"all are insane but me and thee, and I'm not so sure about thee"

[ineffabelle]

"So there is a pretty easy reply to people who say that man is innately evil, that without a control apparatus people would just go around killing and stealing, and so on and so forth, the reply being “who would you kill first?” Of course they do not want to kill anyone, and they will say so, although they are convinced that the masses harbour in their hearts a desire to kill.

So from a logical point of view, we have a paradox which leads to three possible solutions: either the answerer is somehow special and has escaped the evilness of human nature, or he is lying to himself and really does want to kill, or he is wrong in his basic belief. "

- Francois Tremblay

Comments

[lassiter.livejournal.com]

Thank you. This is something which I instinctively have grasped for a good while now, but had never seen it put into words so succinctly.

[autodidactic.livejournal.com]

Most people just wanna be happy on a small scale, and I'm no exception.

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

There are four of us down here
I don't like the other three
...except for you, dear.

Let's have a coup, dear.

[kajarainbow.livejournal.com]

My choice would be 4) People have their own conditions for killing/stealing, and for the majority those conditions are relatively abnormal (i.e. doing so to save their own lives or others' or other similarly uncommon conditions).

Though looking at this again, this seems like it is just a different way of saying 3) "wrong in his basic belief", since the pessimistic person seems to be talking about such acts being committed under ordinary conditions.

But considering the violence I've heard of being performed against those holding differences perceived as unacceptable... But this is probably a different question and it's not like the control apparatus is immune to this condition (though it doesn't always share the prejudices--it can do good when it doesn't, and much ill when it does).

Actually, the question arises of what to do with the people for whom the urge to kill/steal comes into play in relatively common situations (i.e. people generally regarded by most as warped or at best serially criminal). Of course, such persons often have a poor enough sense of consequence that they often do those things even when there're deterrences.