Hee…well of course, why else wouldn’t I care if I puddled into a pool of pee in a McDonald’s massacre? It was obvious you thought I was a big strong testosterone mess, which is why I thought I’d better kindly set you straight, challenging old ladies to prove their manhood isn’t really effective (But don’t feel too terribly bad, I’m a fairly new grandma, not quite ready for a walker yet!).
I think he’s touched a nerve too, which is why he’s getting such resistance here. I’m not meaning to be rude ( I don’t think others are either), just to understand how this can possibly be. It really is mindboggling to some of us. Maybe others (and me) aren’t expressing it quite the way he wants, but I think it definitely touches a nerve to think that someone would actually stand there and allow fellow citizens to be gunned down. And I meant what I said about instinct, that wasn’t meant to be snarky, I truly believe that instinct causes people to react in ways they never could have imagined, despite what they believe their convictions to be.
I believe that it’s not that we don’t believe him, as in he’s lying, but we don’t believe it as in we’re baffled and again, are stunned that he’d allow murder when he opposes it so!
Oh Lord, I could have sworn it was Mr.Dribble, you know, similar to a cat’s name? It’s not so much a typo as I thought that’s what it said in the first place! I scrolled back up, and sure enough it’s DIbble…siiighhhh, and I just got new readers too snort!
Yes, I understand that. The trouble is, there isn’t much BUT shoot to kill that a person can do to stop someone like this. If at all possible, I think most of us would try any other means, but if you’ve got a raging psycho, or a burgler blasting away, it’s not as if you’re going to have time to figure out a non-violent solution. Do people in this position really believe that there would be time, or that “talking it out” would be even remotely effective? Please. History shows that isn’t so likely in far too many cases. And you don’t know which will be which either.
You’re right, the likelihood of him being in such a school shooting is very tiny, probably zero. The school shootings and other “gone postal” incidents themselves however, are hardly “hypothetical”, they’re pretty much a common frequent occurrence in today’s society. Just an aside re: your post above, why does it have to be “or 1000 people will die”? If a person is against murder and he/she condemns only one fellow citizen to death by inaction, it’s still killing.
Who posted the time-traveling post? I missed that one. Not to hijack, but that IS pretty idiotic…sheesh, of COURSE you wouldn’t kill a 10 year old, you’d remove him from his psychotic mother and raise him kindly and well.
As to the “if more people were absolutely non-violent”? Well of course, in an ideal world, but that’s true of all of the world’s ills. Unfortunately, we live in the real world. Bottom line, the two of you and MrDibble are right in one thing, he’s unlikely to ever have to find out what he would really do.
I agree that survival instinct is very strong (and so does Mr. Dibble). It’s not that he lacks that instinct; he is consciously choosing to fight the instinct harder than he’d fight to save his own life. It’s a decision that’s in keeping with who he is as a person. To take a person’s life, for any reason, will rob him of his innocence and self-worth, much the way a rape would take these things from some people. To avoid being (for lack of a better term) an incomplete human being, he chooses not to add to the ever-rising body count.
This doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. It doesn’t mean he loves his family less than anyone else. It simply reflects his opinion regarding his place in the world and his duty to mankind. It’s not a numbers game (referring to how many lives would be saved if he’d just take one). It’s about his job on planet Earth.
I know I took some liberties here…it’s just how I read his position.
I’d like to add that this is what I (and possibly Ivan) were talking about in that heated gun thread a couple weeks ago. Some of the pro-gun guys were saying they’d shoot an intruder. I was ridiculed for saying I would hide. There are many things a person can do that will keep them from engaging in violence. An alarm system, strong locks, hiding, fleeing. I would do all these things plus not own a gun, to keep myself from crossing a line I don’t want to cross.
As I said upthread, I don’t know if I could fight the instinct to kill (I hope I’d be able to). However, Mr.Dibble said he’s been tested and is confident he can follow through on his personal decision to never kill under any circumstance.
I think this might be the crux of the bafflement. I’m pretty sure MrDibble has not advocated non-violence - just the utter wrongness of killing someone, in whatever circumstances.
Speaking for myself I probably wouldn’t go as far as him. I acknowledge that if someone was holding a gun to my daughters head and I had a clear shot blah de blah, then I’d probably go for it. But for the vast majority, if not all of us, these situations are completely hypothetical. I also think that the taking of a life, even the life of a scumbag psycho, is regrettable in the extreme, and should be avoided if at all possible.
I think far too many people think about when killing is justifiable - from the hypothetical black and white scenarios, through “just war”, to the idea that “he’s on my property so he’s lost the right to live” - and not enough time thinking about alternative ways to deal with the world’s problems.
PS I’m sorry if I’ve offended you at all, you’re clearly not the person I thought you were.
I’m going to go ahead and assume based on your interpretation of the article that you didn’t read the article. The author makes it explicit that in some cases these feelings are natural and common, but by bracing the victim for them before she has even experienced them we are setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is absolutely no need to be defensive, as I pretty explicitly disagreed with Kalhoun further up in the thread, and then made it clear in my response to you that I agreed with everything you’d said except the part I quoted. You’re defending parts of your post that I already agree with.
You neither have to convince me of the real loss that being abused or raped can entail, and further you don’t have to convince me that child molestation isn’t as bad as rape. One of my earliest memories is testifying in court against the man I enthusiastically called Dad. As unfortunate a situation that was, it wasn’t nearly as traumatic as being later molested by my Mom’s 4th husband (who I also enthusiastically called Dad) for years, from the age of 10 to 17. I lost both fathers as a result of their actions, and in the second case my mother blamed me, accused me of lying about it, and admitted she knew about it all in a single breath. She spent the next several years still married to my abuser, trying to convince my doctors I was schizophrenic, and to this day is uncomfortable to bring up the subject because she’s ‘‘not ready’’ to talk about it. That at no point in my life was I forcibly penetrated really doesn’t enter into the utter grief and trauma I had to endure as a result of that situation and absolutely no one on this planet will ever convince me that what I went through isn’t ‘‘as bad’’ as rape.
I read that article at a time when my life was pretty much falling apart for no good reason other than I couldn’t stop thinking about what a pathetic childhood I had. It gave me the strength to realize that a lot of my reactions were based on what I was told, by therapists and self-help books, I should be feeling. Reading that article gave me the strength to witness my own experience in my own way and realize that falling apart was not a necessity in healing from trauma. Neither did I have to view myself as irrevocably damaged or having had my innocence stolen. I was never innocent. I think it’s a stupid construct.
So let’s just further emphasize that my second paragraph, the one all about predictive factors of trauma, was more of an academic lecture supporting your argument than a refutation of what you were saying. People can believe all they want about what traumas are worse than other traumas but the bottom line is that while we can make predictions about whether a given individual is more likely to develop PTSD (based on duration, repetition, external vs. interpersonal, involves prolonged captivity, etc), it’s still completely dependent on the individual.
Though now I have to take another exception… there is little evidence that repressed memory is something that actually happens. A great deal of credibility was granted to it during the 70s/80s Sybil-era of psychology but the more research we do, the more it’s clear that, barring physical head trauma, this is either a nonexistent or at least extremely rare phenomenon. And even if it were real,
That someone can be ‘‘hypnotized and made to forget’’ a traumatic event is an even more troubling belief.
Blaming the victim is such an easy thing for friends and family members to do if it means protecting the perpetrator – as Judith Herman points out, the choice is between remaining silent or taking an active stance against. Remaining silent is always the easiest choice. Culturally, societally, victims of child abuse and rape are up against a great Conspiracy of Silence… therefore we must take care to protect our credibility. Believing that hypnotism can resurface or repress memories is not in line with the goal of protecting credibility. Families have been destroyed due to the myth of repressed memories, and with every family that is destroyed this way, another true victim of child abuse is ignored, ostracized, and otherwise blanketed in that Conspiracy of Silence.
It’s just one of those hypotheticals I hear a lot to test out how far someone could go, in terms of committing violence, if it were for the ‘greater good’. It is ridiculous as presumably if you have the opportunity to kill him you could kidnap him instead. Personally I worry about the alternate reality being even worse (Soviet Union takes over Western Europe and Stalin kills twice as many as Hitler did) but, yeah, hijack.
I’ve successfully talked my way out of being shot in the head by a “raging psycho”(well, a guy high on drugs) once. And I’ve run from violent confrontation more than once.
I think if I developed a morality that said essentially “it is sometimes OK to kill”, I’d suddenly find that that “sometimes” covers a lot more situations than I expected. Slippery slope and all that, I know, but I know how I am with latitude, personally.
And we are discussing my personal morality here. While I *do *consider it the ideal morality for everyone, I don’t proselytize it. I can perfectly understand why people advocate a “kill in self defence” morality. I don’t agree, but I understand.
However, the likelihood of me being a victim of gun crime or other violence is probably orders of magnitude greater than most other people on this board. I do, after all, live in South Africa, a very violent society.
This twists the meaning of the word “killing” past all reason. I would not be the killer, the person doing the killing would.
I’m not as fatalistic as you. I believe the real world responds to our efforts to change it, and that complacency in the face of a violent society is just as much a moral choice as opposing it or actively participating in it are.
Like I said, I’ve found out on more than one occasion. I’ve lived in some pretty violent times, and in some decidedly dangerous places.
Well, I do advocate not taking any actions that could reasonably easily lead to death. I’m OK with restraining force, or tackling someone to the ground (yeah, I know, they could knock their head and die…), I’m definitely against guns and knives and blunt instruments. I’m not exactly sure how I feel about Tazers or bare-fisted punching, but at the moment I wouldn’t use either. Pepper spray is OK in my book, and I’ve used it in the past to good effect.
Our mind forgets things that are useless to us all the time. If it’s possible to induce this loss of memory for events that are potentially psychologically damaging, why would it not be desirable?
I was specifically stating that the belief this is currently possible with hypnotism is troubling, because it’s not currently possible. You can’t use hypnotism to suppress or surface traumatic memory. The idea that you can is quackery.
The implications of assuming that one would be better off without traumatic memory is another ball of wax altogether, and perhaps better suited for another thread. I for one consider myself extremely fortunate to have had the experiences I did.
Q.E.D., it seems to me that your own cite is supporting Olives position:
Emphasis added
If a suppressed memory is still affecting learned behaviors, and associated memories, it’s not what I’d consider to have been usefully suppressed for any kind of therapeutic definition. It may be a tool for therapy, and allow the behaviors, thoughts and actions to be modified more easily, but it’s not the fantasy of simply erasing a memory so that it no longer affects the patient.
This is interesting. I’m wondering if the context and the actual events themselves are tied to two different memory functions? There are many ways of remembering. The subjects in the study were exposed to a movie, which is a pretty mundane narrative memory. Has this work been reproduced with traumatic memory? There is good evidence to indicate that traumatic memory is chemically encoded and retrieved in a different way than standard narrative memory. This would not surprise me, given the fact that traumatic memory as a subjective experience is completely different than narrative memory, particularly in cases of individuals with PTSD.
I do want to emphasize that I don’t regard hypnosis in general as quackery. My point is that hypnosis cannot, at this point in time, serve as a magical panacea to eliminate traumatic experience. Furthermore, I am incredibly suspicious of anyone who suddenly has a traumatic memory resurface under the guidance of hypnosis. Memory in general is not reliable, one thing that’s abundantly clear is that hypnosis is often incredibly successful at fucking with the brain, and that combination of truths should make one leery about any subjective observation about hypnosis and memory. And my final point is that even if we could somehow take away our memories of trauma, using it to that end would raise serious ethical concerns about the perceived value of negative experiences.
Fair enough, I of course have not had to deal with violence (not on a human level, I HAVE been chased out of the woods by an angry moose though and had other typical Alaskan encounters with wildlife, well typical for those of us who work out in the field I guess…:D). I understand, though still disagree with some of what you believe. And you’ve somewhat unmindboggled me with your explanations. Though of course that’s not my place to say for you. And sorry again for the extra R! Honestly, I’ve been reading this entire thread and seeing Mr. DRibble until it was pointed out to me, that there was no R…arrgh!
Up front:
Most people here suffer from the idea that all human life is precious. In most of the world it is not nearly so.
In this country we are not allowed to put down our evil offspring. :: shrug ::
Most here have not worn the shoes.
I don’t much care what you do, it is what it entails for me that is the problem.
I feel that laws and justice have nothing in common.
I feel that my life is no more precious than anyone else’s.
One of my sisters was raped at gun point twice by the same guy who told the judge that if they let him out he would do just that. They let him make bail anyway without letting my sister or her family know.
That is our justice system in action.
In 1991, my 18 year old daughter was murdered. the DA would not arrest nor charge the guilty party because he was running for Lt. Gov and the time and he told the police, and the Lt. who was in charge of her case told me, because he did not want to have a possible loss as the proof was to circumstantial to suit him. It is still an open case. The guy has fled the country. There is that 1 in a million chance that the guy did not do it… So I did not nor did my son kill him. I think we were wrong not to. I live with this every day.
You all can yak and posture all you want but you have no clue. If you have Mr. D’s attitude or what I feel is the blindness of Kalhoun, fine, but your desire to make me see the error of my ways is laughable.
Only because many people were and are willing to fight and die for you, are you able to be this stupid and idiotic. Ain’t it grand… I have been on both sides of the juror box and on both tables in front and if you think it is about laws and justice and not about power and money, then you are really really stupid…
Someone up thread talked about natures way of dealing and it does bring up that man and only man, (no religion or after life – remember, this is the dope after all) is the only animal that makes this terrible mistake…
I don’t make that mistake anymore and with the decreasing quality of our judicial system and all levels of government, those that are willing to give up their family members to it’s corruption and stand there and say that if their children or family members are as poorly treated as mine has been and smile and say thank you to the wise ones of the system and of the SDMB, well, you will be getting exactly what you deserve…
Since 99.999% of you will never have to find out what it is really like, I know this is falling on deaf ears but do not be surprised at the more sever reactions you might get from people in the real world when you say these thing to their face at the funerals of their children or friend or family members. When they cry out because the courts let the killers and rapist go and you do not tell then the same thing you are saying in this thread you are worst kind of hypocrites there are.
I really doubt you most of you have the stones to tell your siblings these things at the funeral of the their children or at the bed side of you sister who was raped oh so gently…
I have no desire to make anyone see any “error” - like I said, it is my chosen lifestance, I don’t directly advocate it for anyone else.
I’ve addressed this before - suffice to say, it just ain’t so. I had the same stance when the people in power were the ones doing the killing and the maiming, and bloody revoltion looked like an attractive way out.
It is precisely because there is no universal Justice that I believe as I do.
What mistake, nonviolence? Lots of animals practice nonviolence, and it works for them. Mercy? That’s a human construct, I agree, but so is the concept of murder.
Note, I confine my nonviolence to humans only. Killed enough animals in my time.
I’m not afraid to say “I refuse to kill” in the real world. Truth be told, it’s not the most bizarre worldview out there. Most people who don’t know me that well just assume I’m Buddhist or Jain or Quaker or somesuch.
Paah - I’ve been raped (once at knifepoint), it was pretty bad both times, but I still wouldn’t wish death on the guys who did it.
As to “stones”, what would I be scared of saying to a sibling? “Sorry, brother, but I wouldn’t become a killer just to save little Johnny”? This would not be news to anyone in my family. Nor would my mostly very liberal Christan sibs see anything unusual about it - them all being very much “turn the other cheek” types.
I just don’t get why so many people have a bug up their noses about this,or why you’re all so insulting about it, either. It’s not like pacifism doesn’t have some pretty well-known historical precedents. It’s not like I’m asking anyone to follow my moral code, either. Why does the mere existence of pacifists irk people so?
I don’t know why you would think it’s “blindness” that makes me think the way I do. I am perfectly aware that I could kill people if I wanted to. I simply don’t consider it as an option in my arsenal.
I also don’t consider all human life to be precious. That’s not the reason I am against killing. I’m against it because it chips away at our collective humanity.
Hee…well of course, why else wouldn’t I care if I puddled into a pool of pee in a McDonald’s massacre? It was obvious you thought I was a big strong testosterone mess, which is why I thought I’d better kindly set you straight, challenging old ladies to prove their manhood isn’t really effective