*Glances back and forth between the Deathnote and an industrial-strength shredder...*
*Considers learning a lot more about politics*
*Glances again at the shredder*
In reality, the ability to kill someone, with or without repercussions, is not an effective vehicle for the sort of change I would like to make in the world. And focusing on individual lives and deaths is the sort of thinking that got us into most of the messes we are currently into. Honestly, a Deathnote isn't going to STOP something like genocide or human trafficking unless you kill a LOT of people. It's going to help even less with other issues like religious and political extremism and world hunger.
In the end, who am I to say who lives and who dies? And what's to say that the person I kill wasn't the lesser of the two evils vying for power? I might use the Deathnote if I could live up to Dexter's standards of evidence, and higher standard for predicting the outcomes of my kills.
REVISION: Oh, I would probably also kill off psycho/sociopaths indiscriminately. Those don't need to be in our gene pool. Incapacity to feel remorse and thus being completely uncompelled to be a productive member of society (in some cases wanting only to be a DESTRUCTIVE member of society) is something I, for one, can see no evolutionary purpose for in our species at this point.
*Considers learning a lot more about politics*
*Glances again at the shredder*
In reality, the ability to kill someone, with or without repercussions, is not an effective vehicle for the sort of change I would like to make in the world. And focusing on individual lives and deaths is the sort of thinking that got us into most of the messes we are currently into. Honestly, a Deathnote isn't going to STOP something like genocide or human trafficking unless you kill a LOT of people. It's going to help even less with other issues like religious and political extremism and world hunger.
In the end, who am I to say who lives and who dies? And what's to say that the person I kill wasn't the lesser of the two evils vying for power? I might use the Deathnote if I could live up to Dexter's standards of evidence, and higher standard for predicting the outcomes of my kills.
REVISION: Oh, I would probably also kill off psycho/sociopaths indiscriminately. Those don't need to be in our gene pool. Incapacity to feel remorse and thus being completely uncompelled to be a productive member of society (in some cases wanting only to be a DESTRUCTIVE member of society) is something I, for one, can see no evolutionary purpose for in our species at this point.
