this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2024
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1
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Murder is not too difficult: you lock 'em up on the grounds of protecting society, since this was premeditated violence and they might do it again.
Accidental homicide is where it gets tricky. Obviously someone who runs over a child by accident is going to jail. The usual constructive justification is that this "an expression of society's outrage", or similar. There's truth in that. But the real, underlying, motive is surely to inflict suffering on the perpetrator as they inflicted it on their victim - in this case, completely unintentionally. My point is that it's not constructive, it doesn't solve anything except add misery to misery. And it's hypocrisy, because we all know, deep down, that retaliation is about us, not them, but we won't admit it. I hate hypocrisy.
I once got badly injured in a road accident entirely caused by someone else's gross negligence. There were no witnesses and they got off by brazenly lying about what happened. Did I hate them? Yeah, a bit. But then the lying was rational and I might well have done the same in their place. They wanted to escape punishment, which after all serves no purpose to anyone. Did I even want them to go to jail? Actually, no. I would have accepted a sincere apology and some symbolic act of making amends. A day of community service, perhaps. But our system is not set up like that. I think it's a shame.
in this case planned murder is tricky. because the person they killed is directly responsible for orders of magnitude more deaths and the government was unwilling to lock them up for everyone's safety.
But a financial criminal does not directly cause anything much, let alone a ton of murders. That's the whole point. It takes lots of other people, all with their own agency, to effect the harm. As for locking them up "for everyone's safety", I would say that that is pure sophistry for a case of someone who sits behind a computer. We will agree to disagree on this whole subject.
Wrong person mate. Unless you meant to completely change the context of the conversation.
Neither of us were talking about financial crimes. I was very explicitly countering your narrative that planned murders are easy to decree as a danger to society vs accidental; and therefore somehow less ambiguous/ simpler.