Aren’t you thinking of Ursula Le Guin’s “The ones who walk away from Omelas”?
I’ve known a few dogs that I’d be willing to die for…or take their place in Hell. How’s that?
Maybe it’d take 50 yrs of therapy before I’d get over it. Maybe that person I tortured turned out to be some evil person that had tortured 1,000’s and had it coming. Maybe I never would. But, just maybe, even after I tortured a person, I could be happy again.
But, if I were dead, I know that I would never spend a single happy moment on earth ever again. And if it turned out that I was doomed to spend the rest of my life in agony, well, I always have the option of offing myself.
This is what’s baffling to me. Why would my living or dying have anything to do with how much the feelings of others matter? My heart stopping changes nothing about their feelings.
I was responding to the two options.
- you are alive, but everyone knows you tortured a guy. Therefore people you know believe you have no honor.
- you are dead, but you have your honor because you chose death over torturing a guy. People you know, know that.
Your heart stopping was a result of your choice to preserve your honor - in that hypothetical.
I would die for a stranger; for the weaker person in a fight. I wouldn’t step between two apparently equally matched people in an argument, but if I see someone weak being attacked by someone strong, I’ll get between them.
Last year I put myself between a crazed tweaker mom who was beating up her 13 year old son. He was too shocked by her aggression to defend himself, and when she went for the knife in her purse (though she ultimately pulled out and brandished a hairbrush) I put the boy behind me and attempted to restrain her. Wouldn’t have made any difference if she had whipped out a hairbrush, a blade, or a gun, that child would not have died unless the bullet or blade went through me first.
Nothing noble or heroic about it, though- it is instinctive to want to protect someone weaker. But several acquaintences who read about the incident in the paper called and swore that “I would never have done anything like that.”
Yes. What baffled me was your statement that “it won’t matter how they feel because you’re dead”. It matters exactly as much whether I live or die.
EDIT: That was for brewha, not Beaucarnea.
If it was just a ploy to get recognition, that doesn’t sound very honourable anyway.
I think what the others are saying (and if so, I agree) is that it is better to die with honour (even though you may consider it conceptually impossible for you to enjoy that honour, being dead and all), than it is to live on having been deeply dishonourable.
[Chekov voice]No, no, this Le Guin, she must have stolen it from Dostoevsky![/Chekov voice]
The quote’s from The Brothers Karamazov BTW.
If you show yourself willing to die then that has an effect on people who learn of the incident. Think of Leonidas and the Spartans at Thermopylae. Think of firemen rushing into burning buildings. Obviously you personally do not benefit, but society does. And just maybe, at some time in the future, someone will do the same for one of your descendants. Or, instead of just one person stepping forward, several will and the attacker will be scared off or defeated.
Did I somehow indicate that I disagree with any of the above? Well, except the importance of Leonidas, that is.
To them? Sure.
To me? No. When I’m dead, it doesn’t matter how anyone feels. I will have absolutely no empathy because I will have absolutley nothing. Unless you beleive in an afterlife or karma or reincarnation, what goes on with others when you are dead is irrelevant. I won’t matter to me if the entire world explodes when I die, because, for me, it’s the end of the universe anyway.
So everything only matters in relation to you? If something doesn’t affect you, it does not matter?
Whoa!! I’m not trying to piss anyone off here.
I’m not trying to get anyone to take my side or my opinion.
The entire universe only exists through my eyes. When I die, nothing really matters to me, because I’ll be dead. There’s no one gonna tell me, good on you, you saved that guy. No one is gonna thank me. I’m not gonna feel pride or guilt or remorse or happiness or anything because I’ll be dead.
This is not answering the OP and is at the embryo stage of a debate that I want no part of. I bid you good day sir!
Carbohydrates. (I have teh type 2 diabeetus, and a persistent starch tooth.)
Nor have you to my knowledge done so.
Nor have you given me the impression that you were.
Well, that viewpoint is baffling to me. Pain and pleasure were felt long before I was conceived and will continue to be felt long after I’m dead, and my conception and death will have affected them only inasmuch as I personally did. What’s good will remain good when I’m dead, what’s bad will remain bad. So what people feel about me when I’m dead matters just like what they feel about me while I’m alive.
Definitely baffling to me, but then I am not baffled by the Jehovah’s Witness woman. How could someone not be willing to die for their religious beliefs? I hope I would be able to, but I can certainly see myself failing.
I’m not sure this counts, Olive, since you’re not choosing death over life. You’re making an entirely rational choice to maximize your chances of survival by retaining as much control of the situation as possible.
In fact - isn’t olivemarch’s approach what they teach in self-defense classes these days? Never go anywhere willingly with your kidnapper - they’re taking you to where you’re going to die. Fight back in every and any way possible - you’re still better off in an ER with gunshot wounds than you are trapped in their basement.
What?
Surely Bacon Salt has to be up there alongside cheese.
As for myself:
If I saw anyone at all ill treating a cat/kittens, old as I am I’d do my damned best to gouge out their eyeballs and shove them up their arses before I was killed.
Yes, I love cats that much