Unethical

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I have talked a lot about my moral and ethical standards recently, and I have come to the realization that I am a complete prick. I put an incredibly low value on life, and disagree with some of the most basic principles such as happiness. I turn mass murderers into these great powerful symbols in my mind. If given the chance, I would probably kill someone without a second thought. Just any random person, I would kill them. I don't know why I am this way, why I have given up all of the decency that humans are supposed to feel and why I have gone to the point of ridiculing it. What the hell is wrong with me?

Nothing's wrong with you. You're a Free Speaker, and I find that there's a certian charm that your style projects. As I see it, this Site is all about Democracy. If I offend anybody by speaking my Mind, I let them be offended and go along my Merry Way. I know that you possess that Strength, because I've seen you use it, many times.

Complete prick, huh? Cool! I was circumcised. I will never be a complete prick.

SB,

You have a 5hit guage to judge these things by, as we all do. The same triggers are cocked and ready. The hammer is in mid swing at times. The edge is so close that you can spit over the side of the world. And yet you have endured it all ... again. There is no shame in pushing these feelings out and away from you. Just save the part of you that tastes sweetness for the times when a breath of life's nectar blows your way.

That's pretty f'd up, subatai. I hope you realize that if you do kill someone, you will never get to be a complete prick in complete freedom ever again.

And if you don't, then move to Washington, D.C. There's plenty of people there that need killing.

" why I have given up all of the decency that humans are supposed to feel..."

Nah, you haven't. If it was "all decency" gone, you wouldn't even be worrying about it.

Even noting your feelings and considering putting a cap on them shows better than animalistic thinking, and ethical questioning.

Yes, there is a historic strand stressing the intrinsic value of life, and that everyone is intimately involved in that. John Donne's "No man is an island" concept might serve as its banner.
(Monty Python's "Every Sperm is Sacred" as it's countering parody)

But it's not just a done deal. Do these myriad brief existences actually matter to anyone except their selfish owners? Shakespeare in Macbeth has a superb passage on life being a temporary and meaningless event.
Samuel Beckett's plays hinted that this might be so. No wonder folk try to avoid seeing it.

And my own life? As Kipling has it:
"Trust me, To-day's Most Indispensables,
Five hundred men can take your place or mine."

So what's wrong with you? I don't know you well enough to be sure. But I suspect you've found that morality and ethics isn't built on ground as solid as you used to think.

What the world says about ethics and morality and what it does can be very different.
Very tempting at times to say to hell with the lot of them, and wish to revert to "might is right" mode. (Not a good idea, on a moment's thought.

(small edit for clarity)

subatai_baadur

You might want to read Dostoyevsky's book "Crime and Punishment"
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2554

Which explores the topic of killing someone just because you can. Reading the book won't get you put in Jail.

Now is a good time in history to be a complete prick - just look at the political leaders we have most places. Have you thought about going into politics?

Personally - I prefer a more humanist approach - where it doesn't completely conflict with the ecological sustainability of the planet. I'd rather have freely available birth control than murder.

Being able to see an argument from both sides doesn't make you a prick.

It's probably got a lot to do with the fact that robbing banks, killing random people, and committing other atrocious crimes has nothing to do with making anyone's (and your own, for that matter) life any better. It's definitely the best and fastest way to take a situation from bad to much, much worse if you really want to be anally raped by a burly 250-pound prison inmate and beaten by sadistic prison guards. It's your life, though!

I feel like that on occasion, but I treat people a lot nicer in real life.

Ok, so, you are finding yourself to be less idealistic than you wanted and see a loss in this idealism, as well, you probably are feeling a bit of anger or bitterness inside yourself that is eating away at you to some extent. Putting a low value on human life is rather vague, since there is a rather large spectrum of important things. If life the most valuable of all things? No, but it is also not the least valuable either, the same is true with happiness, people are willing to sacrifice both for many other things, however, idealists are likely to see happiness and life as high values which are not to be compromised, and the rejection of that idealism is probably leading to some of the emptiness. The whole killing somebody if given the opportunity thing is probably a bit of anger and contempt held towards the world, because only anger would motivate somebody to kill so meaninglessly. The question is not what is unimportant to you, but rather what do you see as important? What ideals/beliefs do you hold? There is nothing that humans are supposed to hold except for themselves as we have given birth the horrors beyond imagining and to saints, the question is whether what you hold will be good for you.

Yes, people are different, but I stick to my own ways.