Malaclypse the Younger

Put more tinfoil in your hat, plzkthxbai. -The Management.

We don't have that. We've got some farmers, who often live very far apart, with bolt-action hunting rifles. I would not leave it up to them to defend our country from foreign invaders. Our military, however, has some of the best snipers in the world. Those are the people I would count on to fuck up any hopes anyone might have of successfully invading Canada.

You can believe otherwise if that makes you feel comfortable. But that is just denial of impermanence. We are quite irrelevant. I found it necessary, if not humorous. In the end, I did get you to concede that you were playing dumb. Therefor, in the absence of humans, nothing matters.

The specification is in how the question is written. If you had reading comprehension skills beyond that of a first grader, you would know this. It's not nonsensical. Note that you're the only one here who hasn't understood it. Not, it's not. But let's not be idiots. If a big enough asteroid hit our planet, it wouldn't selectively choose only humans to die. Let's say it's an asteroid so big that nothing survives when it hits Earth. You are on Earth when this happens. The day after this happens, do you think you'll be able to care? Ok, it looks like you're too stupid for this question, so I'll just draw you a picture: See how big that asteroid is? If it hits us, nothing lives. We're all dead. Everything you know is gone, including yourself. I'm not suffering from incurable pain. I have no really good reason to kill myself. If I were suffering from incurable pain, and my family and friends demanded that I continue to live for their bemusement, I would call them all a bunch of assholes and then kill myself.

I think you're confusing socialism with anarchy. There is no rule with socialism about lack of hiearchy.

An army of you, a dog, and some birds that landed on your property does not make a military.

O rly? Splain.

The way our education system is built upon wrote memorisation, yes. That system of education is built for capitalism, and is not actually all that good at educating anyone. That does not mean that all education must exist for the good of capitalism. Do you read what you write before you hit the "add reply" button? You should try it sometime. What you just described is a socialist construct. The military is, in fact, one of the greatest socialist institutions that we have.

I didn't ask if it would matter before it happened. I asked if it would matter after it happened. I did not say that there was any life surviving. I said that nothing survives. I am not thick headed. You have a reading comprehension problem. I am not afraid of dying. Everyone dies. There is no point in being afraid.

Possibly! I am the ripe old age of threevety. Also, capitalists smell like donkey butts.

Capitalists wear top hats. Also, they're ugly and have warts. If you touch a capitalist, you'll get herpes.

Pray tell, how would you care, having ceased to exist and all that?

Having a family member die in any fashion is pretty traumatic for most people. Especially in our society, where death is a taboo subject. If we had more Buddhist principals in our society, we might not be so traumatised by family members dying. But the subject is not how you feel about someone else dying, it is how a person who must live with incurable pain feels about continuing to live.

In the scope of this argument, it isn't. There are no grand reasons for our existence other than the ones we've made up to make ourselves feel comfortable. If an asteroid hit our planet tomorrow and wiped out the entire human race, do you think it would matter?

A horse is not a rabbit or a squirrel. I doubt a horse could chew off its own leg, much less walk very far once it had done so. With a broken leg? Definitely. A horse that can't walk is a pretty unhappy horse, no matter where it is.

Yes, your argument is simplistic, not to mention irrelevant. Given those choices, it doesn't matter which one you choose, because you die painfully in both cases. If you want to make a relevant argument, you should be asking if one would rather die slowly and painfully, or quickly and painlessly. In both cases, you still die, but one choice involves less suffering than the other.

In the end, it is not any different than choosing to eat burnt toast or no toast. In the grand scope of the universe, people are not that important.

That was his choice. I think that most people, given the choice, would rather die than live with pain that only gets worse with every passing day which cannot be healed.

Put yourself in the horse's position. Do you think the horse wants to live with a broken leg that will never heal? The truth is, we don't know what horses think, but it's not hard to tell when a horse is not happy. I've seen a horse cry because he was stuck in a tiny pen with crowds of people poking and staring at him all day for several days. It's not hard to imagine how that horse would feel about not being able to get up and run around. It's more humane to kill the horse and end its suffering than to allow it to continue to live a painful, degrading life.

Which would you rather have happen to you? Killing yourself and ending the pain of terminal disease, or living a life of horrible, incurable pain? I don't think it's that hard to figure out.

Are you saying it's now illegal to wear a hat in Quebec? What kind of crazy ridiculous shenanigans will they come up with next...

Try reading the post, and maybe then you'll understand. I don't think I was very unclear. If you have a problem with reading comprehension, I can't help you.

That's not what I was talking about. Death does not have to be painful, but living with an incurable, terminal disease can be very, increasingly painful. You'll get no argument from me on this. We already agree. Some would. Don't ask me why, because I have no idea. But some people have chosen to be an empty shell kept alive by machines if their brain dies. I don't have a hard time believing that some people would do this willingly anyway. I'm so glad that my grandfather's will had a Do Not Resuscitate, or my aunt might still be trying to "fix" him. I think it starts with educating children about suffering, dying, and death at an early age, instead of treating them like a taboo subject. Our society needs to learn about reducing suffering and not fearing death. I think both should be legal. With the proper legal protections, of course. It needs to be a deliberative process.

It's a lot more humane than insisting they live with injuries that will never heal, or that will heal in a manner that would only be even more painful. There is a very good reason why you shoot a horse with a broken leg, and it is because it will never be able to stand again.

I don't think it's all that contradictory. I think people are dissatisfied with the choices they are left with. There is a hardened minority of ignoramuses that will keep voting for the Conservatives no matter what they do (that is not to say that there is not a similar group who will do the same for the Liberals. But the leader of the Liberal Party is not the Prime Minister), who manage to keep them afloat as a minority government. The rest of Canada, the majority, is not interested in them, but are also not interested in all voting for the same party in order to form a majority government owned by one party. A coalition government would actually make the most sense, if we had any parties that could be counted for and that were really committed to taking political risks to make our country better. Instead, we've got a choice between a bunch of selfish, floppy limp noodles that will spend a decade hesitating to implement even one policy that would create positive social change; another party that will say anything to get votes and get in bed with any strongly emotional idea without really thinking about it too much; a third that just wants to live in its mom's basement, acting surly and smug in a really inappropriate manner, and pretending it's independent when it asks for an allowance; and a fourth that is really trying hard but just can't seem to get its foot in the door of the House of Commons. And in the other corner, we've got a bunch of whiney, cynical, greedy kindergartners that think politics is a game of Monopoly. Given this, it's rather hard to say "Yeah, let's have another election", because it won't change anything. It's like trying to buy a week's worth of groceries with a handful of change and hoping you'll be richer if you stare at it and blink hard enough.