Random Questions

At what point is revenge justifiable? How badly does someone have to hurt a member of your family before you feel justified in killing them? The death penalty exists because we cant be allowed to just take revenge. There bas to be an official system in place of investigation and trial before the sentence of death is handed down. My only objection to the death penalty is that wealthy people escape it even when they are guilty and poor people get stuck with it even when they are innocent.

I wont give examples unless i have to but please, unless you really want to have your feelings hurt by learning about some horrible, real life events, please don't argue with me on the point that there are people who have inflicted such torturous suffering upon others that they have forfeited their right to another chance. There is a point where someone should die for what they have done. Civilians cannot be allowed to take that sort of justice into their own hands. Thats why we have a death penalty.

I am sure some people are justified, especially as the system stands. But what I believe about all this is that if people were taken care of in the first place, they would not resort to such crimes. And in going to jail/prison where it's a jungle and each person is in constant survival mode from other prisoners AND corrections officers, they become worse when they are released.

With that said ... at this point I do not think things can be fixed. We live in a world where PTSD and mental illness and abuses of various kinds are passed on from generation to generation. Millions grow up to reflect what they have been taught about life when younger. Some come out quite angry about life and find the only relief is hurting other people. Mass shooters come to mind when I think about this and about capital punishment. It's a hard line to walk and say "let's help this person who just shot up a school", and "put them out of society's misery". I am not a god to make that decision on that person's life decisions.

dwagoonie wrote: ... what I believe about all this is that if people were taken care of in the first place, they would not resort to such crimes.

And perhaps if she hadn't worn a short skirt on that night, things would have gone differently for her.

As much as I agree that in general a sufficiently tame society would do well to grow in such a way as to not drive a vast fraction of her people into the sort of desperation that might push them to commit atrocities, I am struggling to interpret blaming the actions of an individual on said society as anything less or better than victim blaming, even if we are ready to acknowledge that the perpetrators in question are themselves victims of a grossly flawed system that left them with their sickness brewing inside of them well past boiling point. No matter how rosy things get, there are miserable and desperate and sick people everywhere and most of them live and die without leaving much of a mark on history. The few who do went out of their way to acquire the means and to carry through their awful deed.

While, again, it is fair and necessary to ask just what drove them and what the rest of us can do better in future, it is also acceptable, in my humble opinion, to place some, if not a majority of the blame, on them, too.
That being said, however, this is all assuming that finding whom to blame or not to is a reasonable use of our time. It is entirely possible, so I assert, to ponder what could be done to make things better in future without first asking whose fault any incident must have been. And on the outset capital punishment is not all that obviously unhelpful in this regard. There wouldn't be much of a debate around it if a case couldn't be made either way, and I think this much we can appreciate even if our own stance is firmly on one side of that issue and not the other.

Blame is a term thrown around a lot these days. I am not a psychiatrist or sociologist, or even a criminologist. The observations i stated are based on the point of view of looking in from the outside. It is an umbrella- boanket generalization. The whole picture of how humanity presents itself. From the detailed view of individuals it may appear different, but we are all still a part of the whole.

I blame no one, and yet the criminal and the society are both to "blame".

OB1Shinobi wrote: At what point is revenge justifiable?

Revenge is not the way of the Jedi. Or a Knight.

We should seek justice and balance. If your emotions will not allow you to do that then it might be best to let someone else handle the matter.

That said... for all my efforts I am only human. Fallible and flawed. I can not guaranty that if someone hurt my daughter I would or could let others deal with the situation. :evil:

You may be right to react that way, just as the police may be right to lock you up for it. This is a major struggle for people, in my mind: We can say "no" to reality all we want, but I'm pretty sure the whole shebang will continue on if one person kills another, or even if a comet smashes us to smithereens. Morals, ethics: these are not intrinsic to all of reality. No amount of justice weighs even an ounce. Humans created these ideas, and like a child playing with a knife and a piece of wood trying to be a master carpenter, we often fall short and end up injuring ourselves.

Of course, if you don't practice...

To be clear, I have my own morals and ethics: I am human after all and it is within us to decided these things. Expecting anyone else to share what I view as right and correct is foolish in my mind, though. I can say, as Jedi, I am on the side of life, but that is connected to the idea that we are All One Creature. I don't smash flies, I put them outside, or ignore them, but I will squish a mosquito who bit me. Wescli would be correct in my mind to defend their children's life by taking one, just as I wouldn't blame the police for locking him up over it. Your dealing with 2 different moral sets at that point: Wescli's and Societies.

To begin with, I am very happy with the responses and it'ts the exact reason I created this topic. Now another question, "Does the direction of your head( North, East, South, or West) while sleeping has its benefits?" I found this article https://parenting.firstcry.com/articles/magazine-ideal-sleeping-direction-as-per-vastu/#:~:text=4.,negative%20energies%20in%20your%20life. and if you are someone like me who have troubles sleeping, staying asleep, or constant nightmares might benefit from this, but I can't force you! Before, I usually had my head pointed south for a long time and I did see results, but then 2020 came and I changed it so I was facing the west. Personally, I do feel that this is real and I hope it does benefit you as well. So, I leave this information to you, and May the force be with you!

I have looked into that some years back. I tried all the head facing directions. I still got the ongoing Night Hag, the nightmares of doomsdays and dreams of being in the middle of battlefields or some other life threatening situation. I still had the dreams of dying in every imaginable way possible (very unpleasant btw). What worked for me in the end was inner-child work. I had those kinds of dreams for 20-30 years, I got to the point I was able to feel when things were about to go really bad and I would force myself awake. Now I have restful sleep.

Jeez, that sounds really horrible. I'm sorry that you had to go through that. I thought I had control over my waking day after a nightmare, but 2020 happened and now I'm back to square one.