I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Yes, I think it’s more or less honorable. At least as honorable as any “honorable” thing we attribute to this absurd human race, like dying for your country or dying for love. If you’re dying to save the world from yourself, that’s a sign of great sacrifice, awareness and even compassion.
The question is: if you possess that degree of honor and strength to do such a difficult task, shouldn’t you also possess the strength to fix what’s “evil” about you? I don’t know the answer to that. It’s just a logical quandry I’ve been wrestling with.
Thought #2 if we scale this up to humanity as a whole, or any species, there are some interesting examples in nature of entire groups wiping themselves out when they become too large (consuming too much). One that comes to mind is bread yeast. It will rise due to the yeast feeding, but at the same time they are releasing a sort of toxin which reaches a critical level and kills the entire culture. (More or less something like this, I’m not exactly a biologist)
And the big one is the Fermi Paradox which asks why the universe isn’t teeming with life zipping around from planet to planet, given the high probability of life developing on countless planets like ours (remember the universe is supposedly infinite). One answer to the paradox is that any species that becomes advanced enough to develop interstellar travel will destroy itself first. We’re nowhere close to interstellar travel but we’re already on the verge of nuking ourselves off the planet, so I happen to agree with this theory.
What I’m saying is, that the self destruction of “evil” (unchecked consumption and/or destruction) is not just honorable but it’s part of the natural order of existence.
Now if I could just translate this thought into courage, I’d check myself off the planet tonight.
Contrarian that I am, I’m going to say that it isn’t honorable to end your own life regardless of moral failings. The reason is that supposing you could assess certain acts as “evil”, and I have written hundreds of pages on that subject, you’d adress the acts, not the person doing them.
The bare minimum honor would require is exile. If one was so compelled to do awful things that they could not stop, then they must remove themselves from temptation. This would prevent further evil acts thus satisfy moral duty, but not complicate with self ending.
However, the real pressure is to amend and correct, to change direction and nature of actions. There must be good acts to perform, and these would be the ones to serve as a suitable penance. That would be the highest honor.
To live is the adventure. Death is but an afterthought.
5 comments
I’m not sure honorable would be the right word exactly. Assuming this is about you, what have you done that warrants death exactly?
Well, nothing deserving of death quite yet. It’s more hypothetical at this point, daydreams I’m posing to others
I’d say so, sparing the world of evil. Then again, I think the Earth should be spared of all humans cuz we suck O_o
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Yes, I think it’s more or less honorable. At least as honorable as any “honorable” thing we attribute to this absurd human race, like dying for your country or dying for love. If you’re dying to save the world from yourself, that’s a sign of great sacrifice, awareness and even compassion.
The question is: if you possess that degree of honor and strength to do such a difficult task, shouldn’t you also possess the strength to fix what’s “evil” about you? I don’t know the answer to that. It’s just a logical quandry I’ve been wrestling with.
Thought #2 if we scale this up to humanity as a whole, or any species, there are some interesting examples in nature of entire groups wiping themselves out when they become too large (consuming too much). One that comes to mind is bread yeast. It will rise due to the yeast feeding, but at the same time they are releasing a sort of toxin which reaches a critical level and kills the entire culture. (More or less something like this, I’m not exactly a biologist)
And the big one is the Fermi Paradox which asks why the universe isn’t teeming with life zipping around from planet to planet, given the high probability of life developing on countless planets like ours (remember the universe is supposedly infinite). One answer to the paradox is that any species that becomes advanced enough to develop interstellar travel will destroy itself first. We’re nowhere close to interstellar travel but we’re already on the verge of nuking ourselves off the planet, so I happen to agree with this theory.
What I’m saying is, that the self destruction of “evil” (unchecked consumption and/or destruction) is not just honorable but it’s part of the natural order of existence.
Now if I could just translate this thought into courage, I’d check myself off the planet tonight.
Contrarian that I am, I’m going to say that it isn’t honorable to end your own life regardless of moral failings. The reason is that supposing you could assess certain acts as “evil”, and I have written hundreds of pages on that subject, you’d adress the acts, not the person doing them.
The bare minimum honor would require is exile. If one was so compelled to do awful things that they could not stop, then they must remove themselves from temptation. This would prevent further evil acts thus satisfy moral duty, but not complicate with self ending.
However, the real pressure is to amend and correct, to change direction and nature of actions. There must be good acts to perform, and these would be the ones to serve as a suitable penance. That would be the highest honor.
To live is the adventure. Death is but an afterthought.