Choices

Should the Earth get a break from humans?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Do you ever get the feeling that we should just give up and let the bombs start flying? I think it’s time that the Earth gets a break from humans. Can you think of anything better than A nuclear or holocaust to do this?”

While cleaning up my Quora content, including A2As like this one. I sometimes make what I’m unsure of is a mistake or not to check out a profile. My first inclination is to pass on the question, but I’m sometimes more curious than I should be about the profile behind the question. When checking out this profile, I thought this would be another troll to mute and block. Then I started scanning the rest of the content, expecting more unhinged lunacy.

I spotted content from someone who appeared somewhat sane, non-trollish, and aware enough to grant the benefit of the doubt about this question by interpreting it as an extreme expression of frustration. We all have moments when we realize afterwards that we could have gone a different route in our expressions.

This may be one of them, so I decided to answer it instead of passing on it and blocking the querent.

I’ve never felt that destroying all life on the planet was a solution to anything. I view it as a kind of MAGAt “burn it all down” attitude that I immediately dismiss as unhinged emotionality.

Although I have encountered this sentiment occasionally, I generally scroll past or get triggered into lambasting it.

This time, however, I will respond with a simple question:

Why should all the rest of the animal and plant life be extinguished to quell the frustrations of a few humans who have lost tolerance for bullshit?

It seems rather like the kind of narcissistic attitude that’s gotten us into this mess in the first place.

Why not just pull a Frank Herbert and create a virus to eliminate humans, allowing the rest of life on Earth to continue? (Okay… Frank’s virus in “The White Plague” didn’t extinguish all life, but you get the picture.)

That seems much more representative of justice to me and perhaps even a better step in owning up to our shit as humans. By allowing all other species to learn from our stupidity (at some point in an imaginary evolutionary future) instead of turning the traces of our existence into glass that can never serve any potential life that may or may not follow, we can at least make up in part for our destructive behaviours.

There’s no upside to this kind of genocidal cleansing of life. Getting rid of humans is one thing, but taking away the opportunity to live away from all other forms of life beyond bacteria and cockroaches seems like adding insult to injury.

This reasoning reminds me of someone considering infanticide. Just because one’s life sucks, it doesn’t mean their families need to be extinguished as well. Eat a bullet or play hopscotch on a freeway to get your misery over with. If the lives you want to extinguish along with yours are innocent of causing harm, and of harming you in particular, how do you factor in punishing them? That makes absolutely no sense to me.

One should at least pick targets directly responsible for their misery, and let everyone else live, so they can learn something of value going forward.

Luigi Mangione chose this route, and he’s now viewed as a hero by many. I’ve even read claims (however trustworthy they may have been) from people about how insurance companies briefly relaxed their policies after Brian Thompson’s exit from this plane. People who would otherwise have been denied coverage and died were accepted for treatment and cured. They are still among the living when they would have died otherwise. One cannot but consider some nobility within an ignoble act.

The entire point of violence as a last resort is that it’s supposed to address the causes of unendurable misery, not eliminate all life. The Bush Doctrine’s advocacy of preemptive action seems to have proven that leading with violence is always the worst strategy to take. It’s supposed to instill hope in the lives of those left behind to continue struggling through difficult situations. That’s what Luigi accomplished.

Turning the planet into a giant glass ball accomplishes nothing more than turning the Earth into a giant glass ball. Nothing is left to praise the heroes who sacrificed their treasure for the sake of protecting the treasures of others.

Sure… I can understand wiping out mosquitoes, but what has any rabbit ever done to you to deserve wiping them all out?

Were you somehow hurt by a carrot or traumatized by tomatoes? Perhaps apples give you gas?

I’ve never met a squirrel that hasn’t made my heart flip.

I don’t see how anyone who isn’t indulging in extremely narcissistic thinking could imagine a nuclear holocaust as a solution to anything.

Please do try to think about how it is precisely that kind of self-serving thinking driving the Orange Nazi freak who likely contributes to your extreme attitude.

It’s a strategy that gives the bastards their coveted win.

What makes you think Trump isn’t trying to get revenge on all of life in precisely that way, because he’s reaching the end of his? Right now, he seems like the guy who got into office to party like there’s no tomorrow because he knows there isn’t much longer for him. In a 1992 interview, he spent an hour talking to Charlie Rose, bragging about how much he loves revenge on people he feels have betrayed him.

1992 Charlie Rose Interview with Donald Trump

Why do you think Republicans are making such a fuss about Biden’s decline and faking outrage about it “being hidden” in the dastardly, devious way Democrats always do? My guess is that’s just another projection on their behalf.

I will predict that we’ll discover insiders within the Republican party are acting precisely in ways that run interference on TACOman to hide his decline. He may not even make it to the end of his term.

It would not surprise me to discover Jake Tapper’s got another book in progress to mirror the one he’s hawking right now.

In short… No, I can’t think of anything worse, not better than a nuclear holocaust. Feeling as if cats, dogs, or even leopards can evolve enough to rule the world comforts me.

Mondays may suck, but they don’t suck that badly.

Kamandi — Last Boy on Earth – DC Comics — by Jack Kirby
Kamandi — Last Boy on Earth — DC Comics

Why do people think I should feel guilty about shoplifting?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Why do people think I should feel guilty shoplifting, when literally so many people in the world want to use other people for what they have?”

You seem to want to justify shoplifting as a form of protest.

Meanwhile, protesting is a means by which systemic injustices are challenged by publicizing grievances. The point of doing that is to garner widespread support and enough momentum to make a systemic change that addresses a grievance over a condition which victimizes many people.

Sometimes, protests must be escalated to such a degree that some form of tradeoff between victimizing an aggressor and sacrificing someone in an act which alerts an otherwise unaware public of the severity of a grievance.

The incident between Luigi Mangioni and Brian Thompson from United Health qualifies as a situation in which escalation was deemed necessary (by Luigi) to sacrifice one’s life to alert the public to the severity of a systemic injustice.

Most often, protestors sacrifice only time and effort to address injustices. The goal of protesting, however, is to help people other than themselves who may or may not participate in the protest itself.

The purpose of a protest that can successfully gain support and make meaningful change is never to benefit an individual at the expense of victimizing someone else because that’s just another form of victimization.

It may be true that the degree of victimization is practically invisible to the victim such that they suffer a loss on an unnoticeable level, but they remain victims nonetheless.

It may very well be that the stores absorb their losses from your thefts with little impact on their operations, but that’s mostly because they amortize their losses across their operations. That means that a proportion of the cost of their products contains a piece of math they’ve determined recoups their shoplifting losses through every product sold.

Your thefts as an individual may be unnoticeable. Cumulatively, however, with others who think the same way you do, your thefts contribute to the increased cost of products that everyone bears while the store factors in a profit margin for managing those losses. Your thefts contribute to their net revenue while further victimizing those who pay full price for their products.

You may view your theft as a personal protest, but it’s an act that solely benefits you and injures all other consumers more than it injures the store you steal from. For this reason, your behaviour is considered selfish, over and above being a crime that contributes no benefit as a protest to the issue you criticize.

Your reasoning shares more in common with the stores you steal from when they add surcharges to an expected percentage of loss that’s padded enough to profit from.

Your reasoning and theirs are based on misanthropic, spiteful, and opportunistic thinking to justify an essentially parasitic behaviour.

You may not feel guilty about your choices, but they are neither justifiable nor actions to be proud of. However, the risks you take will one day result in criminal charges against you, while no one will be interested in empathizing with your reasoning.

You will carry a stigma of shame for the rest of your life once that happens, and no one will be sympathetic to whatever suffering you might experience as a consequence of your criminal choices.

Furthermore, your shame will be compounded by the reality that you will have become exactly the type of person that you justified harming through your thefts.

In short, your reasoning makes you a hypocrite, and you may not feel guilty about stealing from a greedy operation. You might still want to consider alternative forms of protesting to make your point — assuming, of course, that you believe your reasoning instead of just making excuses for being precisely the same as the people you criticize.

The circular and self-serving nature of your reasoning is precisely the same reasoning every criminal uses to justify their behaviour.

After all, in their minds, they also believe “everyone else does or would do the same in the same situation they’re in.”

Try to imagine the chaos that would ensue if everyone made the decisions you have made for yourself using the same reasoning you employ.

Society would shut down, and that’s why you will get no mercy when you inevitably get caught. After all, it’s never an issue of “if” with repeat offences but “when.”

Your luck will eventually run out, and you will be caught. If guilt isn’t enough to motivate you, then understanding how impossible it is to shoplift indefinitely might help you to reconsider your choices.

Security systems are improving every day. It’s already impossible enough for security experts to keep up with all emerging technologies, let alone someone like yourself. Cameras are cheap nowadays and tiny. You won’t know where you might be recorded, and it’s only a matter of time before you won’t know about the GPS tracker hidden in the liner of the coat you steal.

Good luck, though. Maybe you’ll convince a billionaire to give their people a decent raise just to convince shoplifters to stop shoplifting… which will happen after cows learn to fly. 😜

How do you know if you’re an evil person or not?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-know-if-youre-an-evil-person-or-not/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

That’s simple: Do you find the act of hurting another pleasurable?

Even if that other person has caused you harm and you lash out in self-defence while feeling sorrow toward them and the events that lead to a destructive outcome, you are demonstrating the capacity of awareness that characterizes what allows humans to think of ourselves as “civilized.”

When Hillary Clinton laughed at the death of Muammar Gaddafi, that was when she lost it for me. It doesn’t matter how evil a monster he was; there should never be any pleasure in taking a life because that’s a betrayal of one’s essential humanity on every level. One can feel relief and express that. One can find satisfaction in ridding the world of evil, even through extreme measures, but the moment one finds pleasure in that act, one embodies the evil one self-righteously destroys. Evil always wins in that outcome.

Another example of knowing when one is evil is when they are in a position to save a life and choose not to. The most iconic moment embodying this behaviour was in Breaking Bad when Walter White watched Jesse Pinkman’s girlfriend, Jane, die of an overdose. He could have saved her, but his priority was controlling Jesse.

This was a harrowing moment for me when, up until this point, I found reasons to justify Walter’s behaviour but could no longer do so after this.

This particular scenario has exploded with meaning to me as I find it occurring in real life by people I should have been able to trust. Instead, they’re responding to my struggle for survival, which they are responsible for creating in ways that echo attitudes and behaviours.

Meanwhile, I currently need more options for addressing my struggle through civilized means. I have been exhausting every supposed route to reparations, but none are forthcoming as door after door slams in my face. I empathize with Luigi Mangioni in ways I would not have expected otherwise.

This is not something to be proud of or to find pleasure in. This is a moment demanding sorrow that we must come to this extreme before those responsible for evil stop and consider the gravity of their actions.