A big red button
Aug. 14th, 2012 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annwfynThis is a random pondering.
If you were given a button, and told that if you pressed it, someone you dislike would die, would you?
You'd be able to name the person and they would die. It wouldn't be your fault. It would be entirely untraceable. Maybe it would be a car crash, maybe a heart attack. But they would die. It could be someone you'd never met - a dictator - or someone who had hurt you in a specific way.
Consequences free killing.
Could you?
Would you?
If you were given a button, and told that if you pressed it, someone you dislike would die, would you?
You'd be able to name the person and they would die. It wouldn't be your fault. It would be entirely untraceable. Maybe it would be a car crash, maybe a heart attack. But they would die. It could be someone you'd never met - a dictator - or someone who had hurt you in a specific way.
Consequences free killing.
Could you?
Would you?
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-14 10:11 pm (UTC)I'd want to. I'd be very tempted. I'd start lifting a hand a few times. But:
a) Those people I want dead? I want to do it up close and personal, so they damn well know who's killed them and why, and so that I can feel it.
b) I worry what that act would do to me as a person. Would I start to turn into someone I wouldn't like very much? Or would I feel guilt and regret over it for the rest of my life? How would I feel, knowing I had done a thing that my friends would turn away from me if they knew about it? Would I feel like I was living a lie every time I hung out with them, knowing it was only possible because I was keeping something big and fundamental a secret from them?
So... two very contradictory reasons there, but then that's me all over :)