violence and justification

now i know a lot of people will jump in ready to say there is no justification for any violence but hear me out. as ive said before, i think that sometimes violence is justified.

  1. self-defense. this is difficult, however, to keep in prespective. i find it important not to kill someone in self-defense unless ABSOLUTELY necesary. most times, there is a way to escape your own demise without causing someone elses. if you are sure that you will not be killed, then retaliation is unnecesary. we grow from our suffering be it mental or physical.

  2. when it isnt out of hate, spite, or revenge. if somebody is sacrificed to a god and is chosen without their sacrifice being a punishment, then i see no problem. the problem is that this very rarely happens and now most violence is for one of the above mentioned reasons.

i think vengeance is the worst of all mental formations (ok, so thats dipping into religion. sorry but i cant explain it any other way.) it shows weakness of the soul. somebody bent on revenge is trapped in the historical dimension and needs to find the present and realize what happened is over and nothing can change it.

id really like to hear what you guys think about this.

The mind boggles.

What possible justification is there for taking the life of an innocent person just to appease a made-up God?

I believe intentionally killing anybody is wrong, even if they want to be killed. If a person wants to die they should have to kill themselves. And if they are incapable of doing this themselves, then they are what would also be legally deemed as, “of unfit mind” to make this decision for someone else to carryout the killing on their behalf. Of course forcing someone who wants to die to live could be considered a form of torture.

PV

They’re not of unfit mind if they have a dehabilitating disease which means they are incapable of killling themselves. Also some patients say “If I get to this point X, I want to die”. Point X is usually the point where the disease leaves them in a terrible state where they can’t perform the act themself.

But sacrifices don’t tend to want to die or can’t even say so, like the babies the aztes used to sacrifice.

No not directly, but indirectly. As there disability has a psychological effects on their decision making processes.

PV

First: Killing is not wrong - it’s the reason why you kill another person that makes it wrong. (this may reduce all human killings to zero if all fictions are removed). If you kill a person by misstake or in selfdefence you do not have to feel guilty because no one is judging you. If you kill someone on purpose no one will judge you either (maybe the law), but your act show me that you fail to understand the reality.

Hate is just a kick of adrenaline filled with guilt. Without the guilt it’s a wonderful feeling. The act performed during this can ofcourse be right or wrong. Hate is not a premiere feeling, the same as with love.

And I also believe that a person who want to die does not have to whole perspective clear of other possibilities. He/she is sick and we have to take care of this person. We may not be able to offer the right support or convince the person that suicide is wrong, but that does not make it right to offer help to kill the person. Even in the worst possible situation life still have a value that should not be taken away by going to sleep (there exist no sleep). Suicide is always a misunderstanding. If a person can be so creative that he says: “Kill me, I’m suffering”, he either does not mean it, or his active mind have thought out a very heroic way to die. Remember the movie “Seven”, when that model kill herself after the psychopath cut off her nose? Every time I wanted to kill myself there were missunderstandings involved. And to put it in a little controversial perspective: Everyone that kill himself will realize it was a misstake afterwards.

Johan

what about curiosity as a reason for suicide? like if somebody was so curious as to what came next that they killed themself to find out? i dont think this person needs treatment.

i dont think anyone needs treatment. people are different thats how we are. not everyone fits the mold of “normal.” in fact, if you really get to know people, youll realize that nobody you know is what society calls “normal.” nobody is

Such a person would need serious treatment, yes. If a friend of yours suddenly said: “I’m curious what comes next”, and then point a gun to his head, then I would say that he is far from healthy.

Health is the same as living in harmony with life.

Johan

Johan stated:

If that’s so, than we are all really sick people.

Yes; I know I’m very sick.

Johan

That’s a backwards way of putting it. For someone who’s reason they want to die is because they have a terribly painful illness, you can’t turn round and say then, ahhh, but you’re not of fit mind because you have a dehabilitating illness. If I were burning to death, set alight by a flame thrower and screamed out “Kill me”, I would damn well be pleased to be shot in the head by anyone. The point is that I have 5 minutes of burning to death n pain, or a short sharp death with no suffering.

Your argument is circular, look at it this way, why can’t I decide to die as all I have left is misery, because you are unfit to decide. Why am I unfit to decide as my mind is untouched by illness, because all you have left is misery. I don’t think it stands up at all. You’re trying to say that the illness itself is making you unfit of mind, but it’s just pain, it’s not affecting your brain reasoning. There’s nothing wrong with the reasoning, I am in so much pain, this pain will not stop, I wish to die now rather than suffer for the rest of my (short) life.

Or you have to accept that you would give the order not to shoot the burning man. And if you do accept this, it seems strange to me, though there are some people out there who have a notion that life is sacred, the ultimate good, if you have life, that’s the important thing. But it’s not for me, the important thing for me is pleasure/pain principle. I would not want to suffer like that. It seems to be a very recent phenomenon, all that hooha about Princess Di’s death, everytime there’s an accident in which people die, it’s the greatest tragedy of all time. These things happen, they just do, you can’t protect everyone all the time without making everyones life dull and pointless.

I’m not saying life is sacred. Just that when you’re in pain all you want to do is stop the suffering, no matter what the cost might be. You brought up a good point. If I’m going to die in five minutes then you might as well kill me now. We are all going to die, so if I’m in pain, how short of a time must there be before I can ask another to kill me?

People who suffer from depression are always in a form of pain. Instead of a body burning it’s a mind. It’s not as easy to observe to an external party but to the victim it’s just as real. So if this victim is going to live the rest of their life like this, should they be allowed to ask another person to end there suffering? Well there are antidepressants. In your example why not just put the fire out? This would stop you having to kill him and save his life. He would be in some short-term pain until you have time to give him medication and attend his burns. Lets say this man how has to live the rest of his live with scars. People are always staring at him; he becomes very self-conscious and can no longer go out side. After awhile life becomes pointless, as he can’t get a girlfriend and has no friends, his life is one long road of misery. He’s depressed, should he take the Antidepressants or an Overdose?

Happiness equals life. But if we’re in pain it’s now okay to kill ourselves. I’m not arguing that Suicide is wrong. From what you’ve said, if I’m in pain it’s okay to ask another to kill me if I’m going to die soon anyway, but how long is ‘soon’. All I’m saying is that because I’m in pain, I’m no longer thinking the way I would normally be, meaning if I wasn’t in pain I would want to live. It’s the pain that causes me to want to commit suicide. If you remove the pain, or the form of suffering I would want to live. This is why I’m saying they’re not of fit mind, as all they want is for the pain to stop, and death is the easiest but not always the only answer.

Pax Vitae.

Depression shows you are not of sound mind. I accept that they shouldn’t be allowed to have assisted suicide. A person who is suffering physical pain is not necesarily of unsound mind. A terminal illness is one which modern science cannot cure. I suppose there’s a slight argument for saying don’t kill yourselfcause tere might be a massive medical breakthrough tomorrow, but it’s so unlikely it can be ignored. It seems like we have had different cases in mind whilst discussing this.

In my example he has suffered sufficient burns already that he can’t be saved, his body will eventually shut down after 5 minutes because of the damage. Not only that I was thinking more of WW2 cases where the chances of a medic with the right equipment getting to him would be impossible. After enough damage it doesn’t matter what you do, they’re going to die.

We’re rather getting off the point of this thread though :wink:

The euthanasia debate ensues…