How do people see bad people as having worth?

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

I have little mercy for people I view as "bad". Particularly people in positions of power or authority, and people who discriminate harshly. It frustrates me to a level where I vividly dream up horrific things to do to them, because goddammit, if these people don't listen to morality, don't listen to reason, then the only thing left is fear.

This is not a positive. This becomes evident when I calm down and realise that I was perfectly morally prepared to put someone through torment, to listen to their every scream and not only keep harming them, but enjoy it.

Still though, I wonder how most people seem to manage to hold that back. How people manage to see bad people, say, the WBC, as people, not like some sort of vermin that could, and even should, be exterminated on site.

So I ask you, how do you manage it?

Speaking as someone who used to be in the same position as you, albeit in different circumstances, I can understand what you're trying to get across.

Like countless others have said before me, continued exposure to these fantasies isn't good. It can change the way in which you deal with these sort of people and make you more hostile to people who support them. Anything that leads down that spiral of negativity isn't good, and I speak from experience.

Although it can be useful; I am using my own 'experiences' in a story I plan to write, but make them intentionally off-putting and uncomfortable; part self-therapy to get rid of all this pent-up aggression I had that caused these 'fantasies' in the first place, and part self-expression so that all the anger didn't go to waste. I could suggest this too, but it differs for different people.

The most direct way to dealing with it would be just to distance yourself from those people. If it doesn't help, then remember that you aren't the only one sharing these opinions, and you aren't the only person who wants institutions like the WBC to fail or close down.

Try thinking more about this; sure, making them go through pain would be a quick solution, but it would cause a lot more problems than it solves. Institutions like the WBC would use it to their advantage to augment their cause as they would see themselves as an oppressed minority. Fighting these sort of people with words is arguably the more cathartic, and definitely more effective option. Dismantling their beliefs and forcing them to see how wrong they were would be a lot more 'satisfying'(though technically also a bit immoral in some ways, because you are replacing one bias with another, effectively imposing your own values) and it could lead to further dissipation amongst members.

Alternatively, just treat them like the Tea Party. Few things can hurt a cause more than active ridicule. If no-one takes them seriously, then they will get no traction whatsoever and they will just disappear into oblivion. You can also get a few good laughs out of it too, which also helps with negativity.

To address the original question, there are two stances that can be taken on this topic. Either all human life has inherent value because, well, we only live once, so it is sacred. Taking it away in any scenario is very difficultly justifiable. I doubt that even people who have killed others in self-defence always sleep like babies at night.

Alternatively, the potential for human life is so chaotic that there is no inherent value to it. There is equal probability that a person can turn out to be a new Hitler, and for them to become the new Dalai Lama. Due to this, it's impossible to say if there is any value to human life at all, because it can just as easily cause suffering as it can spread happiness and enlightenment.

In both stances, killing is pointless. In the 1st: human life should be treasured and it shouldn't be taken away unless in incredibly dire, as morally black and white as possible circumstances, because all life has worth due to its brevity. In the 2nd: killing someone doesn't guarantee that there won't be another WBC years down the line, who could even be worse than the original, so it would solve nothing because there is no guarantee that there will or won't be another dickhead to take the place of the original, now dead, dickhead.

I hope I answered your question(s?), OP.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Also, it is funny you should bring up the WBC as they are a positive example of this in my opinion. They are without question, some of the looniest, dumbest, most self-hating, gay-bashingest motherfuckers who have ever roamed the planet... and because of that they have inadvertently helped to shepherd along civil rights for the LGBT community more than most activists ever will in their lifetimes. That is because what the Westboro Baptist Church represents is a common enemy for every single human being who has ever lived, an enemy who not only doesn't want your support but actively tries to bring others into confrontation with them. They have put themselves into a situation where literally no one on the planet could end up seeing them as in the right. The fact that they made their message about gays only serves to put everyone on the same side for once about gay rights and allows us to see hate is at its very worst, yet its most impotent. They have hurt hundreds, if not thousands of grieving family members and for that they are scum, yet at the same time they are a symbol for the opposition to hold up in defiance and say, "Do you really want to be like these guys?" The only power the WBC has is as a constant magnet. They are trolls made flesh.

There is that, yes.

However, there's also a problem with these extreme examples of bigotry, because bigotry doesn't have to be that extreme to be a problem. When people think of bigots, they often think of people like the WBC, but that excludes massively greater numbers of people, with a lot of power behind them. Less individually horrible, of course, but with a much greater impact.

It's easy to support LGBT people when their opponents are trolls given human form, that you and yours will never, ever, be as bad as. But that's only a very limited support.

 

[briankoontz]

If getting rid of bad people was the solution then Bush leaving office, bin Laden being killed, and Saddam Hussein being killed would have resulted in kittens and rainbows, but in fact in each case things became worse.

Reality is far more complicated and has much more to do with systems of understanding and complicity than about the wills of individual people. Even the Koch brothers, the Waltons, Barack Obama, and Bill Gates, individually some of the most powerful people in the world, individually have little power. Obama operates within a system with many centers of power, likewise for each of the others.

I wouldn't mind if someone killed the Koch brothers on general principle, but I'm not under the illusion that it would be too helpful politically. It would be far more helpful to control the Koch brothers - to limit their power through modifying the laws that govern them. But murder is both lazy and sexy, so it attracts people too impotent to do anything else.

There's a basic psychological reason why people deep in despair turn to murder - despair is the self-realization of impotence. Murder and suicide become the final solutions.

There are far better solutions. Humans in general are similar to each other, therefore people coming together to create a shared political reality in a rational manner is the best solution. The best solution is only possible if the people are capable of it - when despair becomes too deep only murder and suicide remain.