Don't like it when people pick on your imaginary friend?

I imagine that somethings are above me, or beyond my judgement. That I'm inept to evaluate them. That I personally am not the measure of all things, at the very least. That there are heights to which I have not climbed, and may be incapable of climbing.

To imagine that everyone is just really fucking dumb, and juvenile, and you're so smart by saying the same thing as every other edgy teenager... nothing beyond you, besides not being taken in by fads and rhetoric like "reason" "evidence" and "science" without substantive content... yeah I'm all butthurt. I just can't take the damage.

especially when I didn't ask to be a part of this cosmic drama — darthbarracuda

How much do you trust your memory? What if you did ask and have forgotten?

Am I still the same person, then?

I imagine that somethings are above me, or beyond my judgement. That I'm inept to evaluate them. That I personally am not the measure of all things, at the very least. That there are heights to which I have not climbed, and may be incapable of climbing. — Wosret

I didn't realize you thought so highly of me, I am flattered.

Was it you that did any of the things that you have now forgotten?

I just try and remember that i am essentially no different to an animal that dies and no different to the billions of people that have died before me and the billions of people that will die in time to come.

I’m agnostic about an afterlife, and as a result my feelings about death are very variable, because I simply don’t know whether anything comes afterwards or what it will be like if it does. In some moods I fear not existing (which when you think about it makes no sense at all), in other moods I fear being disembodied for eternity (a far worse prospect – how would I communicate with anyone? I would probably go insane), in yet other moods I think how amazing it would be to meet up with all the dead people I have known and loved (I was actually at a funeral today of a very dear friend who died in August of cancer at the age of only 46), and in yet other moods I simply tell myself to stop thinking about things I can’t change and get on with life. This last mood is really the only sensible one.

But if there is life after death, then an entirely new perspective is available. It becomes possible, based on works or faith in this life to spend eternity in heaven, hell, or to be reincarnated as some believe. So the real question that remains is, what if the idea of no life after death is wrong? What could happen then? Does one truly want to remain in ignorance by not thinking about it until it is too late to pick a new course? — Lone Wolf

I don’t want to remain in ignorance, but I see no choice in the matter, because I just don’t believe the evidence is there. I certainly don’t want to spend my remaining time (I’m 65) in a probably fruitless search. I’ve got better things to do.

Best way to face death – call a friend, make a coffee, read a good book, go for a walk in the sun or the rain, play with the dog. The best way to face death is just to get on with living. That's what I try to do, and I'm successful 99% of the time. Of course, it helps that at 65 I'm still pretty healthy. When I'm 75 or 85 I may be singing a different song.

Some years ago, I had a heart attack. I was exercising at a YMCA at the time it began, which made it seem strangely inappropriate, not to say unfair. I tried to convince myself that breaking into a cold sweat as a powerful hand seem to reach inside my chest, grip my heart and squeeze was simply an indication I should stop working out for a time. So I did, for a time, and that providing no relief, I found myself in an emergency room where I was fed aspirin and hooked up to various things and eventually told I was having a heart attack and had to be transported to another hospital where they could do more about a heart attack than recognize it is taking place. And so I was "stabilized" to the extent one can be stable while having a heart attack, hauled into an ambulance and given morphine, that admirable narcotic, for my pain.

The ambulance ride took about 30 minutes, I'd say, and it's a curious thing but I didn't panic, or worry, or ask for a priest, but though in pain observed what was taking place with some interest and hoped in a rather vague manner that I would make it through alright. I found myself very much involved in the moment, too busy it seemed to me to wonder what would happen if I died or after I died. And so it went on as I was hauled out of the ambulance and encountered an amiable doctor and his two assistants who may have been nurses or other doctors but in any case gave me something or other, and then I seemed to hover pleasantly while they spoke together and sometimes to me, while they slipped a wire into my wrist, cleaned out my left ventricle or perhaps something else, installed a stent, wheeled me to a room and told me I had "beat the widow-maker."

I have no idea whether there will be an afterlife, but suspect it's unlikely. Regardless, though, I'm here to say that facing death might sometimes entail simply watching, with interest but without overwhelming fear, things happening or things done to you. You're too busy to do much more than that. Was it the morphine or whatever other worthy drug they gave me while in the operating room? I don't know, but think it's likely that without them I would simply have been not only too busy but in too much pain to do anything more.

I think that it's astonishing that anyone thinks that they're in a position to judge the creator of the fucking universe. The immeasurable arrogance of people... always the smartest, beatest most righteous ones that ever lived... nothing worthy of subordinating themselves to, they're just that awesome. — Wosret

Consider this, Wosret. Any "creator of the fucking universe" is for me a mere hypothesis, an image or concept in my mind. I am indeed in a position to judge this image of my mind. On the other hand, I can only judge this ideal image in terms of other ideal images/concepts also in my mind.

As far as the resistance to subordination goes, this is itself a subordination to an ideal image that includes independence, critical thinking, etc. In other words, I can resist being subjugated by the usual rhetoric of false humility precisely because I am already subjugated by a self-referential rhetoric authenticity, the sacredness of my own mind, etc.

From my perspective, your position in the quote above is blind to its own arrogance. IMO, all positions function also as self-advertisements, virtue signals. You seem to me to abase yourself in order to exalt yourself. I don't judge or blame you for exalting yourself. That to me is essentially what we are. I consciously exalt myself via philosophy.

I struggle to shape my ideal self, which I am always already subordinated to. Because this ideal includes self-criticism, it is more mobile to some ideals, more subject to what amounts to self-editing.

For me, the best philosophy is the rhetoric of self exaltation, either on the individual level or in terms of one's community (a less direct but more common target of public narcissism). I only criticize you for writing as if you were not doing this.

Thanks for sharing. Great story.

I can mostly relate, but I think the gap between us and other animals is extreme. We are like gods trapped in dogs. We've been to the moon, brother. We can cognize the end of all life on the this planet, if not all life in the universe as we know it. Of course biologically we are animals. I have no taste for woo. Our capacity for thought is uncanny.

So for me we are "gods" trapped in the dying bodies of "dogs." We spend decades developing unique personalities until we are able to utter sentences that know human before did or even could utter. So there's some tragedy in our deaths. For me the tragedy is greater where the individual is greater. But there's also beauty in death and even a constant dying within the individuals who attain the sense of themselves as "gods." We are "gods" because we can peel our identities away from the given. We die into a virtual divinity. This "dying" is (as I see it) the death of our childish, tribal fantasies --the deaths of the same identifications that allow us to be civilized (thoughtful) in the first place.

f there is nothing after death, then there really is nothing to face after death; life is but an empty dream. — Lone Wolf

I think there is nothing after death. Also, yes, life is "ultimately" an "empty" dream. "All is vanity" = Everything is empty. But this is only ultimately.

If one decides to live (by not killing one's self), then one has to make decision after decision in the face of uncertainty and ambivalence. Marriage, career, friendship, free time, health problems, etc. etc. etc.

So this empty dream is crowded with incident.

When life is going well (is mostly fun and pleasant), then it has a positive net value. Just as you don't want to lose your cash-stuffed wallet, you don't want to lose your fun and pleasure. That's a move from net value to neutral or zero value. Yes, we won't be able to make that calculation in the grave. So with Nabokov we can say that the fear of death is the master madness. All this struggle to stay alive can indeed appear like madness to one in a specific mood. This is just one of the mood-based perspectives that has no comfortable abode in the busy and earnest public discourse.

When one is "pregnant" with a project, death is a threat to its birth. As ol' Schop put it, the writer is an insect that wants to lay its eggs before it dies. Once those eggs are laid, good night. For most creative types, their own still-developing "infinite" personality is an egg that's never quite dropped. As I start to feel physical aging, I see that it's probably only the slow failure of this "vehicle" that will allow me to welcome as opposed to tolerate death. As S. Johnson said, "it's not use whining." But heroically not-whining is not the same as crawling with a sore body into a soft bed.

Of course life can also appear as a net "bad" or an obscene horror. Anyone who has not seen this "horror" is maybe a little shallow. But those who can only see this horror are maybe a little out of touch with the monster in themselves who likes it just fine. Opinions, obviously.

Consider this, Wosret. Any "creator of the fucking universe" is for me a mere hypothesis, an image or concept in my mind. — n0 0ne

As you are to me, and I am to you. I don't know you, and you don't know me, so when I conceive of you, I construct what kind of person you are. A flimsy one made of straw, or something constituted of more sturdy material.

The inscription at the temple of Delphi, "know thyself" meant to know your place, while in the presence of Apollo, while in the temple.

I only speculate on your competence, on your aptitudes, I don't know them easily, and may not have a comparative aptitude to evaluate. Someone has to be pretty well close to me, and not too far from me to see them well.

This cannot be true for someone that says that they're in a position to judge the highest, maximal point, to judge infinity. They are either judging what they see as a human being, and their conception in a weak form, or are mightily awesome themselves. I did in fact assume the former, but still found it arrogant to write off just other people like that.

You can freely poorly assume my motives, as just trying to look or feel awesome or whatever.

I used to think that the very possibility of there being NO 'afterlife', which I believe to most people - including myself when younger - who do either believe or at least think that they can begin to imagine such, actually means a 'still cognizant, still somehow very 'human', existence into forever, was about the scariest thing I could imagine!! This may have much to do with the severe (grand-mal) seizures I suffered every few months as an adoloscent, and that that timeless, empty, space into which I'd apparently slipped each time - totally devoid of any apparent consciousness! - and only been [made] aware of afterwards (for usually about fifteen minutes, as I'd learn, yet to me as a totally indeterminable void of timeless nothingness!), always, ALWAYS, brought this teenage boy to frightened-beyond-frightened disoriented weeping at the total incomprehension of what might.. or might not.. have just happened!! Over time, I now see that had death itself come during one of those 'episodes', as well it might (I hit my head extremely hard more than once, even fractured my skull one time!) that if that complete and utter nothingness is what was to be for me thereafter, though I'd have no awareness even of that of course, then it wouldn't really have mattered, would it? Not to me, that is. And if our world(s) are, as they now more and more seem, are nought but totally subjective essentially purely individual as per our own perceptions and perceived experiences, feelings, and emotions, then such 'endings', I have come to believe, are always at once both world and universe destroying, that of our own perceptions, including past, present and future possibilities of such, and yet no more than a return to 'source' passing of one thing, life as we generally think it, to another, the absolute [devoid of time] NOTHINGNESS ABSOLUTE from which we came forth in the first place! I had these latter notions confounded when I attended a much-loved Uncle's funeral in my hometown,in England, in 1998. Whilst such a special man, great character and lover of life, had left seemingly such a gaping hole in my own and many others lives, our very worlds - which I now view as often overlapping 'spheres' both in terms of time and place! - I looked upon his coffin, his casket, at the front there, and imagined just the empty, yet still greatly recognisable, 'shell' of that person we all loved. For him, I realised, or would come to realise, there had effectively been an 'implosion' of a whole world. Universe, even. One, his, which was never to come again. Not here, leastways, and in all likelyhood, never and nowhere at all again. A lightbulb ever broken or simply disconnected from its power-source, maybe, that power-source also now evidently extinguished for eternity. So, is this just a too sad or negative a way to 'face' your own one-day imminent death? Or does it make it seem too scary? I no longer think so. Energy, at least, does not die, and so we go on.. just probably not in that 'classical' "Hereafter, here I come!" way we egotistical humans always assume our own existence(s) will somehow remain. In truth, I also believe that all these worlds, wherever on the 'timeline' they occurred, occur, or will occur, and regardless of the 'Many Worlds' hypothesis - that is, variations of such (as per all the ongoing connotations of 'possibilities') - whilst one day undeniably ending for each of us within our own space-and time perception of the 'Here and Now', nonetheless still exist, and will continue to do so, certainly for me in terms of what could perhaps be termed the 'Then and There Hypothesis'. Maybe all this, the reliving and/ or observation of such is what awaits us. Or maybe we just go 'Lights Out' and sleep dreamlessly forever. I'll take what comes. THIS i can live, and face my death, with.

We are like gods trapped in dogs. — n0 0ne

Only in comparison to dogs. The only thing that makes us stand apart from all the other animals is pattern recognition and an incredible rate of learning - again, in comparison.

We've been to the moon, brother. We can cognize the end of all life on the this planet, if not all life in the universe as we know it. — n0 0ne

I'd also point out that we have killed billions of each others, constructed weapons to potentially render our own environment uninhabitable for many years, and it wouldn't take long on a Google search to start reading about some of the sick unimaginable things that some people have done to each other on a 1 to 1 basis. Yes, humans have done great things and in comparison to dogs we may seem like gods (until perhaps we come in contact with some being far more intelligent than ourselves), but aren't we also a bunch of narcissistic demons with a flawed sense of reality?

Really, this pattern recognition is how we are able to communicate (orally and through technology - the alphabet) and the fact that our thumbs can pinch things is what sets apart the average Joe from a dog. Not all of us can design rockets that go to the moon, the general population can't even name all of the planets in the solar system let alone the order they are in from the sun. I'm not having a downer on the human race, i think you just have to be a bit realistic in the credit that we give ourselves.

I think that it's astonishing that anyone thinks that they're in a position to judge the creator of the fucking universe. — Wosret

Your sentence implies the following argument:

X created the universe.
Therefore I should not judge X.

Clearly not a valid argument.

I should also mention that "virtue signaling" isn't even an insult, and signal theorists denounce it as an insult. It just means signaling, and can only be construed as an insult in the sense of dishonest signaling, what values you're signaling you do not actually hold, or enact, or preaching to the choir. The pejorative thing though, is a politicized, rather than scientific notion of virtue signaling.

No man... people were speaking in hypotheticals, saying that if they went to hell, then that wouldn't be fair, and only an unjust being would decide that. I was saying how that didn't follow, as one wouldn't be in a position to judge something like that. I don't think that's all that wild of an assertion, unless you don't know fuck all about much...

Socrates argued for instance that in the meno dialogue that there isn't a problem of will. Everyone wills the good, we just disagree about what is, and isn't good. What works, and what does not work. The only evil ignorance, and the only good knowledge. People act in accordance with what they think is right and true, and against what they think is wrong and false. Is this controversial? We are not all equally right, or equally wise... is that controversial?

For me, if there is indeed no afterlife, then I imagine I will feel much the same after I die, as I did before I was born.

Very Epicurean of you. The symmetry argument:

...anyone who fears death should consider the time before he was born. The past infinity of pre-natal non-existence is like the future infinity of post-mortem non-existence; it is as though nature has put up a mirror to let us see what our future non-existence will be like. But we do not consider not having existed for an eternity before our births to be a terrible thing; therefore, neither should we think not existing for an eternity after our deaths to be evil.

To answer that question I would consider the question from a Presentist perspective.

After all,

the presently imagined future isn't the actual future,
just as the presently remembered past isn't the actual past.

And the presently imagined actual future isn't the actual actual future,
just as the presently imagined actual past isn't the actual actual past.

And the presently imagined actual actual future isn't the actual actual actual future ,
just as the presently imagined actual actual past isn't the actual actual actual past.

And the...

So the imagination cannot refer to time but only empty signs of temporal pretence, while the present reduces to whatever one is imagining or looking at.

I think there is nothing after death. Also, yes, life is "ultimately" an "empty" dream. "All is vanity" = Everything is empty. But this is only ultimately. — n0 0ne

What if you are wrong and you die? How do you know that everything is empty?

So this empty dream is crowded with incident. — n0 0ne

How do you speculate that life is merely chance and not directed?

When life is going well (is mostly fun and pleasant), then it has a positive net value. Just as you don't want to lose your cash-stuffed wallet, you don't want to lose your fun and pleasure. — n0 0ne

Of course life can also appear as a net "bad" or an obscene horror. Anyone who has not seen this "horror" is maybe a little shallow. But those who can only see this horror are maybe a little out of touch with the monster in themselves who likes it just fine. Opinions, obviously. — n0 0ne

Sorrow deepens the ability to receive joy. Without pain, then there can be no pleasure that can be fully appreciated. So one cannot truly discern if life is worthless or not based on emotions at the moment, nor based on emotions that have built up over a long time. Pessimism is an attitude, not the ability to determine if life is worth living or not.

I simply tell myself to stop thinking about things I can’t change and get on with life. This last mood is really the only sensible one — Herg

I am very sorry for your loss. But perhaps it would be best to reconsider what you can and can't change. Death will likely be unchangeable, but what you think about death changes. What happens after death cannot be changed when one is dead, but what could happen might be able to be changed before dying.

I don’t want to remain in ignorance, but I see no choice in the matter, because I just don’t believe the evidence is there. I certainly don’t want to spend my remaining time (I’m 65) in a probably fruitless search. I’ve got better things to do. — Herg

With the preconceived notion that there is no after-life, then truth cannot be found. You do not expect to find anything, therefore you do not search with much effort. You don't believe there to be evidence, therefore it is possible that you have merely rejected the evidence. You contradict yourself when you say you have no choice, but then say you have better things to do. So by your own statement, you have chosen to remain ignorant because you claim to have better things to do.

What if you are wrong and you die? How do you know that everything is empty? — Lone Wolf

There is IMO something that might be called a leap of faith or rather unfaith in atheism and/or the denial of afterlife. As I've wrote elsewhere, I think we can find only irrational foundations for our otherwise rational or rationalized positions. I can make a case for my position. I can explain why it appeals to me. But I don't pretend to be doing an absolute science or "word math" with the language I've inherited. In short, my lifestyle is a measure of my subjective certainty.

In an ideal logical sense, I could of course be wrong. But if religion is a matter of knowledge in the sense that God is a tyrant who may be hiding and waiting to punish the skeptical, then what we are really talking about is a quasi-scientific hypothesis. God becomes a monster toward which we can only feel fear and contempt. If I somehow became certain that such a tyrant existed, then I would submit. Eternal suffering is that kind of threat. But why is a God who rewards critical thinking and autonomy any less likely? Why not postulate a God who punishes believers or those who claim to know his nature and intentions? What if God despises all prophets as false prophets? Of course I don't think there is a God, or at least not the kind who metes out justice in the afterlife.

Only in comparison to dogs. The only thing that makes us stand apart from all the other animals is pattern recognition and an incredible rate of learning - again, in comparison. — MPen89

IMO, this is quite a stretch of the word "only." But for me this is not really an "objective" matter. We disagree perhaps in the realm of values or fundamental existential investments. From my perspective, you are speaking from a desire to humiliate man.

I'd also point out that we have killed billions of each others, constructed weapons to potentially render our own environment uninhabitable for many years, and it wouldn't take long on a Google search to start reading about some of the sick unimaginable things that some people have done to each other on a 1 to 1 basis. Yes, humans have done great things and in comparison to dogs we may seem like gods (until perhaps we come in contact with some being far more intelligent than ourselves), but aren't we also a bunch of narcissistic demons with a flawed sense of reality? — MPen89

For me these are two sides of the same coin. We are indeed narcissistic demons, and God was created in our image. Note, though, that as a human you judge humanity. I'm not accusing you when I say that your position is one more assertion of a standard or a norm, one more imposition of an ought-to-be on what-is. The violence you mention can be chalked up to human tendency. Religious wars phrased moral preferences in terms of the will of God. Secular war is expressed in terms of abstract principles. And you and I right now are engaged in a polite war of ideas.

But my position is really about zooming out, trying to think beyond good and evil. I realize that this detached or amoral position is "evil" for other perspectives. When I speak of man as a god, I'm thinking of the individual's ability to put all inherited values in question.

This cannot be true for someone that says that they're in a position to judge the highest, maximal point, to judge infinity. They are either judging what they see as a human being, and their conception in a weak form, or are mightily awesome themselves. — Wosret

I didn't mean to come off as rude, just to be clear.

For me the issue if whether the "infinite" has any content. What I took from Hegel is the vacuity of the thing-in-itself. I'm taking this out of context and understanding it spirituality. If I believe in a perspective that surpasses my own (like the mind of god), what exactly am I believing in? All I seem to have is a bare negation of my own perspective.

Let's say that God is to man as man is to dog. What can a man be to a dog? Perhaps only an ideally clever dog. If the dog could understand man, he would already be man, albeit strangely trapped in a dog's body.

We can take Hegel himself as an example. Imagine a 20 year old who picks up the idea that Hegel is some master sage. He has a vague belief in some superior perspective but no actual grasp on this perspective until he reads Hegel. As he understand Hegel, he becomes Hegel. In short, we only understand or know what we have already become. I think Hegel continued this kind of thinking:

Now the essence of critical philosophy is this, that an absolute self is postulated as wholly unconditioned and incapable of determination by any higher thing...Any philosophy, on the other hand, is dogmatic, when it creates or opposes anything to the self as such; and this is does by appealing to the supposedly higher concept of the thing, which is thus quite arbitrarily set up as the absolutely highest conception. In the critical system, a thing is what is posited in the self; in the dogmatic it is that wherein the self is posited: critical philosophy is thus immanent, since it posits everything in the self; dogmatism is transcendent, since it goes out beyond the self. — Fichte

I should also mention that "virtue signaling" isn't even an insult, and signal theorists denounce it as an insult. It just means signaling, and can only be construed as an insult in the sense of dishonest signaling, what values you're signaling you do not actually hold, or enact, or preaching to the choir. The pejorative thing though, is a politicized, rather than scientific notion of virtue signaling. — Wosret

I don't at all understand it as an insult. If that's what personality is, then "accusations" of virtue signaling can only be more virtue signaling. So to be clear, I understand myself also to be virtue signaling. I "confess" it. I was just trying to point out that accusations of arrogance also assert knowledge-virtue.

I more or less define personality as the assertion of some notion of the ideal. The objective/universal pose is one that asserts some moral/intellectual ideal as binding for all humanity. The less common subjective pose is one that presents sentences as tools for others sufficiently like himself to appreciate such tools. I identity with this subjective pose.

From my perspective (asserted as a lived vision of the world), we all act and a speak from irrational foundations. Our criterions for true and false and right or wrong cannot justify themselves. We act and argue from investments that we can only rarely sincerely put in question. If we occasionally manage this, it's because the shape of that investment is self-referential. Perhaps I let go of my notion of being a "good guy" as I try to realize my ideal self as ruthless pursue of the truth. This is what Nietzsche especially means to me. In pursuit of the truth, morality is finally put into question. But then the pursuit of truth itself as an unquestioned absolute value is put into question. It can even be said to put itself into question. And that's how the subjective pose is born from the objective pose. (So I venture as an assertion of unjustified personality.)

You ought to consider that I never posited a god, or said that I was a theist, but was speaking within a hypothetical scenario. that in no way required me to. That this was just supposed to be so, and then reacted to so strongely should give you pause.

Hegel is a good example, as he does reject the metaphysical limits Kant set out, as he thought that you could only delineate such limits, define them and their scoop from beyond them. He also is famous for dialectics, and the notion of progressing through conversation. So, think that if I interpret, and construct my interlocutor's position as flimsily, and stupidly as possible, and mine as strongly as possible, what am I doing? What is the goal there other than to protect something that I identify as myself, and part of myself from damage?

I don't want to argue about what God is or isn't, or whether or not it is or is, but just that there are things beyond you. If you go to learn a discipline, you subject yourself to their mastery. You listen intently, take them seriously, study what they tell you to, practice what they tell you to, and eventually things start falling together.

Now imagine two disciples, one doesn't pay attention, believes that the professor is an idiot, doesn't engage in the practices, doesn't study the material, and the other does the opposite. Which student do you figure will master the discipline, and which will not? Which will become an authority on the subject, and which will not?

No masters, or teachers are Gods or infallible, but you need to move through them, and beyond them in order to truly figure that one, it is far more difficult to reinvent the wheel, from scratch, thinking every other wheel maker a fool from the beginning, and a far better wheel than has ever been made before.

You of course do need to be on someone's level before you can understand them, and their are certain behaviors and attitudes which are not very conducive to getting there, and there are other behaviors and attitudes which are.

So you were saying that my opinions were value laden, and therefore equally valid to everyone else's? I didn't get that... that's a silly thing to think, and you can't actually think it. You literally can't actually behave as if that is true. You will behave as if some values are superior to others, and some are wrong. Saying that on some meta-level analysis you think they're all valid, but we can't help but act otherwise doesn't actually change anything then, if we all act like they're true anyway, then there is no difference besides some kind of back-handed dismissal, or enlightened self-awareness that you can't in any sense actually enact.

I think a difference in our attitudes may have something to do with "embracing the killer." The novel Steppenwolf comes to mind. From the wolf's point of view, war is beautiful. Men would not return to it again and again if it did not appeal to them. Rich, comfortable, civilized nations sometimes go to war. There is an "excess" in man's psyche that finds peace boring or repressive. Part of us wants to kill and die. Orgasm has been called the little death and that figures in too.

There is the desire to survive peacefully (a constructive, future-invested drive) and a drive to give one's self away to the moment. "Sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll" are related to this second drive, along with war.
From my point of view, there's a safe, righteous kind of thought that dominates the public space. For instance, you mention the "sins" of man as if you yourself cannot relate to the joy in destruction. Maybe you indeed cannot relate. But I for one enjoy shows like Gomorrah. I love Breaking Bad. I root for the evil hero. That's the inner gangster, etc. TV is a magic circle where the repressed beast is allowed to feed on the flesh of his enemies. It's like "true blood" (the product within the show of the same name.) If we do establish peace, it'll probably be by means of virtual as opposed to actual war.

In short, I experience condemnations of man's evil as incomplete or not quite convincing. I think the ambivalence runs through the center of the individual heart.