this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2025
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Damn, this actually made me stop and think for a bit.
Even against those who are your sworn enemies, reveling on their deaths doesn't make you anything other than a cruel asshole.
EDIT: Unless those people are actually cruel assholes. I wouldn't say reveling on their deaths is right, but some obituaries SHOULD be read with great pleasure. Nobody should be called out for celebrating the death of a dictator.
Sometimes, it's a trolley problem where you don't have to pull any lever, and one horrible person's death saves many innocent ones.
Yup, plenty of people celebrate death or wish it upon people and then start getting defensive when called out on it. Human nature to be a cruel asshole and manage to convince yourself that you aren't.
I mean I think there's a difference between wanting someone to die because that person is an actual cruel asshole who attacks vulnerable minorities and thinking someone who just wants to live deserves to die because of a slight against you.
A wolf attacking sheep just wants to live, some politician attacking vulnerable minorities because they wanna hide something is a completely different thing. If I hear news about a Nazi dying trying to attack a minority and getting jumped/shot for it I will think "well you FAFO, that's your own problem".
Is there a difference? Because there isn't to me. Wishing death upon anyone makes you a bad person who stoops to the level of someone wishing it to you.
I pose a different thought: there are different ways to want someone's death.
There's wishing someone is dead because you hate them.
There's wishing someone is dead because there is no other way to stop the harm they're causing.
On the outside, it's hard to tell the difference, but I think it's profoundly different internally. In my opinion, the former lacks deeper thought. I think most people genuinely believe that whatever they're doing is good, or at least justified.
To a large degree, we are shaped by our environment. Yes, we can argue free will, but there's always a bias. It's similar to what Christians told me when I was a kid when I asked if indigenous tribes in the middle of nowhere could be saved by Jesus. Teachers told me, "well, they can find God/Jesus in the world around them." Like... theoretically, that's not impossible, but realistically, no. If there's some kid growing up being told his whole life that black people are evil and want to hurt him, and the only time he sees or meets black people are in hostile situations... what else is he going to believe? Should we excuse him? His actions, absolutely not. Him as a person... no... i think...? But how do we solve that? Should we just obliterate the population that kid was a part of? I don't have a great answer.
Basically, I think we should avoid hating people, and you can wish someone to die without hating them. The sheep can wish for the wolf to be dead so the sheep can be safe, but the wolf has to eat, too.
There is always a way to stop the harm that someone is causing without killing them. There is no difference to me. You want someone dead, you are just as "good" as they are, wanting you dead.
And the "wish them to die without hating them" is complete bullshit. Otherwise you wouldn't want them to die.
You are just proving my point.
How would you feel if you were in a war, defending your country and family, where the attacking soldiers were conscripts and didn't want to be fighting you in the first place?
I have never been in that situation so I don't know. Also it is irrellevant to what we are talking about.
I'm glad you haven't been in that situation and hope you never are.
I disagree on its relevance. In such a situation, it would make sense to have the desire to kill that soldier, but you might not hate him. Does that make sense? I'm asking you to use your imagination of such a situation and how you might feel about it. If you think you would feel or behave differently, I'm all ears
You keep trying to find a justification for wishing someone death and jumping through multiple hoops to explain it to convince yourself you are justified. There is no war without hate.
I gave an example that I thought was pretty similar to the comic. But reasonable people could differ on that one.
War certainly breeds hate, I'll give you that. And in today's world, most leaders generate hate to drive people towards war. But I guess a real world, contemporary example could be Ukraine. Many Russians don't want to be on the battlefield, or so I've read. Many Ukrainians feel like they have no choice to defend their homes and loved ones. I wonder if there are Ukrainians that don't hate their Russian counterparts, though they're fighting them. I imagine there at least have to be a few. I dunno.
In any case, I don't think either of us is budging in our beliefs here. I hope neither of us ever ends up in this kind of situation, and I hope we can avoid wishing death on people, hating them or not. Have a great day, my dude
I think that only applies to whole groups of people who can't choose who they are. Some palestinian wishing Netanyahu died is a whole different thing from that same palestinian wanting every Israeli to die. And this can apply to any minority. To me, directing rage to the person directly responsible for someone's oppression is a completely different beast from directing that rage to an entire group of people who just happens to share one trait with said oppressor.
Besides, I'm not one to wish death on anyone, but if they die as a consequence of their deliberately cruel actions I'm not gonna care.
How is it different in any way? Do you think that Netanyahu dying somehow ends the war in Gaza? Saves the Palestinian people?
Wishing someone dead comes from hatred. Hatred for their actions, for who they are. Netanyahu and Israel can be stopped. He can be put in jail. And I am saying this as a person who is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, who supports them.
Hatred is hatred and it breeds more hatred.
We are talking about wishing death to someone, not you caring when someone dies.
You are doing the exact same thing that I talked about. Trying to justify to yourself that you are still "good" but still wishing death, hating.
See, this is a problem we commonly see as "tone policing". You can't really tell victims of actually cruel people to not dislike their oppressors. You're showing more of a concern with decorum and being respectable than the fact the people are being oppressed.
You are strawmanning. I never said anything about tone policing, or telling victims to like their oppressors. We are talking about wishing death on someone and about hatred.
Be careful with these kinds of realizations around here... (Apparently the term 'horseshoe theory' can summon half of lemmy user base on the thread)