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Jan. 5th, 2020 02:43 pmOh Facebook. Where else could I have a conversation that would lead me to consider asking people I love whether they'd prefer I choose to let them die if I were forced to either do that or torture and murder babies?
Spoiler; I'd let them die. I mean, it's like TVs or movies that have a plot line where the prisoners have to decide who among them must die before their captor lets them go. My choice is always going to be no one. It's the captor choosing to kill, not me. I will not choose to kill in such a pointless way. My entire childhood of reading fiction about heroism under the guidance of parents who supported those ideals instilled that in me.
To borrow a zen concept, if you force me to choose who will die, one group against another, my answer is 'mu.' The question is invalid and should be unasked. It presumes a level of agency on my part that I feel is erroneous to presume.
(To elaborate; this is from Wikipedia on the topic of 'mu':
""Unasking" the question
The term is often used or translated to mean that the question itself must be "unasked": no answer can exist in the terms provided. Zhaozhou's answer, which literally means that dogs do not have Buddha nature, has been interpreted by Robert Pirsig and Douglas Hofstadter to mean that such categorical thinking is a delusion, that yes and no are both correct and incorrect.")
Spoiler; I'd let them die. I mean, it's like TVs or movies that have a plot line where the prisoners have to decide who among them must die before their captor lets them go. My choice is always going to be no one. It's the captor choosing to kill, not me. I will not choose to kill in such a pointless way. My entire childhood of reading fiction about heroism under the guidance of parents who supported those ideals instilled that in me.
To borrow a zen concept, if you force me to choose who will die, one group against another, my answer is 'mu.' The question is invalid and should be unasked. It presumes a level of agency on my part that I feel is erroneous to presume.
(To elaborate; this is from Wikipedia on the topic of 'mu':
""Unasking" the question
The term is often used or translated to mean that the question itself must be "unasked": no answer can exist in the terms provided. Zhaozhou's answer, which literally means that dogs do not have Buddha nature, has been interpreted by Robert Pirsig and Douglas Hofstadter to mean that such categorical thinking is a delusion, that yes and no are both correct and incorrect.")
