Hey, everyone! This thread and accompanying poll is A FUN PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION for unsavory people. IT IS NOT DISCUSSING, PLANNING, OR ENCOURAGING REAL-LIFE CRIMINAL ACTIVITY. The hypothetical activities described herein are FICTIONAL.
The Gutter does not endorse doing anything that will upset any government anywhere, ever. Even a really evil one. Laws are laws, you guys. If we were capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong, government wouldn’t even need to EXIST. Think about it. We’re basically retarded children standing on a freeway.
We are not discussing committing real-world crimes. Any discussion constituting conspiracy to commit real-world crimes are not endorsed by the author and will be deleted.
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Qualifiers:
In this imaginary scenario, you are free from LEGAL consequences ONLY. You are not granted immunity from whatever spiritual, social, or emotional consequences might arise from this situation.
The individual does not pose any present threat to you or anyone else; this scenario does not constitute self-defense or the immediate prevention of harm.
You must take direct responsibility for ending the individual’s life. Assume you have whatever resources you need to be successful in whatever means you choose - the person may be delivered to you fully restrained, imprisoned, etc.- but YOU must kill the individual yourself (by whatever means you have chosen).
Assume that no one else will be directly (physically) harmed or killed in the process.
Your role in the individual’s death may be publicly known or secret; your choice. Regardless, you are immune from any form of criminal prosecution.
You will not directly profit in any way from this person’s death- no life insurance scams, bounty hunting, etc.
As part of your legal immunity for this act, any violent act to prevent or retaliate against your actions would be considered illegal.
Please avoid any references to real-world entities or situations in your comments that could be interpreted as criminal behavior. When in doubt, preface your comment with a phrase like, “In an imaginary universe…” so that the entirely speculative, not-real nature of your comment is clear.
COMMENTS REQUEST: Whether your answer is “Yes” or “No,” your most interesting commentary will be “Why?”
Oct 15, 2022·edited Oct 15, 2022Liked by Guttermouth
With all the caveats and terms or conditions, as far as I understand there's no reason for the act apart from "I want to", and for me that is not enough when it comes to killing, be it human or otherwise.
So that's a no.
Edit: interesting to see the great difference in answers/comments with regards to the different questions. Is it due to the nature of the question or something unrelated, I have to wonder.
As any half-way competent teacher can testify to, writing questions so that people read them the intended way is tricky. I've seen a few funny mistakes:
"Name and explain five key events that decided how World War 2 ended"
Seems straightforward if it's an essay-style exam, right? Only, this colleague meant five single battles. So some students wrote in the five battles mentioned in the book, and the ambitious ones wrote mini-essays on the back and in the margins, about oil fileds and the African theatre, and radar and so on.
And then there was an almighty row when the ambitious kids got 0 points for that question.
My main point here was I didn't want people to waste their choice or answer JUSTIFYING the death itself. Stripped of that, it is a much less comfortable "once in a lifetime offer."
I personally have a relatively short list of people I would choose from because I believe they represent vast and deeply unpunished evil that they will continue to perpetuate as long as they continue to live (and I'm pretty sure they'd end me if I were significant enough to ever stand meaningfully in their way). My list would be nothing more than a vigilantism fantasy football league.
That's sort of what threw me off when parsing the question. I could think of a few people who deserved death as a penalty for past evil and as prophylactic against future evil, but I wasn't quite sure how that fit. I figured chances were pretty good that given the opportunity for hanging for past evil or just exiling in a hole in some remote prison somewhere I would opt for exile, although it might be a close run thing.
That's exactly why I don't care about justifications. I have REASONS, I stand by the consequences, I simply aren't willing to play the extremely long odds going against the legal and law enforcement infrastructure that protects such people.
And hey, we may end up seeing good validity testing of Nukemap in our lifetime. :)
In your example, was there anything more to the question than what you wrote there, that might have indicated to students that they meant 5 single battles? I wouldn't have gotten that and would probably have named a couple of battles and a couple of Allied decisions and deaths of key Axis individuals and such.
In swedish, it was written so the first interpretation could be "things" or "events", with no clue to which one was intended. Sort of how "Can you set the table?" can be understood in more than way.
So some of them thought it was the stuff enabling the battles and operations in the first place which were of interest.
I done a right blunder myself once, when I wrote as an essay-length reading comprehension question for 18-year olds having read 'Angela's Ashes' like this:
"In your opinion, using your own words, what do you think the main character should have done in (list of situations from the book)?"
Logically, any answer is correct, thanks to me blundering when putting the question together.
Wolfman, if you were in the situation of a downed aircraft in the winter Andie's, with no food and you could not be rescued for weeks or months, then I am sure you would revert to what the Donner Party did and that was to eat the dead to survive so the answer would have to be yes in this case, that said, under normal circumstances I would not eat another human. In the hypothetical question concerning killing someone for the greater good, I would, and hypothetically I would start with most of the so-called foundations from the Rockefeller's to Gates, and all the way to Fauci and co. as they perpetrated a genocidal, eugenic plan on the entire world population. I do this in my mind only LOL. Oh, by the way in case any of you have not gotten the word, there is a film based on the book by Robert Kennedy Jr. The real Anthony Fauci that must be watched to see what these transhuman, eugenics pushing monsters are doing and have done, verry important. This will make you want to kill for the sake of Humanity. If any of you think Kennedy is anti-vaccine, then you don't know him at all, and live in the matrix. Take the red pill.
When I lived in NH and my daughter lived in Jersey City, I would make the drive occasionally, always (of course) through Connecticut, and when GPS said the Merritt/Wilbur Cross was the fastest route, I had to brace myself for the ahole Left Lane Louies who would impede my travels for 90 minutes.
In Twitter my "handle" or whatever is "GetOutOfTheLeftLane!".
Oct 15, 2022·edited Oct 15, 2022Liked by Guttermouth
Average leftist: Of course not, I am a civilized modern human being and killing is uncivilized and unnecessary in every circumstance.
Also leftist: I'd stay and explain further but I am late for my abortion appointment.
Also leftist: Conservatives are the devil, they deserve to be killed for their views and it should be legal.
Me: Yes, yes I would. But it wouldn't be a random person, it would be the man who while driving drunk killed my wife and son and got a prison sentence which didn't result in his eventual death behind bars.
Oct 15, 2022·edited Oct 15, 2022Liked by Guttermouth
I feel guilty enough when I occasionally entertain the thought of my son's dad " not making it back from a climbing trip".... I automatically say " Clear, Cancel and Avert!" Out loud, and try my best to mean also thinking " I'd be happy enough to be shut of him by him finding a hippy swingers commune to run off to or something... just leave me the house ...Karma will see to him eventually..."
Tho I admit I have a hard time thinking that karma will be swift enough for the likes of TPTB that are culling us ...
The thing about Karma....I want a very select group of people to experience Karma NOW, in this life. Where we can watch it. And enjoy watching it, by the way.
Oct 15, 2022·edited Oct 15, 2022Liked by Guttermouth
I believe in right to self preservation. I believe in Just War Theory of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Most wars are not just. Currently I believe many, many civil wars WILK be breaking out, most having a very just side... I pray for utter defeat of new world order
I believe many deserve military tribunal and rope for crimes against humanity in coercing experimental vaccine.
Note... It's not experimental, it's failed. It's designed to kill
I've not checked lately.. If video calls Francis POPE they're not Catholic but are idiots. Francis has committed so many different death penalty offenses I feel like Fred Sanford just to thinking about little deceiver and murderer.
Spicey, thank you for asking. The Catholic Church had "modernists" , heretics who probably believe that they are Catholic on the inside... They deny vast amounts of Catholic teaching.
Then communists on the outside.. They put over 1000 men into Catholic seminaries... These evil men rose to positions of power, some (fake) Cardinals ..
Then you have lukewarm, apathetic Catholics who failed to pray Rosary. Our Lady of Fatima was not heeded.
So God allowed1958 takeover of Vatican.
You probably have never met a Catholic and never seen a Catholic church... Most are fake, not Catholic...
Well, you're a real spoilsport. Not even the tiniest hang-my-hat-on-the-splinter excuse for doing it?
Very sad to confess I can't do it, then.
One of my HS friends was a really gifted shoplifter and I admired her talents enormously. I think I was about 15 when I showed my own great boldness by filching a packet of seeds from my neighborhood supermarket. But I knew I'd never have her talents, so I went for a lesser version of the sport.
In those days the price labels on stuff in the supermarkets were pretty easy to peel off so I did price adjustments on stuff I wanted. I was pretty careful in choosing items that the register clerk might be a little less routinely familiar with, like say peanut butter. I changed price on stuff like brie and not to a ridiculous extent.
The only stuff I stole outright were magazines because I'd found such an easy trick I couldn't resist. You pick one up from the racks by the register when you first go into the store, and walk around with it under your arm and they think it's yours, that you must've come into the store with it.
I was only caught once with the price-changing; the clerk glared at me indignantly and said that wasn't the price and it really cost blah blah and I said indignantly that I didn't want it then!
But I was never caught otherwise. Eventually I stopped because of that Higher Power thingy. It was wrong and we both knew it. Couldn't pretend otherwise. If I couldn't afford brie--well, fuck me. Can't have it then.
So how the hell am I gonna get around this? Feel quite regretful to have to decline the opportunity, really.
It is made a very careful special offer so it is asking precisely the right question and not another question, and your regretful declination is a perfectly cromulent response.
I declare proudly that I am assuredly the only one of your readership--perhaps of the readership of every Stack I subscribe to--who has never watched the Simpsons.
(With the strange timing of every overseas sojourn I took, and various other moves and disruptions, the gaps in my cultural knowledge really can be summed up as "I don't know what the fuck anyone is talking about mostly ever.")
For a good many years I think it was a valuable and genuinely quality cultural touchstone. It hasn't been for a long time.
I spent about half of my childhood forbidden from consuming most forms of TV and modern music. It led to a similar gap that I found a little easier to close in young adulthood and explains why Brothermouth still has about a decade of cultural references that bounce off me.
Oct 15, 2022·edited Oct 15, 2022Liked by Guttermouth
In absolute and 100% serious response I'm really glad you were able to escape and make your own life as you choose to shape it.
It's been quite the revelation to me over these many many decades of realizing that my parents were in fact only average dreadful, and it's just their failure to conform to the purported great strengths of our cultural tribe that made me think I was uniquely afflicted.
For years I used to describe myself as being one o' them Appalachian Baptist Jews and I swear nobody ever got the joke; not much good having a go-to line that goes splat when you go to it.
My parents absolutely meant well in the above example and I don't hate them for it. There were way more damaging things they did that were not good-intended but were a product of their own problems (mental illness, alcoholism, and just a plain old deeply unhappy marriage with one weird kid to triangulate on).
A lot of the weird non (intentionally) abusive aspects of my upbringing were due to my parents taking me to child psychologists and being given extremely weird advice about "how one ought to raise a gifted child so they aren't a psychopath/narcissist (because this is somehow a specific risk of intelligence)" and so went through the entirely secular modern-religion version of "she's got the devil in her."
Which is why I have a uniquely deep hatred of pop psychology (fuck you, Dr. Spock).
Oct 15, 2022·edited Oct 15, 2022Liked by Guttermouth
Strange thing. I have a paperback copy of Dr. Spock that must date from my own infancy (it's so fragile now I've got it in a protective sleeve), and when I had my own kid I read it, as well as some of the au courant stuff, and I was really surprised at how absolutely tender and compassionate and sensible I found him over all the others. (Of course I ended up taking no one's advice on anything because I discovered to my extreme amazement that my instincts were superior to anything any credentialed moron tried to tell me.)
So I wonder if there was a sort of telephone game going on where the actual words became quite corrupted in transmission.
Other than you seeming to be aggravatingly much smarter than I am, we got some parallels in the family cauldron.
SCA: I’ve never watched the Simpson, nor The Kardashians, nor Game Of Thrones, nor Seinfeld. The list goes on and on……..I must really suck. (I must admit, The Big Bang Theory was hilarious!)
We exist to experience life. Outside of euthanasia due to illness at the person's specific request, your second qualifier renders the action pure evil. Even if you didn't state the third qualifier, I have no right to take away another human being's ability to learn and experience., never mind their very life. I have no right take any tangible thing away from another person in the first place. Taking something that cannot be replaced is especially egregious even for things that are not the life of another.
Your fourth qualifier removes one of the most important aspects of human life and that is our relationships to one another (by stating "physically"). I've always said, no matter how hard it is to die, that dying is ultimately the easy part. The hard part is for those (family and friends) that remain. They say that, in many cases, people don't really ever get over loss or separation, they just learn how to better deal with it. Such an act deeply harms others in an irreversible manner.
Well, I answered yes without reading the qualifiers. Should have scrolled down more. The first thing that popped into my mind was the ability to hypothetically eliminate a pedophile without any legal repercussions.
I thought that I would change my answer to No with the qualifier that they do not pose an immediate threat to anyone but then thought about a hypothetical pedophile that received a slap on the wrist for abusing a child and decided Yes was a good answer.
Then I thought perhaps the hypothetical person who handed a light sentence to the hypothetical child rapist might be a better hypothetical choice to hypothetically torture to death over a long period of time in a public setting.
It would be a No for me if there wasn't a good reason but in an imaginary universe where injustice runs rampant a little public display of justice would be a good enough reason for me.
I had to think about this. When I was in my younger years, I might have said YES. Today, I”m 70, older and wiser, my answer is NO!! But if someone was a threat to me/my life, I would have no problem using my gun. But in this scenario, I can’t use that situation.
I believe if one kills another human being (not self defense), one is eliminating that soul prematurely, which has negative ramifications.
I also believe that when a soul is severed prematurely, that soul WILL come back and have to do “its’ job” again. This is one reason I was not pro death penalty. The soul must learn!
Killing is wrong. Why would I want to become that which I despise?
Quite a set of caveats! As I understand your points, my rationale should be, "because I want to" or "because its Tuesday". I submit that there can be, and far too frequently is, a moral justification to end the life of another human. Evil exists. And often walks about on it's hind legs.
Can I look a child rapist/murderer in the eye and press the button or pull the trigger to end it's life? Of course. Will I feel "good" abut having done so? No. But I will feel exactly the same sense of completion I get when I have to shoot a rabid dog. Killing the dog is not punishment. It is merely putting the poor creature out of it's misery. And helps prevent the spread of rabies. Killing a child rapist is not punishment. It puts a poor insane animal out of it's misery. And helps prevent further child rapes or murders.
With all the caveats and terms or conditions, as far as I understand there's no reason for the act apart from "I want to", and for me that is not enough when it comes to killing, be it human or otherwise.
So that's a no.
Edit: interesting to see the great difference in answers/comments with regards to the different questions. Is it due to the nature of the question or something unrelated, I have to wonder.
You correctly interpret the caveats and understand the question 100% as intended.
The nature of the question is calibrated precisely to be interesting in the way you have observed. :)
Hurra!
As any half-way competent teacher can testify to, writing questions so that people read them the intended way is tricky. I've seen a few funny mistakes:
"Name and explain five key events that decided how World War 2 ended"
Seems straightforward if it's an essay-style exam, right? Only, this colleague meant five single battles. So some students wrote in the five battles mentioned in the book, and the ambitious ones wrote mini-essays on the back and in the margins, about oil fileds and the African theatre, and radar and so on.
And then there was an almighty row when the ambitious kids got 0 points for that question.
My main point here was I didn't want people to waste their choice or answer JUSTIFYING the death itself. Stripped of that, it is a much less comfortable "once in a lifetime offer."
I personally have a relatively short list of people I would choose from because I believe they represent vast and deeply unpunished evil that they will continue to perpetuate as long as they continue to live (and I'm pretty sure they'd end me if I were significant enough to ever stand meaningfully in their way). My list would be nothing more than a vigilantism fantasy football league.
That's sort of what threw me off when parsing the question. I could think of a few people who deserved death as a penalty for past evil and as prophylactic against future evil, but I wasn't quite sure how that fit. I figured chances were pretty good that given the opportunity for hanging for past evil or just exiling in a hole in some remote prison somewhere I would opt for exile, although it might be a close run thing.
Yeah. I know the feeling. When I let that one run its own course, I might just use Nukemap instead of a list.
Justifications, we can all dream up.
That's exactly why I don't care about justifications. I have REASONS, I stand by the consequences, I simply aren't willing to play the extremely long odds going against the legal and law enforcement infrastructure that protects such people.
And hey, we may end up seeing good validity testing of Nukemap in our lifetime. :)
In your example, was there anything more to the question than what you wrote there, that might have indicated to students that they meant 5 single battles? I wouldn't have gotten that and would probably have named a couple of battles and a couple of Allied decisions and deaths of key Axis individuals and such.
In swedish, it was written so the first interpretation could be "things" or "events", with no clue to which one was intended. Sort of how "Can you set the table?" can be understood in more than way.
So some of them thought it was the stuff enabling the battles and operations in the first place which were of interest.
I done a right blunder myself once, when I wrote as an essay-length reading comprehension question for 18-year olds having read 'Angela's Ashes' like this:
"In your opinion, using your own words, what do you think the main character should have done in (list of situations from the book)?"
Logically, any answer is correct, thanks to me blundering when putting the question together.
I’m surprised that only 23% of us are potential killers.
Only 23% of us are ADMITTED potential killers.
As well there should have been an almighty row!
ive just been watching Dexter and now im asked this!
there are occasions in life where you have to be capable of being a monster
to quote jordan peterson 'you should be a monster, an absolute monster, and then you should learn how to control it.'
Yeah, I train to be a monster and teach others to bring it to the front when needed- however- never in anything but self defense.
Wolfman, if you were in the situation of a downed aircraft in the winter Andie's, with no food and you could not be rescued for weeks or months, then I am sure you would revert to what the Donner Party did and that was to eat the dead to survive so the answer would have to be yes in this case, that said, under normal circumstances I would not eat another human. In the hypothetical question concerning killing someone for the greater good, I would, and hypothetically I would start with most of the so-called foundations from the Rockefeller's to Gates, and all the way to Fauci and co. as they perpetrated a genocidal, eugenic plan on the entire world population. I do this in my mind only LOL. Oh, by the way in case any of you have not gotten the word, there is a film based on the book by Robert Kennedy Jr. The real Anthony Fauci that must be watched to see what these transhuman, eugenics pushing monsters are doing and have done, verry important. This will make you want to kill for the sake of Humanity. If any of you think Kennedy is anti-vaccine, then you don't know him at all, and live in the matrix. Take the red pill.
If you know where I can get a bazooka mount for my car...
As to the "Why?"
You ever driven in Puerto Rico or Connecticut???
Do you know anyone from Syria or Somalia? People down there are real good at the mount-military-weapons-to-anything-with-wheels business.
Why not a french anti-tank Vespa? It had the US made 75mm recoilless rifle mounted. Should push the bp of highway patrol up a notch.
First thing I thought of was the recoil 😂🤣... is worth the visual to envision without the compensation
Well, if you happen to know any old french paratroopers, they might have used one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespa_150_TAP
It's like something Dick Dastardly would ride.
😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣 Holding my stomach laughing!
🤣 I grew up in Eastern CT and gladly left at about 21( before Mohican Sun? Was even a thing)...
I've heard it's very unpleasant now, instead of just ' a rat race'..
When I lived in NH and my daughter lived in Jersey City, I would make the drive occasionally, always (of course) through Connecticut, and when GPS said the Merritt/Wilbur Cross was the fastest route, I had to brace myself for the ahole Left Lane Louies who would impede my travels for 90 minutes.
In Twitter my "handle" or whatever is "GetOutOfTheLeftLane!".
As I shared on the Gutter yesterday - there are 3 rights of the road.
1. Slower traffic keep right
2. Keep right except to pass
3. Mash (or bury) the pedal on the right.
Totally worthy moniker!
Double-entendre as well!
😂🤣
Average leftist: Of course not, I am a civilized modern human being and killing is uncivilized and unnecessary in every circumstance.
Also leftist: I'd stay and explain further but I am late for my abortion appointment.
Also leftist: Conservatives are the devil, they deserve to be killed for their views and it should be legal.
Me: Yes, yes I would. But it wouldn't be a random person, it would be the man who while driving drunk killed my wife and son and got a prison sentence which didn't result in his eventual death behind bars.
This. All year.
Joe, I agree with you 100%
I feel guilty enough when I occasionally entertain the thought of my son's dad " not making it back from a climbing trip".... I automatically say " Clear, Cancel and Avert!" Out loud, and try my best to mean also thinking " I'd be happy enough to be shut of him by him finding a hippy swingers commune to run off to or something... just leave me the house ...Karma will see to him eventually..."
Tho I admit I have a hard time thinking that karma will be swift enough for the likes of TPTB that are culling us ...
The thing about Karma....I want a very select group of people to experience Karma NOW, in this life. Where we can watch it. And enjoy watching it, by the way.
No no, don't worry, it will be delivered in an invisible and untestable manner at an unknown point in time by unseen forces.
But trust me, it's absolutely happening.
Absofuckinglutely happening.
To be the Instrument of Karma can be a blessing and a curse.
Y'all...don't forget: Karma cones in both 'Bad' and ' Good' varieties...depending upon earnings...
I'm watching, and unlike Santa? I don't give a damn about lists or coal.
I found a handy trick for that one, though of course it annoys me to have to use it.
First! *does the first dance*
https://c.tenor.com/bO82LbyYxBAAAAAC/tenor.gif
*gasp*
Responder #2 is a murderer!!!
Yeah... #2... suuuure it was. :)
Firdt!
maybe!
I believe in right to self preservation. I believe in Just War Theory of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Most wars are not just. Currently I believe many, many civil wars WILK be breaking out, most having a very just side... I pray for utter defeat of new world order
I believe many deserve military tribunal and rope for crimes against humanity in coercing experimental vaccine.
Note... It's not experimental, it's failed. It's designed to kill
Most have no idea... Catholic Church is very tiny.
You all just grab a beer and sit back... We're gonna take care of commie NWO bastards... Enjoy the coming show
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VRZIJiFn--U
I've not checked lately.. If video calls Francis POPE they're not Catholic but are idiots. Francis has committed so many different death penalty offenses I feel like Fred Sanford just to thinking about little deceiver and murderer.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/radical-traditional-catholicism
A BADGE OF HONOR TO BE ENEMY OF SPLC which is anti American, hate group
The enemy is aware of us. (Please note, we are much smaller... Most of these want to be Catholic, but can't be because they call Francis Pope...
A non Catholic can't become pope)
Catholics love Jews. Pope Pius XII opened convents to Jews.
They found out he was a woke socialist a little too late, apparently.
We lost Vatican in 1958.
The electors are fake Cardinals, not Catholic.
Sept 1974 my nun said something... I knew something very very wrong with the comment...
Looking back, she had fallen for Vatican II, an evil non Catholic council.
You are not obtuse.
In my book, extremely brilliant. I go around like Noah and so very few ask any questions.
Those that love truth will be saved.
I've been blocked by so many fake Catholics...
Spicey, thank you for asking. The Catholic Church had "modernists" , heretics who probably believe that they are Catholic on the inside... They deny vast amounts of Catholic teaching.
Then communists on the outside.. They put over 1000 men into Catholic seminaries... These evil men rose to positions of power, some (fake) Cardinals ..
Then you have lukewarm, apathetic Catholics who failed to pray Rosary. Our Lady of Fatima was not heeded.
So God allowed1958 takeover of Vatican.
You probably have never met a Catholic and never seen a Catholic church... Most are fake, not Catholic...
There are 2 churches. Francis heads a church mocking Catholic church. He's not Catholic, not pope.
Catholic Church is so small.... My priest lives 1000 m awsy. He visits us for Mass once a mo....
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9tio92eXhp4
See 1040 . predicted centuries ago. Its happening now. Great apostady.
I say this people think I'm crazy.
512 284 6535 I can walk anyone through it. I'm sick about it.
Catholic Church is spotless bride of Christ, going thru Passion like Founder Jesus Christ
You or anyone... 512 284 6535 cell.
This is very deep deception...
1.2 billion think Rome has Catholic Church and say an IDOLATOR is pope. Only 200k Catholics. 1 in 6000
Intro to Sedevacantism link coming
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wcvfe4zJ-TQ
Doesn't everybody have a "Purge" list? And a funeral playlist?
Ayup.
Why would you kill them, when you could love them instead.
Gaaaaaaaaaaaaay.
🤣
🤣🤣
Is it still just philosophical?
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/omicron-gain-of-function-research
Yes. In my scenario it explicitly states you will not profit financially from the murder.
I only kill what I need to eat and I wouldn't eat a human, so no.
You would to survive.
Well, you're a real spoilsport. Not even the tiniest hang-my-hat-on-the-splinter excuse for doing it?
Very sad to confess I can't do it, then.
One of my HS friends was a really gifted shoplifter and I admired her talents enormously. I think I was about 15 when I showed my own great boldness by filching a packet of seeds from my neighborhood supermarket. But I knew I'd never have her talents, so I went for a lesser version of the sport.
In those days the price labels on stuff in the supermarkets were pretty easy to peel off so I did price adjustments on stuff I wanted. I was pretty careful in choosing items that the register clerk might be a little less routinely familiar with, like say peanut butter. I changed price on stuff like brie and not to a ridiculous extent.
The only stuff I stole outright were magazines because I'd found such an easy trick I couldn't resist. You pick one up from the racks by the register when you first go into the store, and walk around with it under your arm and they think it's yours, that you must've come into the store with it.
I was only caught once with the price-changing; the clerk glared at me indignantly and said that wasn't the price and it really cost blah blah and I said indignantly that I didn't want it then!
But I was never caught otherwise. Eventually I stopped because of that Higher Power thingy. It was wrong and we both knew it. Couldn't pretend otherwise. If I couldn't afford brie--well, fuck me. Can't have it then.
So how the hell am I gonna get around this? Feel quite regretful to have to decline the opportunity, really.
It is made a very careful special offer so it is asking precisely the right question and not another question, and your regretful declination is a perfectly cromulent response.
I declare proudly that I am assuredly the only one of your readership--perhaps of the readership of every Stack I subscribe to--who has never watched the Simpsons.
(With the strange timing of every overseas sojourn I took, and various other moves and disruptions, the gaps in my cultural knowledge really can be summed up as "I don't know what the fuck anyone is talking about mostly ever.")
For a good many years I think it was a valuable and genuinely quality cultural touchstone. It hasn't been for a long time.
I spent about half of my childhood forbidden from consuming most forms of TV and modern music. It led to a similar gap that I found a little easier to close in young adulthood and explains why Brothermouth still has about a decade of cultural references that bounce off me.
In absolute and 100% serious response I'm really glad you were able to escape and make your own life as you choose to shape it.
It's been quite the revelation to me over these many many decades of realizing that my parents were in fact only average dreadful, and it's just their failure to conform to the purported great strengths of our cultural tribe that made me think I was uniquely afflicted.
For years I used to describe myself as being one o' them Appalachian Baptist Jews and I swear nobody ever got the joke; not much good having a go-to line that goes splat when you go to it.
My parents absolutely meant well in the above example and I don't hate them for it. There were way more damaging things they did that were not good-intended but were a product of their own problems (mental illness, alcoholism, and just a plain old deeply unhappy marriage with one weird kid to triangulate on).
A lot of the weird non (intentionally) abusive aspects of my upbringing were due to my parents taking me to child psychologists and being given extremely weird advice about "how one ought to raise a gifted child so they aren't a psychopath/narcissist (because this is somehow a specific risk of intelligence)" and so went through the entirely secular modern-religion version of "she's got the devil in her."
Which is why I have a uniquely deep hatred of pop psychology (fuck you, Dr. Spock).
Strange thing. I have a paperback copy of Dr. Spock that must date from my own infancy (it's so fragile now I've got it in a protective sleeve), and when I had my own kid I read it, as well as some of the au courant stuff, and I was really surprised at how absolutely tender and compassionate and sensible I found him over all the others. (Of course I ended up taking no one's advice on anything because I discovered to my extreme amazement that my instincts were superior to anything any credentialed moron tried to tell me.)
So I wonder if there was a sort of telephone game going on where the actual words became quite corrupted in transmission.
Other than you seeming to be aggravatingly much smarter than I am, we got some parallels in the family cauldron.
Dr. Spock has always been full of shit.
Mr. Spock on the other hand.......
SCA: I’ve never watched the Simpson, nor The Kardashians, nor Game Of Thrones, nor Seinfeld. The list goes on and on……..I must really suck. (I must admit, The Big Bang Theory was hilarious!)
Guess how I feel every time Steve Guttenberg turns up as a poll question option. I know who he *is,* of course.
But I exorcise my bitter resentment by watching Airplane as many times as necessary.
We exist to experience life. Outside of euthanasia due to illness at the person's specific request, your second qualifier renders the action pure evil. Even if you didn't state the third qualifier, I have no right to take away another human being's ability to learn and experience., never mind their very life. I have no right take any tangible thing away from another person in the first place. Taking something that cannot be replaced is especially egregious even for things that are not the life of another.
Your fourth qualifier removes one of the most important aspects of human life and that is our relationships to one another (by stating "physically"). I've always said, no matter how hard it is to die, that dying is ultimately the easy part. The hard part is for those (family and friends) that remain. They say that, in many cases, people don't really ever get over loss or separation, they just learn how to better deal with it. Such an act deeply harms others in an irreversible manner.
Well, I answered yes without reading the qualifiers. Should have scrolled down more. The first thing that popped into my mind was the ability to hypothetically eliminate a pedophile without any legal repercussions.
I thought that I would change my answer to No with the qualifier that they do not pose an immediate threat to anyone but then thought about a hypothetical pedophile that received a slap on the wrist for abusing a child and decided Yes was a good answer.
Then I thought perhaps the hypothetical person who handed a light sentence to the hypothetical child rapist might be a better hypothetical choice to hypothetically torture to death over a long period of time in a public setting.
It would be a No for me if there wasn't a good reason but in an imaginary universe where injustice runs rampant a little public display of justice would be a good enough reason for me.
I had to think about this. When I was in my younger years, I might have said YES. Today, I”m 70, older and wiser, my answer is NO!! But if someone was a threat to me/my life, I would have no problem using my gun. But in this scenario, I can’t use that situation.
In an imaginary universe, ... Hell, yes!
BUT, no matter what, my conscience would eat me alive and I would never be able to live knowing what I did.
I believe if one kills another human being (not self defense), one is eliminating that soul prematurely, which has negative ramifications.
I also believe that when a soul is severed prematurely, that soul WILL come back and have to do “its’ job” again. This is one reason I was not pro death penalty. The soul must learn!
Killing is wrong. Why would I want to become that which I despise?
Quite a set of caveats! As I understand your points, my rationale should be, "because I want to" or "because its Tuesday". I submit that there can be, and far too frequently is, a moral justification to end the life of another human. Evil exists. And often walks about on it's hind legs.
Can I look a child rapist/murderer in the eye and press the button or pull the trigger to end it's life? Of course. Will I feel "good" abut having done so? No. But I will feel exactly the same sense of completion I get when I have to shoot a rabid dog. Killing the dog is not punishment. It is merely putting the poor creature out of it's misery. And helps prevent the spread of rabies. Killing a child rapist is not punishment. It puts a poor insane animal out of it's misery. And helps prevent further child rapes or murders.