Nihilistic Murderer

[Neo-Scholastic]

I also eat the sandwich, not because I think that it matters if I do or not, just because I'm hungry and want to eat a sandwich. I don't think that inaction is the logical outcome of being a nihilist. It makes just as much sense to eat the sandwich as it does to do anything else and I'm hungry so I eat it.

Bravo! The issue revolves around final ends. Because the value of limited ends depends upon their relationship to the larger end they serve. The nihilist is freed from ends. Considering how vigorously many naturalists deny the existence of final cause you would think they could recognize the tenaciousness with which they defend its place in their values system.

[Whateverist]

What I don't understand is how finding life meaningless for you would lead you to make a decision to end someone else's life. Don't you value having the freedom to decide whether life is worth it? Why take that from someone else?

I'm not talking about recognizing any inherent meaning in reciprocity. I'm just talking about choosing the kind of world you want to participate in.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I think this discussion might be coming to a peaceful and mutually satisfying conclusion (plus I have to go soon) but I have a few final points. I don't think what you said at the start is the same as wanting to kill someone. You wanted to preserve your own life. Way different than wanting to kill someone, especially different than wanting to kill a random stranger.

Well, perhaps, but at one point I decided that I might have to kill him, and was willing to do that. Now, the circumstance of the decision was far out of my control, and even the decision itself was not a matter of deliberation, but something that happened very, very quickly -- but it was still a conscious decision, and that seems like one sort of want, to me.

Would you ever want to kill a random stranger? Is it a desire that you could conceive of having if your moral code shifted? I would guess probably not and I think that applies to most people regardless of what their beliefs are. I think applies to most nihilists, even those who say they have no morals.

I could not under any circumstances ever see myself wanting to kill someone, and yes, part of that is very deeply emotional and not susceptible to moral reasoning. It may be that rather than comport our behavior to our conscious morals, we rather select that set of moral values which best represents our inner, emotional landscape. I don't know. I do know that aside from my inner repulsion to committing acts of barbarity, I have a moral sensibility which can elucidate my feelings intellectually as well, and that is why I am comfortable inside my own skin: I can understand, I think, why I do and don't want to do this or that.

I think what you are doing applying meaning to your life is fine. I don't think that everyone should be a nihilist, I just feel that it is the inescapable conclusion that comes from our future non-existence.

I disagree. As I mentioned earlier, the fact that something comes to an end does not rob it of meaning. Think for a moment what meaning really means: it means that a conscious mind somewhere has attached value or judgement to a thing. Now, Abraham Lincoln is dead, but even so, his life still has meaning for Americans, insofar as he steered us through the four hardest years of our nation's life, and we still on occasion experience the ripples that emanate from his existence. Plato, too, exerts influence -- meaning -- from beyond the grave; without Plato, this forum would likely not exist. And others of us, to obviously lesser degrees, leave ripples as well.

Likewise, even the fact of death itself gives our lives meaning, inside the context of human relations. We know that death is a fact for us, and that knowledge steers how we manage our lives.

Now, if you're talking objective meaning, something we can build an instrument to measure -- "Joe's life has 4.377 meaning points" -- well, no, obviously that isn't the case.

I'd like to posit a final question, which regards the discussion I was having with FaithNoMore. Are you a nihilist when it comes to the long term? Do you think that in 1000 or a 100,000 or a 100,000,000 years (all of which are a blink of an eye) your life and the meaning that you've applied to it will have mattered?

No, not at all. In that sense -- the objective sense, if you really think about it, measuring the life of men against the scale of the Universe -- we're so insignificant that we may as well be atoms each one of us, and our interactions may as well be those same chemical reactions. But I don't think for a moment that that devalues the subjective sense of meaning we each have -- or at least most of us have, as is made clear in the vid.

Final and not really relevant point regarding Ted Bundy. I think he had morals, just fucked up ones. In the book I read on him, which was written by his ex-girlfriend (imagine how fucked up that is) he definitely thought that what was being done to him was wrong. Not just that he was afraid of death, but that the people who had imprisoned him and were going to execute him were doing something bad and wrong. Ted Bundy also definitely believed in God and the afterlife and believed that he was going to heaven so presumably he had a moral code from that.

You appear to know quite a but more about him than I do; I'd read a book about him roughly 20 years ago, and of course have forgotten much, and perhaps misunderstood more.

But fuck him, he was an asshole.

Thanks for the good convo, and if I got a little testy, I'm sorry. I've been pretty moody lately and if that came across too clearly, my apologies.

[Delysid]

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.

I think you'd be surprised what you are capable of as a human. I could be wrong, but I think it is in every single human being alive. Maybe there are some exceptions.

[Whateverist]

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.

I'd much rather not but I'm sure that I would if I felt it was necessary in the heat of the moment. I only hope I never get backed into a corner where I would. It would be a lot to deal with after.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

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.