Random Thought's on Death I Suppose

[Peter Illicete]

      The disconnect we feel when considering others, it’s astounding. Well, I don’t know if it’s everyone or just me. Maybe I’m terrible at empathy. But when thinking about death, it’s such a terrible topic. Because everything points to the cessation of existence, the end of the collection of atoms named Peter.

       This profound fear explains religion much more than any god or holy book. People want answers, a consolation from the realization that life is ultimately futile and pointless. But what evidence supports a creator, other than existence? But that’s not even strong evidence. Existence could have always been. Our universe doesn't necessarily make sense, or conform to our form of logic. Logic is a human convention, not necessarily congruous with reality.

      Anyways, what I was thinking is “This person should die” when watching a television show with a particularly abhorrent villain. But what was I really thinking? Was I really understanding the implications of that thought? No, and neither do most people who see death as an ok thing to do, as a solution. Why is voluntarily ending the existence of another self aware thing ok? When is it EVER ok?

      And the worrying thing is that I, a person whom I usually think as a pretty moral person, was thinking of killing as not entirely evil in every case. As not terrible when I think it is suitable. It’s disgusting how we rationalize things for our own means.

      Maybe that's really why power corrupts, not because power inherently causes us to turn bad, but power makes immoral behavior more convenient. Think about it, for you and I, murdering our enemies would be a lot more trouble than it’s worth, but not for a dictator intent on something. We simply don’t kill others because it’s inconvenient, it’s not worth the trouble. Maybe we have developed (Yay natural selection!) an aversion to killing BECAUSE it’s socially unacceptable, it makes life harder for the individual. Not because we have some inherent sense of right and wrong.

[Sarah H]

I think the biggest argument against there being an "inherent sense of right and wrong" is the tremendous variation in morality through history and across cultures. 

But the fact that we create our systems of morality, that they are not inherent facts about the world but processes in which we participate, does not by itself make them less valuable or useful or worthy.

Also, I would argue that our own culture (assuming you and I belong to the same culture, on some level) is, I would say, deeply ambivalent about violence- there is plenty of violence in the stories we tell one another, and plenty of non-fictional violence that is not necessarily considered immoral because it is sanctioned by, for example, the State.