Nihilistic Murderer

[robvalue]

I don't know what it would take for me to kill someone. I can't bring myself to stand on a suffering insect, even when I know it's for the insect's own good.

It would have to be in defence of myself or others where there was absolutely no other option. Even then, I don't know if I could physically do it.

[comet]

yeah, the "sun" don't care. But the family of the victims do. Today, for now, what one is more important? The word is "balance" again.

[Nope]

Anybody can be a killer when placed in the correct circumstances. Exian said it well. They are as human as any of us.

I don't think I could be a killer. Placed in any circumstance. The closest thing I can think of is protecting my kids, but I would be doing everything in my power to stop the person without killing them. I think, I mean, I have been in similar situations and my thought wasn't to kill the guy, but I didn't really have that option. I guess I may have thought to kill him had that been something that was actually possible. I'm not sure though. I don't think I could kill someone though.

One of the reasons that killers fascinate me is because I could not kill someone unless I was defending myself. I don't understand how someone doesn't realize that another person has feelings, hopes and dreams just like they do. How do you stop having empathy? So, I watch documentaries trying desperately to figure out why killers are the way they are.

I watched a documentary once on a hitman called the Iceman. The reason he terrified me so much was that he was just a very cold person. He had no remorse or shame for his actions. He told his stories in a very matter of fact manner.

[abaris]

Anybody can be a killer when placed in the correct circumstances. Exian said it well. They are as human as any of us.

Anybody can be a killer, but not everybody can be Ted Bundy. Takes some special ingredients to create a serial killer personality. Almost all serial killers are trained by their environment from an early age on.

Herzog made a great film about Tim Treadwell who thought he was an 'expert' on Bears until he got eaten by one.

Hope the bear didn't suffer any long term damage.

[JuliaL]

Herzog made a great film about Tim Treadwell who thought he was an 'expert' on Bears until he got eaten by one.

Hope the bear didn't suffer any long term damage.

LOL
And very apropros.
I try to put myself in the place of others, human and non. I never succeed fully because (no surprise) I am not them. I think the bar to killing is one that varies depending on circumstance and perspective.
Losty might react strongly in defense of her children, robvalue suggests he would not kill in near any situation.
I find these expressed attitudes very understandable and consistent with my view of the underpinnings of morality. We are the product of eons of natural selection among self aware individuals (most recently humans) in which the populations that protected themselves (particularly those of close shared kinship) thrived better than those who did not. The subjective experience of this heredity is that of empathy for other people and strong motivation to protect those in danger. The degree to which we protect is directly proportional to our relatedness. Our own kids first, then other peoples, adults of the tribe less so, then members of other tribes, farther down, non-humans credited with awareness and finally non self-aware automatons (bugs), plants and rocks.
We don't, and probably cannot, intimately understand the perspective of a tiger (or bear) who might kill a child to provide food for its own cubs. The best I can extrapolate is that it just doesn't care. I cannot put myself in a place where a human sociopath (or Serbian war criminal) might think that course of action 'good.' So it goes.

[abaris]

We don't, and probably cannot, intimately understand the perspective of a tiger (or bear) who might kill a child to provide food for its own cubs. The best I can extrapolate is that it just doesn't care.

And why should they care? Do we really care when animals are killed to feed and cloth us.

On the other hands you have examples of animal empathy, such as that one video where a giant bear at the zoo gently picks a drowning raven out of his pond. He could have crushed it with his jaws, but he simply put it onto the banks and went on his merry way.

We don't know why that moron got killed by that bear. Maybe it was a mother feeling a threat for their young, maybe it was an animal he simply got too close for comfort. Humans aren't usually on the bear menu.

[Losty]

We don't, and probably cannot, intimately understand the perspective of a tiger (or bear) who might kill a child to provide food for its own cubs. The best I can extrapolate is that it just doesn't care.

And why should they care? Do we really care when animals are killed to feed and cloth us.

On the other hands you have examples of animal empathy, such as that one video where a giant bear at the zoo gently picks a drowning raven out of his pond. He could have crushed it with his jaws, but he simply put it onto the banks and went on his merry way.

We don't know why that moron got killed by that bear. Maybe it was a mother feeling a threat for their young, maybe it was an animal he simply got too close for comfort. Humans aren't usually on the bear menu.

I almost never think badly of animals who kill humans. We don't care when humans kill animals or when animals kill other animals. I feel sad when person is killed, for them and their family. I don't think anything bad of then animal though. Unless it's a cougar. Those things are fucking evil. Just not big enough to kill humans.

[JuliaL]

On the other hands you have examples of animal empathy, such as that one video where a giant bear at the zoo gently picks a drowning raven out of his pond. He could have crushed it with his jaws, but he simply put it onto the banks and went on his merry way.

We don't know why that moron got killed by that bear. Maybe it was a mother feeling a threat for their young, maybe it was an animal he simply got too close for comfort. Humans aren't usually on the bear menu.

Mybold

You're right. I was just trying to bring my comments about subjectivity of perspective back to the quoted concern for the welfare of the bear that killed the moron.

I don't think that empathy can be attributed to the behavior of any individual other than the self except through the process of mentally putting ones self in the position
of the other. That is through empathy itself.
It may seem, or in fact be, more natural to do this with other humans, but in each case, because of the impossibility of actually being them, the process is based on the assumption that they have a consciousness somewhat the same as ours. I believe this assumption is necessarily at some point incorrect. Some philosophies accept that trees, and we, have spirits with intention, that suffer, that should be appeased when life is taken. As in so many cases, this is a theorem that, while possibly true, cannot be proven within the system we inhabit. I Godel.

[Faith No More]

At the end of the day I feel that he is right, that it doesn't really matter that he killed two people. Probably the most disturbing evaulation of my own beliefs that I've ever had to come to terms with.

The loved ones of those people would disagree that it doesn't matter. Don't get caught up in the theistic delusion that a finite existence leads to our actions being meaningless. Just because our actions have no effect on how the universe will be in a million years doesn't mean that they don't have very real, measurable effects on the here and now, and we can judge those actions by the negative and positive effects they have on the people around us.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Don't get caught up in the theistic delusion that a finite existence leads to our actions being meaningless.

Neither atheism or theism per se entail existential nihilism. Ontological naturalism, physical reduction, and materialism are a different story, since all three sever the relationship between signs and those things they signify. Purely physical event just are, they are not omens nor do they have affect. They have no significance except what gets assigned to them arbitrarily based on someone’s whim. And within that absurdist position, the whim of a pious humanitarian has no more justification than the whim of a mass murder.

...the negative and positive effects they have on the people around us.

And why exactly do those effects matter at all within a materialistic paradigm? How does someone go about assigning value to different kinds of electro-chemical reactions?