So My Highschool "European History" Teacher

[Kil'jaeden]

You should be. Google is much more evil than Wal-Mart. It's 3rd place actually. 1st and 2nd are Disney and Microsoft.

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

Tired -_-

Murder is in the intent, IRHP, which you're not accounting for. Ignoring that, you've already missed the point that the people will eventually be dead, and how you perceive murder will not affect the inevitability of death.

Technical and legal mumbojumbo aside, if I do something knowing that someone could die as a direct result, and I go ahead with it, I am a murderer.

Now, surely the logic can be warped as most any can be, but you know I'm right on this.

Nice food for thought with the philosophical second paragraph, but it doesn't directly correlate to the topic at hand, and therefore it's little more than an amusing distraction. Also, I'm far too lazy to respond. I did read it though, and you make good points.

[Kil'jaeden]

I think it means that people die anyway, so you should not feel too bad about killing a few. Or, your opinion on murder will not stop people from dying.

Though, that also means that armies are alright. They do the job more efficiently. One of the best things about modern technology is industrialized killing. There's no way we could ever be as efficient at killing with rocks. How else do you respond to violence but with violence? Sure, we do lip service to non-violence these days, and have in the past, but few believe that. It is contrary to our basic, animal nature. If something attacks you, you fight or run. We kill things to eat them. Who said violence is a bad thing? Why care about violence at all, especially if one has no personal stake in it? It happens, not much you can do about it. A few serial killers here, a bio weapon there, will not really be a problem in the long run. Everything will keep spinning in space, and that's the most important thing. So why even spend all this time bothering about these murders and whatnot?

[1-up Salesman]

I personally don't have anything against armed forces when it's for defense, to be honest. Sure, call me a hypocritical crap-headed pig, I don't really care.

From what I'm getting out of this, AI, basically you've been viewing society for a number of years from an outside point-of-view.

[Deepfake]

Or, your opinion on murder will not stop people from dying.

Ayup.

Though, that also means that armies are alright.

It doesn't mean anything, really. There is no objective means by which you can judge a death via its cause, because dead's dead. Dead guys are not going to say "oh gee well I sure feel bad about the way I died" as they are dead, and inevitably would have been. I just see people killing eachother and making agendas out of whatever takes the least amount of thought. I am way past thinking of hardship as beatable, because it is subjective.

Sure, we do lip service to non-violence these days, and have in the past, but few believe that. It is contrary to our basic, animal nature. If something attacks you, you fight or run. We kill things to eat them. Who said violence is a bad thing?

A lot of people who weren't very zen about it, I would judge. People have a very powerful fear of death. As a lifeform, you are built to sustain life. Not that there's an actual sentient reason behind it. I see all of this media glorifying the preservation of the human race, which amuses me, because I see a lot of people creating problems to fix. Big picture, it's all gone eventually. Or it changes so much it may as well have, anyways.

From an alternative perspective, in the past, I'm still as I was. Time doesn't negate that, and my death doesn't undo that.

I personally don't have anything against armed forces when it's for defense, to be honest. Sure, call me a hypocritical crap-headed pig, I don't really care.

Defense is one of those subjective concepts, again. You've got "fundamentalists" protesting that it's their freedom to prevent gays from being gay, you've got the opposite side protesting that it's their freedom to be gay. I don't think hypocrisy is something you need to be concerned about, it's realistic to accept that your ideals don't align with your feelings or actions.

I don't think a lot of people want to commit to what it takes to having realistic ideals, although I prefer to - mostly, I understand that unless you pick a fight, you're not having one. So if it's your ideal to avoid conflict, you either choose the realistic notion of agreement, or you choose to redefine your goals or the purpose of your ideals.

So in this instance, we're looking at an aggressive man losing his **** and setting a building on fire. On the scale of aggressive people losing their ****, Walmart being on fire is a thing I can deal with. Considering he could've fixated on a person, and didn't, I'd say that's subjectively the best outcome I could imagine for a guy losing it.

Of course, we could imagine a perfect world where nobody wants to set Walmart on fire because there's nothing wrong with Walmart and cooky mother****ers don't want to set anything on fire, and they always choose the path of helping every single person they meet rather than possibly accidentally burning them down, but that's an unrealistic ideal. We know how that road goes, because if it were viable it simply would've been done.

Some guys I went to school with threw Molotov cocktails at an ex-girlfriend's house this very year - of the 3 people whom were present in highschool with me that have intentionally set a place on fire, this one is definitely the better option. I'm not overestimating the effectiveness of what I would want it to accomplish, though, it's just the initial impulse of "Yeah, I hate Walmart and everything it reminds me of."

Of course, you get the Chunky perspective that it's not going to strike to the core of Wal*Mart the company, which is irrelevant when what I want to see damaged is Walmart, the place people visit continuously that prevents them from experiencing new locations and ideas. Homogenous and familiar locations are a huge part of what's created the US self-entitlement complex that we're all so familiar with. The problem isn't just a company or an economy, it's a thought pattern.

From what I'm getting out of this, AI, basically you've been viewing society for a number of years from an outside point-of-view.

Society is just another concept. People make it into a threat or a goal, but it's just an incorrect notion that while we personally may not benefit, local humankind may benefit, which is somehow supposed to be objectively good. Our understanding of these concepts should be as complex as the truth of them.

For instance, most political candidates and arguments do not promise clear benefits, but instead appeal to ideals. My ideals are not even accessible.

In my ideal world, I would be happy about every single thing and everything good I could imagine would happen to me but would be undoable. I would be immortal and I would die as many times as I like and I would have as much or as little as I want whenever I want it, only to be dismissed or recalled on a whim. There would be no problems, yet there would be all of the problems I ever wanted to fix, and they would all be fixable, and the ones that are not fixable would be easy to abide, and then they would become beneficial. Everyone would understand me, everyone would love me, everyone would know me, no one would bother me, nobody would know me, everyone would be my enemy, and I would win every conflict, and I would lose were I to tire of winning, and everything would be utterly true and valid unless I had decided it should not be.

The honest truth is, wanting is the problem.

[Kil'jaeden]

So, you are saying that the five skandhas do not exist?

[Random User]

To be honest, as terrible as this sounds, what is a small bunch of people in a Wal Mart in a world of 7 billion people? I agree with AI in the point that people will die anyway, and I think that the sooner they do the better for stablising the population.

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

To be honest, as terrible as this sounds, what is a small bunch of people in a Wal Mart in a world of 7 billion people? I agree with AI in the point that people will die anyway, and I think that the sooner they do the better for stablising the population.

That doesn't sound terrible, it is terrible. Nobody should look like the female cop in the end of the Silent Hill movie because a Wal-Mart is in debatable need of burning

What, there's a bunch of people, who cares about the avoidable, inexcusable, hellish death of a couple? Come on, man.

People dying isn't the same as people being killed just because they still end up dead. Robot logic is for robots, so unless you're shooting lasers, you're a little off.

[Kil'jaeden]

VHEMT

This is a suggestion.

[Random User]

Well I personally would never want such a thing to happen, but I wouldn't see it as an extremely bad thing if it did. Would that change if someone I actually cared about died in a fire? Probably, but that's just my human preference for other people.

Would they deserve to die? Who knows, but looking from a completely logical standpoint it wouldn't matter.

VHEMT

This is a suggestion.

That's kinda funny considering I don't want children.

[Maximum Spider]

I like to imagine it happened like this:

[video]0_1iwwR8sHU[/video]

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

Well I personally would never want such a thing to happen, but I wouldn't see it as an extremely bad thing if it did.

And why wouldn't it be so bad if they did die their agonizing deaths? Because the world doesn't stop? Let's hear your thoughts on the matter.

Someone possibly deserving death being immolated in a burning Wal-Mart is hardly different from a person not quite deserving death being immolated in a burning Wal-Mart. It's too much speculation. The point is that you don't go around all Kratos-like, as sweet as it may sound when put that way.

[X-3]

Can one be deserving of death, if death is a complementary gift given to all? Ponder that while I wrap my slow brain around this "well people die eventually so" stuff.

[Deepfake]

And why wouldn't it be so bad if they did die their agonizing deaths? Because the world doesn't stop? Let's hear your thoughts on the matter.

Actually, this is a sort of personal perspective contradiction where most people look at one negative thing and see that other imminent negative things can be dealt with by playing party to the first negative outcome, and making it a writeoff. It's always long term versus short term - the short term implications might seem horrible, but the long term implications might seem worse.

The one absolute truth here that I have been trying to express is that one outcome is only ever subjectively better than the other; in the case of solutions to the problem characterised by Walmart, we see a step taken in what some of us will consider the right direction. None of us was willing to take that step, and yet an outside force has done so. The problem with any semblance of enlightenment is that it requires the compromise of base desires and goals.

How many of us is guilty of not having prevented this man from committing his hypothetical crime, and how many crimes went into building the man who would commit it? Could positive acts achieve this end result all the same? Circumstance is powerful and unwieldy. We should not hesitate to celebrate when it aligns with our desires.

So, you are saying that the five skandhas do not exist?

I'm not a Buddhist, and I am not especially educated on the subject of Buddhism, but the overall act of creating a system (Buddhism) for labeling is both a tool and a barrier to true perception of thought. We create concepts by perceiving them.

I'm not a fan of the Platonist concept that we are recalling a universally perfect concept, because concepts are actually singular to the mind which possesses them. I have a more scientific perspective, that concepts and language have an adaptive meaning. So in simple terms, any thought you have is an actual physical pattern, exclusive to your brain, because that is how the brain works.

Words are a single sense that we create, and this is where the skandhas enter. Recalling a word may lead to recollection of a time, a place, a smell, a sense of having been. Our brains traditionally function via context and association - a sort of trial and error.

If we evaluate and control our perceptions of the context we've created, we can choose to dissemble our ideas.

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

Some concepts you're delving into are beyond my level. Basically, I just wanna know if some poor, hypothetical bastard's charred body means anything on any level.

[Deepfake]

Some concepts you're delving into are beyond my level. Basically, I just wanna know if some poor, hypothetical bastard's charred body means anything on any level.

Ugh, okay. Well, objectively speaking, they don't mean a damn thing. Even simple religious scenarios involving a God are subjective meanings.

Subjective meanings are infinite, though, and you are free to apply them as you permit yourself.

For instance: The desire to be "right" is a subjective moral. We view selfishness as the immediate identifier for wrong acts. Yet the desire to be right is a self-oriented motivation, because you are perceiving a benefit that you desire and attempting to acquire it.

Of course, people with a moral compass would argue that to sacrifice the certainty in your moral actions and commit a crime to prevent a crime would be a perversion, but unsustainable ideals are a common theme and morals one in the same. The only value you have left is subjective; one that you assigned on a whim. Maybe you chose to follow tenets, but that is still a choice, made on a whim.

A lot of people take issue with understanding and using that understanding, because they want to know somehow that there is a gauge of "good" they can uphold, they have a selfish desire to be right. Well, there's all the gauges in the world, and you may subscribe to any of them, if you want. Every one of them as real as the last; made up on the fly. There's nobody who can make that decision for you. Even when it seems like they do, you are still choosing to adopt their decision.

[1-up Salesman]

To be honest, as terrible as this sounds, what is a small bunch of people in a Wal Mart in a world of 7 billion people? I agree with AI in the point that people will die anyway, and I think that the sooner they do the better for stablising the population.

EDIT:

Okay, I'm sorry, I went too far. But you wrote that, it sounded you don't value human life enough. I shouldn't have responded like that.

[Random User]

And why wouldn't it be so bad if they did die their agonizing deaths? Because the world doesn't stop? Let's hear your thoughts on the matter.

The world doesn't stop, things happen. It's unfortunate. And like I said, I'd never wish upon anyone such a way to die. But if it can't be helped, then that's too bad. What can we do about it once it's said and done?

EDIT:

No worries 1-Up.

[1-up Salesman]

Though, you never had to set a Walmart on fire.

[DarkZero]

My thoughts: Wal-Mart is a bad place and burning people is frowned upon.