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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: December 18th, 2023

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  • Yes, I understand. It is really really gray and complicated here. I’m very conflicted here - on one hand, murder is always a death of a human being who could improve and also has good sides, see my parent comment. On the other hand, exactly as you write sometimes the death of a person means that others will survive.

    My point is that no person deserves to die BECAUSE OF WHO THEY ARE - that’s exactly what the Nazis did. But I absolutely understand the ethical argument that people deserve to die for WHAT THEY DO. If you cannot stop a greedy CEO otherwise (because the judicial system is maybe a little tiny bit biased towards the rich), there really isn’t another choice for fulfilling your rights. And I can honestly respect your argument that in this case, murder may be an overall good thing. I don’t know where the line for me is, to be honest - but I acknowledge that is has to exist somewhere.

    I hope you understand though why from my perspective the dragon metaphor is a bit too simple, because as our thread shows the topic isn’t easy at all :/



  • That is actually a very interesting take, thank you for sharing.

    For me, it was always clear that actions do not define us as people. I never thought that people might see it differently.

    I think it is important to distinguish the term value here. I hope we both agree that every person has dignity. I live in Germany, and the first sentence of our Constitution is “Human dignity shall be inviolable.” That means that I do not have the right to judge a persons value as a person - the Nazis were a famous example for doing that. That’s why in today’s judiciary system, at least in Germany, we e.g. do not lock people away forever: a person always has the chance to improve, work upon themselves, and get out of prison. The prison time can be extended into infinity, if a person poses a threat to society - but if they don’t, they can get free. Their value to society may be close to zero, perhaps negative - but they still possess value and dignity as a human.

    This guy was subtracting value from society, and his value to you and me was probably negative. But it still is different than a humans internal value. To murder a person is to take their internal and external value, and to break their dignity. This is something which is not compatible with my consciousness.


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    23 days ago

    Yes, good point. I agree. Maybe there’s also a difference in perception of these tales, because when a dragon is slain the people can regain their wealth. In this case though, the wealth of the CEO doesn’t get transferred to the people. Buuut one can argue that we have an inheritance tax, thus part of his hoarded money WILL get transferred to the people, in which case the murderer is actually returning the wealth to the people and the dragon metaphor isn’t that invalid after all. It gets very quickly very murky ethically. I presume that while the wealth is parked away in some off-shore, probably some of it at least will return to the State. A lot depends though on the tax rate, how exactly the taxing goes, who does it,…

    Long story short - this guy was way too rich, no question asked. That’s for sure.


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    23 days ago

    I agree with everything you say, up until the last sentence. Probably as a disclaimer, I study psychology and want to become a clinical psychotherapist. I deeply believe that no person wants to be bad. In fact, I am of the utmost conviction that every person has the potential to become a better person than they are right now. That does not absolve him of his crimes - in fact, it is quite the contrary: he chose to go down the path of evil and to condemn people to die. But that doesn’t mean that he cannot ever change to become better. It is a part of my life philosophy that every person can heal. Obviously many people won’t do so - this guy DEFINITELY would’ve had the chance to go to a psychotherapist himself, for sure. But that does not mean that he deserved to die. My argumentation is heavily based on Albert Ellis (one of the founders of cognitive-behavioural therapy) and REBT. In short, Ellis said that our actions do not determine us as whole human beings. The fact that we often act badly doesn’t make us bad human beings, nor does the fact that we act well makes us good. We are simply humans, and to judge us means putting yourself in the shoes of a God. We can and should judge our actions, by all means - but we are far, far more than actions. To judge a person as a whole is a position I do not want to take. And even though this guy wanted to see himself as a God, I personally want to stay human and recognize that he is and was a broken spirit and a human, just as you and I are. Even though he might have wanted to discard his humanity, he still is and stays human.

    Tl;Dr - terrible actions, has committed countless crimes. But his actions don’t determine his worth as a human. Thus I do not want to say that he deserved to die, nor that he was evil as a human.





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    23 days ago

    I disagree with this metaphor. Humans aren’t inherently evil, in contrast to the dragon. Even though the guy definitely did evil shit as a CEO and is responsible for thousands of dead people, he is not fully evil. I’m very sure he also did good things.

    For me this is really important, because that’s exactly why I oppose death penalty. No human is absolutely evil, and thus in every person there is something worth preserving and being protected.











  • Psychology student hère.

    In short, our professor explained to us that there are two approaches as to how subconscious thoughts and emotions work. The first one is that sometimes thought processes are subconscious, but they can be “brought to light” relatively easily; this perspective has been well-validated and compatible with modern psychology. The second approach is the psychoanalytic one - that some thoughts and emotions are forcefully kept away from the consciousness in order to self-regulate. This position has been debunked and doesn’t seem to have empirical basis.

    That’s why classical psychoanalysis today, where you dig deep into thoughts and feelings in order to go beyond the “defensive forces” of the mind (in German also called Abwehr), is seen as outdated.