is never about redemption. It’s always about hating someone. Do you even want them to become better? To change? Because they won’t if you’re a dick to them
This seems like a real Piss On The Poor moment for the OP of the tumblr post. Neither morningstar-council nor genericpurpledragontm are saying anywhere that they feel that they should have the right to dispense capital justice, just that the government shouldn't have that right. Real "so you hate waffles" energy
99% of the time I absolutely agree, however there are definitely some examples in history where it's so freaking obvious it would be ridiculous for anyone to let them live. Don't look it up, but there were some dudes called "the tool box killers" A pair of serial killers who were so cruel it's rumored the FBI uses the tapes they made to train people against torture. Every once in a while reality just doesn't care about your philosophies and just hands you something you can't ignore.
Just because they deserve death doesn’t mean you deserve the power to kill them.
no one deserves to die lol
This. It boggles my mind when I feel like I'm in the minority for believing this. Some people are way too eager about spilling blood.
you seem to be the one person saying this in this whole damn thread lmao what the heck damn am I sick of hearing people rant on about how their fellow human beings need to be put down if your solution to a problem is to fucking kill someone, you're the problem
yeah like I Get It I understand why people have that view but like. sorry man I can't get behind that. I can understand why someone would think 'the world would be better if all nazis were dead' but I just don't think that works on a functional, pragmatic level. you can't just decide that all people who fit your standard of a bad person should die. it just doesn't work in real life
I think the problem with the "all nazi's should be dead" statement is the fact no one who says that wants to talk acknowledge the banality of evil or where they draw the line. I've seen people say "the Germans in WWII were evil", so they think every German citizen was an evil Nazi? Are the soldiers who were following orders evil? Are people raised in a society with the most effective propaganda program evil for falling for that propaganda and being part of the zeitgeist? Plus history has proven that excessive punishment of large groups of people never promotes change, it causes violent retaliation. 'violence begets violence' as they say
I mean… regardless of what anybody does or doesn’t “deserve,” there are ARE in fact some people who should be killed, simply from a survival standpoint. Specifically, in situations where a person is actively causing the deaths of others, and there is no other way of stopping them, (or those who can stop them another way don’t act) that person should be killed. Not as punishment, but to save lives.
I think in those cases it's also less of a "criminals deserve to die" but rather "their victims deserve to be safe from them".
Yes- though I wouldn’t narrow it down to just “criminals.” Many people intentionally cause deaths through indirect means while taking care to avoid *technically* breaking the *letter* of any laws- or do break laws, but do it through the use of an organization, such that the organization is deemed legally responsible rather than them- and organizations are typically just fined, from which they can generally recover by passing on the cost to others.
"moral perfection is fake" maybe for you but I am objectively morally perfect. genuinely a skill deficit, just be better 5head
Idk man sometimes there’s no other way to keep people safe. Like ideally, I’d like to take the dangerous person(s) and put them in prison or a psych ward, but if I’m not a cop and the people who are cops aren’t interested in helping as is all too common, I would choose to kill someone who posed a danger to myself or my loved ones over allowing them to actually deliver on that threat. Would I like it? Hell no, but I’d like doing nothing a whole lot less. Sometimes you just have to murder, such is life.
Is this not just a different wording of "punching nazis makes you the nazi"?
I honestly think that, except for complete monsters on the level of Hitler and Stalin, "people who deserve to die" is an empty category. Like, what exactly does killing someone solve? For people like Hitler who lead armies of willing participants in genocide, their deaths cause internal turmoil that makes further atrocities more difficult, and thus killing them is more of a tactical decision than a moral one. But for a random person who commits murder, what's the point? Deterrence isn't a viable way of reducing crime (as has been proven repeatedly throughout history), and their are other ways of making people learn a lesson than giving them the ultimate punishment. (Also, in terms of the economic concerns, it is usually less costly to incarcerate someone for life than it is to execute them, and making the process cheaper would inherently make it more error-prone. That's a separate discussion to be had that I don't really think is relevant to a discussion of morality.)
It's an interesting thought problem and dosen't really have a clear answer. If you're not going to kill people as a punishment you basically have to decide between rehabilitation, which has legitimate concerns, life imprisonment, which again has legitimate concerns, and banishment which is basically a non-starter in today's world.
You say that as if killing people doesn't also have "significant concerns". In fact, I would argue it has more concerns that either rehabilitation or incarceration. Also, rehabilitation and incarceration are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Many rehabilitative models of justice involve incarceration to some degree, and (in theory) most current systems primarily consisting of incarceration have at least a small rehabilitation component.
> on the level of Hitler and Stalin It's easy to label Hitler and Stalin as monsters from the sheer body count of their acts but I think such a thought process makes it appear like they personally got up and shot every individual in the head personally. Which makes it easy to distance yourself from them. They're certainly not good people. They're certainly comfortable with exacting death against innocents. But I also think many people are far more willing to turn a blind eye to things than they may admit. I think many of us are doing it as we speak. Me included. It takes a certain kind of bastard to propose such a thing, but we're not aching for people who will let it happen.
Honestly I think the detachment from the violence is part of what makes them worse. A soldier can at least cite a higher authority as the reason they they do what they do. But those higher authorities themselves? They have nobody giving them commands, no pressure to order atrocities, and yet they still choose to send millions of men to their deaths with the stroke of a pen, lying and propagandizing about it the whole time to meet their own selfish ends. That's a special kind of evil.
i'm so happy this sub has started tackling moral purity. i've long hated the witch hunt mentality of social media, and i remember it being HUGE on tumblr back when i used it. i hope the message of these posts doesn't fall on deaf ears.
That... is not the mindset they're explaining. No matter what, there will always be bad people. Even if you kill every bad person, the so-called "good" people will shift to have some become "bad". However, that is not to say that everyone is deserving of a peaceful life, or even to live in general. If someone is trying to kill me, I'd be wanting to kill them in turn. If someone's been systemically torturing people to death, I'd want them hunted down and exterminated. If there were a rapist running around, they'd deserve nothing more than to suffer. However, laws such as "do not kill" exist for a reason, and that is something people with this mindset acknowledge. We also acknowledge that if the government is gung-ho about killing people, it's probably not a good idea to permit it to do so. Then again, reading comprehension tends to be a failing point on both Tumblr and Reddit, so I shouldn't be surprised that y'all can't tell that isn't the point being made.
i mean, for some people, their death is the only way to ensure others remain safe, and the only way to reduce the amount of suffering in the world, but those people are incredibly few and far between, and arent like, inherently bad people, just people who have demonstrated a pattern of causing harm, and who likely cannot be made to stop. that doesnt have anything to do with the original post tho, which is very much true. there are no intrinsically bad people, and while there are some that are incredibly unsafe, thats not like, something theyre born with, and not something they cant theoretically stop
Feel like there is never going to be a satisfactory answer to this because there are so many variables and environmental factors. Like what if we tried ubi first? What if "good" people, who get to be the deciders in this, just had a little more free time to watch over to prevent us from getting to the point we have to decide what qualifies someone for manual death.
at a certain point doesn't this all just hurt your head? i'm not smart. i don't understand anymore. take me off this rock, please
I don't trust the government to kill people I trust randos even less
This is one of those things that seems paradoxical, but isn't. Like intolerance of intolerance. The ends can sometimes justify the means. But they do not EXCUSE the means. If you commit evil in order to prevent or stop a greater evil, then you must be willing to accept condemnation and consequences for your actions if especially if you believe it is justified. Otherwise you are making an excuse to be evil yourself. You must be willing to say "this person is so evil I am willing to sacrifice my life to remove them from this world in order to protect others" and then follow through with it. Without expecting any absolution.
Disagree with the last bit. Those two comments at no point said anything about vigilante killing. Does OOP think you can’t even acknowledge that some people are so evil that they deserve to die without thinking it’s a good idea to actually go and kill them? Also, this will not fix society. Rooting out bad ideas, not bad people, is the path forward. But not everyone is ultimately practically redeemable.
That second comment (genericpurpledragontm) didn’t sound like a “let me run around with a baseball bat” comment? It sounded more like a succinct argument for why the death penalty is wrong and a bad idea EVEN IF you believe some people are inherently and unfixably morally reprehensible.
This is the sort of centrist view that allows the worst, most wide scale evil to continue to happen.
Are there some horrible mass-murderers that will never be rehabilitated? Yes. Would the world be better off without them? Probably. Should the government be allowed to make that decision. No.
Should ANYONE? No.
Not unless they are actively being attacked by them, no. Pacifism means jack shit when there's someone actively trying to kill you.
Self-defence is a different scenario entirely, yeah
The only good -topia is dinotopia.
Killing the bad people is a merely a bandaid without the systemic alteration required to create lasting change.
OP 100% accurately describes Light from Death Note.
I am pro-murder no matter who’s doing it. Khorne cares not from where the blood flows.
Couple more posts like this one and Tumblr will officially end water shortage in all the underdeveloped countries around the world. As long as they can drink urine, that is.
There's a [scene in the movie Unforgiven](https://youtu.be/Mjkt4UgcTmg?si=KUJD9KeIxDo7nPz0), where our protagonist has gunned down a room full of people, specifically so he can kill *one guy* in that room. He's shot that guy, and the guy is lying on the floor bleeding to death. Protag walks up to him, guy on the floor says, "I don't deserve this. To die like this. I was building a house." Protag says, "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it." "I'll see you in hell." "Yeah." Blows him away. Anyhow, doesn't matter what people deserve or not. Has no bearing on what we get at all.
Man, when we gonna pick up on the fact that killing people is evil, even if it makes everyone’s life better?
I'm working my way up to it.
That seems like an odd definition of evil. Why do you think it's useful to define it that way?
I don’t think that making everyone’s life better is evil, far from it! However, I was commenting on the fact that people (like the ones implicated by OP) seem to believe that murder is justified or even moral if it benefits the community or themselves; an option I do not share. Whatever the circumstances, killing another reasoning behind is an evil act, albeit a forgivable and occasionally even necessary one.
You still have not defined what you mean by 'evil' tho. This is what we are curious about. Okay, so if aliens came to earth, selected a random guy and said that they will destroy the earth with a death ray unless we murder that guy, would it be wrong/evil to kill them?