Isn't this also greatly related to othering? I bet all those "tough" people would be significantly more compassionate with their own families. How many people who happily eat chicken bought by the piece a plastic tray in the supermarket actually could as happily kill a chicken?
One of my all-time favorite passages from a book appears in Persepolis Rising, the seventh volume of the Expanse series:
[blockquote]
“Did you manipulate me into sacrificing my people so that you’d get the data you wanted?” Drummer said. “Was this you?”
“This was history fucking us both,” Avasarala said. “Live as long as I have? See the changes that I’ve seen? You’ll learn something terrible about this.”
“Tell me.”
“No point. Until you see it yourself, you won’t understand.”
“Hey, you know what? Fuck you.”
Avasarala laughed hard enough that her wheelchair thought something was wrong and bucked forward a few centimeters before she could stop it. “Fair enough, Camina. Fair enough. Here then. See if you can follow me. Last long enough, and you’ll see that they’re all our people.”
“Independence and the Ontario,” Drummer spat. “Union and EMC, all one big happy family standing against the blowtorch together. Wonderful.”
“I told you that you wouldn’t understand,” Avasarala said, her voice cold and cutting. “The fuckers on the Tempest? I’m telling you they’re us too.”
[/blockquote]
Every human, even a human who's currently trying to kill us, is still part of "us", and if you're truly left with no choice but dying or using lethal force to stop them, that's a tragedy. The people trying to sell you on the idea that "they" are responsible for "our" problems, to divide us up? It's all a scam, it's always just a way to get people to countenance atrocities, and it will always end in tears.
Violence _may_ be truly necessary. It is never something to celebrate.
I don't want to have a strong opinion on this, but I got to say, not by statistics but by looking at the news, this kind of thing happens so much more frequent in USA then elsewhere. Not people going violently psychotic but police killing them. It's possible to neutralize somebody by shooting them in non lethal areas a couple of times. Every time I see on the news something like this from USA, it's more like 10+ shots from every officer around. Even comparing this not with the western european country I live in but with the semi-middle-eastern country where I come from; still the USA police shoots excessively and I mean it's not a small difference.
I don't know about that but I do wonder why they weren't equipped with a taser or something they could've used instead. Not saying it would work but it's worth a shot, enough to give every cop one in addition to a gun, right?
I walk around 'lightly' armed these days; a tactical flashlight with a 3K lumens strobe button. A lot of cops have one on the utility belt, but at least in the US they go to the pistol first.
I worked with two people who each had a child with schizophrenia. It's a horrible illness. One's son was sweet and gentle when on his meds but could become violent and abusive when he didn't take them. The other one's daughter killed her grandchild😢 Last I talked to her, her daughter was getting help and making progress. The cop in this instance handled it correctly. He didn't shoot her until he absolutely had to. Though a taser would have been the better option.
I have a friend who ocassionally works with someone who has schizophrenia (for real schizophrenia). She was talking to her about it and this woman said something really interesting - she said, I always have a choice. The moment in which I am aware of it is often very small, but I always have a choice. I just choose to not make the good choice.
I feel like I can relate to that. For myself and throughout my own life, there have been those points where I chose badly. Clawing myself back from them was difficult, but I always had a choice and I knew it.
This is why moral instruction whilst young is so important. Why teaching children to control themselves and act rationally is essential. Why an understanding of sin, or whatever else you want to call it, and its corrosive effect on your character and mind and body is not optional.
I don't know anything about this woman but it is likely that she willingly and knowingly made a lot of bad choices which became a cataract of inevitability.
Regardless of the sadness of her situation, she's still responsible.
I think it is a mistake to generalize from one person's report of their experience with mental illness, to all people with a similar diagnosis. People in the grip of delusions may in some sense be making "choices", but those choices are informed by bad information. The woman who was attacking the officer may have _truly believed_ that her life was in danger if she didn't do that. So, she made a "choice" to protect herself. Calling this a truly free choice, and saying she's morally culpable for it, is... questionable.
You want to back up, and say, "Oh, she's culpable because she made a choice, while medicated, to go off her meds..." Well, maybe. Or maybe she just had a bad day, and her current dosage of meds wasn't adequate to prevent her from tipping into a spiral of irrationality. We'll probably never know. But even if she really did make a choice like that, it's hard to say that such a choice merits the death penalty.
As Bear said, the officer may have done nothing wrong here. But _blaming_ the situation on a mentally ill person, instead of just accepting that the world is full of tragedy, is a moral cop-out. This kind of situation should lead us to aspire to improve our medical technology, so that mentally ill people can be treated sufficiently to prevent this kind of situation; or failing that, in the near term, improving our non-lethal armaments so that officers can reliably subdue people without killing them.
Isn't this also greatly related to othering? I bet all those "tough" people would be significantly more compassionate with their own families. How many people who happily eat chicken bought by the piece a plastic tray in the supermarket actually could as happily kill a chicken?
I am put in mind of Phil Ochs's song "There but For Fortune":
Show me a prison, show me a jail
Show me a prison man whose face is growing pale
And I'll show you a young man with many reasons why
And there but for fortune may go you or I
One of my all-time favorite passages from a book appears in Persepolis Rising, the seventh volume of the Expanse series:
[blockquote]
“Did you manipulate me into sacrificing my people so that you’d get the data you wanted?” Drummer said. “Was this you?”
“This was history fucking us both,” Avasarala said. “Live as long as I have? See the changes that I’ve seen? You’ll learn something terrible about this.”
“Tell me.”
“No point. Until you see it yourself, you won’t understand.”
“Hey, you know what? Fuck you.”
Avasarala laughed hard enough that her wheelchair thought something was wrong and bucked forward a few centimeters before she could stop it. “Fair enough, Camina. Fair enough. Here then. See if you can follow me. Last long enough, and you’ll see that they’re all our people.”
“Independence and the Ontario,” Drummer spat. “Union and EMC, all one big happy family standing against the blowtorch together. Wonderful.”
“I told you that you wouldn’t understand,” Avasarala said, her voice cold and cutting. “The fuckers on the Tempest? I’m telling you they’re us too.”
[/blockquote]
Every human, even a human who's currently trying to kill us, is still part of "us", and if you're truly left with no choice but dying or using lethal force to stop them, that's a tragedy. The people trying to sell you on the idea that "they" are responsible for "our" problems, to divide us up? It's all a scam, it's always just a way to get people to countenance atrocities, and it will always end in tears.
Violence _may_ be truly necessary. It is never something to celebrate.
I don't want to have a strong opinion on this, but I got to say, not by statistics but by looking at the news, this kind of thing happens so much more frequent in USA then elsewhere. Not people going violently psychotic but police killing them. It's possible to neutralize somebody by shooting them in non lethal areas a couple of times. Every time I see on the news something like this from USA, it's more like 10+ shots from every officer around. Even comparing this not with the western european country I live in but with the semi-middle-eastern country where I come from; still the USA police shoots excessively and I mean it's not a small difference.
I don't know about that but I do wonder why they weren't equipped with a taser or something they could've used instead. Not saying it would work but it's worth a shot, enough to give every cop one in addition to a gun, right?
I walk around 'lightly' armed these days; a tactical flashlight with a 3K lumens strobe button. A lot of cops have one on the utility belt, but at least in the US they go to the pistol first.
I worked with two people who each had a child with schizophrenia. It's a horrible illness. One's son was sweet and gentle when on his meds but could become violent and abusive when he didn't take them. The other one's daughter killed her grandchild😢 Last I talked to her, her daughter was getting help and making progress. The cop in this instance handled it correctly. He didn't shoot her until he absolutely had to. Though a taser would have been the better option.
brilliant.
I have a friend who ocassionally works with someone who has schizophrenia (for real schizophrenia). She was talking to her about it and this woman said something really interesting - she said, I always have a choice. The moment in which I am aware of it is often very small, but I always have a choice. I just choose to not make the good choice.
I feel like I can relate to that. For myself and throughout my own life, there have been those points where I chose badly. Clawing myself back from them was difficult, but I always had a choice and I knew it.
This is why moral instruction whilst young is so important. Why teaching children to control themselves and act rationally is essential. Why an understanding of sin, or whatever else you want to call it, and its corrosive effect on your character and mind and body is not optional.
I don't know anything about this woman but it is likely that she willingly and knowingly made a lot of bad choices which became a cataract of inevitability.
Regardless of the sadness of her situation, she's still responsible.
I think it is a mistake to generalize from one person's report of their experience with mental illness, to all people with a similar diagnosis. People in the grip of delusions may in some sense be making "choices", but those choices are informed by bad information. The woman who was attacking the officer may have _truly believed_ that her life was in danger if she didn't do that. So, she made a "choice" to protect herself. Calling this a truly free choice, and saying she's morally culpable for it, is... questionable.
You want to back up, and say, "Oh, she's culpable because she made a choice, while medicated, to go off her meds..." Well, maybe. Or maybe she just had a bad day, and her current dosage of meds wasn't adequate to prevent her from tipping into a spiral of irrationality. We'll probably never know. But even if she really did make a choice like that, it's hard to say that such a choice merits the death penalty.
As Bear said, the officer may have done nothing wrong here. But _blaming_ the situation on a mentally ill person, instead of just accepting that the world is full of tragedy, is a moral cop-out. This kind of situation should lead us to aspire to improve our medical technology, so that mentally ill people can be treated sufficiently to prevent this kind of situation; or failing that, in the near term, improving our non-lethal armaments so that officers can reliably subdue people without killing them.