The gurgling sound of death!

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Of course it's not odd. I would be bothered by watching that person eat their cat but I wouldn't consider it morally wrong in the scenario it takes place in (kinda weird, but again that is like describing a colour, not right or wrong).

I don't care what Carl says to a dying woman to make her feel better. If he promised to visit her in the nursing home every week and then didn't show up when he could have that would be wrong. But she's dead, it really doesn't matter that he isn't at her grave and if he's fine with that that's his business. No one is hurt by his failure to keep a promise.

 

[Amaris]

Of course it's not odd. I would be bothered by watching that person eat their cat but I wouldn't consider it morally wrong in the scenario it takes place in (kinda weird, but again that is like describing a colour, not right or wrong).

I don't care what Carl says to a dying woman to make her feel better. If he promised to visit her in the nursing home every week and then didn't show up when he could have that would be wrong. But she's dead, it really doesn't matter that he isn't at her grave and if he's fine with that that's his business. No one is hurt by his failure to keep a promise.

Bingo.

 

[Velocity]

But don't you want to get ahead? You don't want at week 4 to be competing with all the other desperate people who ran out of cans, you want to be eating protein every day you can and saving your cans for emergencies.

Now actual disaster where you expect the government to show up in a week and give you food, sure I would live off what's in the house. I wouldn't kill anything. I don't need to eat meat. But enormous catastrophe where you think no one is ever going to come, I would have zero problem snapping a pigeon's neck on day one. Every day I could bring in food for my family and not eat what I had stored would be a good day.

As to how to snap their necks, well you break chicken wings when you're eating them. It's probably easier than that.

You just grab them by the head/neck and swing them around over your wrist. Their weight does the work an they are dead before they have time to fret. The plucking is more distasteful to me.

 

[Luminus]

I seem to have confused that Would you eat your cat test.

You responded that Carl Bianchi did no moral wrong in failing to keep the promise he made to his mother on her deathbed. This certainly fits with your view that there was no harm associated with his dishonesty. However, there is an interesting tension in your responses. Even though you think there was no moral wrong and that no harm occurred, you nevertheless claimed it would have bothered you to have watched Carl lying to his mother. This is a little odd. There is no logical inconsistency here, but it is somewhat implausible from a psychological point of view. Put simply, it just isn't clear why you'd find it bothersome to watch Carl lying to his mother, which, after all, is just a matter of watching one person talking to another, if there were not something about the morality of what was unfolding that you found troubling (perhaps, for example, to do with thoughts about betrayal or deception).

It's not odd. There is a difference between failing to keep a promise (the text never implied that he was lying at that point) and not keeping a promise. If life unexpectedly gets in his way, he is not at fault. But if he already knew beforehand, well then he is at fault. It's about intention, guys.

A promise is a promise is a promise. How many women accept excuses for broken promises? They might forgive, but they won't forget.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

The purpose of that promise was to make her feel better. There is no reason to go through with it once she's gone, unless it was a public promise and would upset her other relatives (though they would be silly IMO to drag that out too long). However in the scenario given it is only between Carl and the woman who then dies.

I don't agree with the idea that a promise is something carved into you that you must honour no matter what. You have to look at each promise on a case by case basis. Sometimes it's not possible to keep a promise, even a good worthy one, and that is just life. Life isn't static.

The whole point of him making that promise was to comfort her, which he did. If he had said "no" because he knew he would never do it and caused her distress on her death bed that would make him an asshole who put some high falutin' ideal about truth above a real life person.

 

[Luminus]

The purpose of that promise was to make her feel better. There is no reason to go through with it once she's gone, unless it was a public promise and would upset her other relatives (though they would be silly IMO to drag that out too long). However in the scenario given it is only between Carl and the woman who then dies.

I don't agree with the idea that a promise is something carved into you that you must honour no matter what. You have to look at each promise on a case by case basis. Sometimes it's not possible to keep a promise, even a good worthy one, and that is just life. Life isn't static.

The whole point of him making that promise was to comfort her, which he did. If he had said "no" because he knew he would never do it and caused her distress on her death bed that would make him an asshole who put some high falutin' ideal about truth above a real life person.

I don't give promises I think I might not be able to keep. Period. Different strokes for different folks, again. We simply value things differently. If I fail to fulfill a promise, I accept responsibility. No excuses.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

You would say no to a dying woman and upset her rather than make a promise that comforts and is meaningless if kept or not kept? I see that as putting your needs above hers.

 

[Luminus]

You would say no to a dying woman and upset her rather than make a promise that comforts and is meaningless if kept or not kept? I see that as putting your needs above hers.

Yes, because it has meaning to me. I would simply tell her I'd do my best. It's not putting my needs above hers because I'm not displaying any need in this situation. It's sticking to my principles. Anyone who knows me is going to know that I'm not going to lie to them, if I can help it. If I need to lie to save someone's life or job or to keep the peace in a potentially volatile situation, guess what? A lie might need to be told. But I'm not going to make a promise I can't keep nor lie to them just to make them feel better. That's not how I operate and anyone who knows me and expects me to operate differently than that is a fool.

Incidentally, debating with you has helped me finally figure out which direction my next children's book needs to go. I was confused about it for quite some time. The butterfly effect is an extraordinary thing, even without time travel. Thanks.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

But I'm not going to make a promise I can't keep nor lie to them just to make them feel better.

Dude. It's a death bed. Seriously, making the person feel better is the nicest thing you can do.

 

[Rincewiend]

I just watched the documentary Food, Inc. and there were some alarming things brought up. One of the things that stuck in my head was of a scene on a farm, where the chickens were being prepared. Basically, they grab a chicken out of the cage, drop them into a funnel, head first, and then slit their throats. You could hear the gurgling sounds of death as the chicken died on camera.

This got me thinking, what would happen if supermarkets went away? Just, hypothetically, if this happened how would you cope? That scene keeps playing in my head, but chickens are delicious!

I don't know. Could you make a bloodthirsty violent kill, should such a scenario happened? Eventually, we'd all turn into savages, but for the first few weeks, what would that be like? Would many starve, due to the sheer horror of killing so viciously?

More horrific, in the city, there would only be a choice of cats, dogs, rats, and birds to hunt. You can forget about catching pigeons without guns, so that leaves cats, dogs, and rats. Can you kill and eat any of these to survive?

People will form groups to pool their resources and utilize the different skills to help each-other...
I've seen my grandfathers as well as my dad and some uncles kill and clean/gut chickens, rabbits and fish, i think i can do that just as well if it is neccesary...
Other peope are a bit more squeemish but are better at cooking or foraging for edible plants or bugs...

 

[Luminus]

Dude. It's a death bed. Seriously, making the person feel better is the nicest thing you can do.

Not according to my views. A person does not have the right to "feel better" at the expense of my principles. Consider another scenario:

It's you and your best friend, a woman, stuck in a remote area of the planet. There's no civilization for at least 100 miles and next to zero hope of being rescued. She's sick with the flu and will die if help doesn't arrive soon. She's a virgin; you're married. She wants to experience sex before she dies. Assume that it's 100% gauranteed that she's going to die and having sex with her will make her feel better. No one but the two of you will know. What do you do?​

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Seriously no one wants to have sex when they have the flu, especially a flu that is about to kill them.

But sure, that's one that people might find questionable. However the scenario presented to you in the test is a helluva lot less dramatic. All it asks you to do is to put someone who is about to die first and say some nice words to make them feel better. It would be like not praying for someone who is about to die and asks you to because you are an atheist. It's real don't be a dick territory IMO.

How about if you say the nice words the dying woman asked and crossed your fingers behind your back? Would that let you put someone else ahead of your own supposed principles? Because your principles are making you really selfish in this scenario and missing the whole point. It is not about YOU it is about a woman who is about to die.

You don't get any gold stars for putting your principles above kindness.

 

[JoeZhang]

I have killed, skinned and eaten plenty of animals (country boy, worked in slaughterhouse) but never a cat - problem is that I am from an area with a lot of pigeon fanciers so cat would be a bit riskier because you don't know if it has been eating anti-freeze.

 

[Luminus]

I just watched the documentary Food, Inc. and there were some alarming things brought up. One of the things that stuck in my head was of a scene on a farm, where the chickens were being prepared. Basically, they grab a chicken out of the cage, drop them into a funnel, head first, and then slit their throats. You could hear the gurgling sounds of death as the chicken died on camera.

This got me thinking, what would happen if supermarkets went away? Just, hypothetically, if this happened how would you cope? That scene keeps playing in my head, but chickens are delicious!

I don't know. Could you make a bloodthirsty violent kill, should such a scenario happened? Eventually, we'd all turn into savages, but for the first few weeks, what would that be like? Would many starve, due to the sheer horror of killing so viciously?

More horrific, in the city, there would only be a choice of cats, dogs, rats, and birds to hunt. You can forget about catching pigeons without guns, so that leaves cats, dogs, and rats. Can you kill and eat any of these to survive?

People will form groups to pool their resources and utilize the different skills to help each-other...
I've seen my grandfathers as well as my dad and some uncles kill and clean/gut chickens, rabbits and fish, i think i can do that just as well if it is neccesary...
Other peope are a bit more squeemish but are better at cooking or foraging for edible plants or bugs...

Yes, but who is going to be gutting chickens, rabbits and fish in the city? Those things aren't just walking around. Like I said, we have a choice of cats, dogs rats, and pigeons. Guess which 2 of those are off the menu? One sky-rise apartment is going to have a serious problem with food, no matter how many of you pool your resources. There are too many people around to just feed off the land. And if the sky-rise next door is starving and they see you shuttling food to your group, guess who's in danger of not getting to their group with that food... or alive?

There are so many variables. I guess if you chose hunters from your group to kill cats and dogs, the non hunters can just feign ignorance and eat without feeling guilty. There still wouldn't be enough, though. Your groups would need to be small.

 

[Luminus]

Seriously no one wants to have sex when they have the flu, especially a flu that is about to kill them.

But sure, that's one that people might find questionable. However the scenario presented to you in the test is a helluva lot less dramatic. All it asks you to do is to put someone who is about to die first and say some nice words to make them feel better. It would be like not praying for someone who is about to die and asks you to because you are an atheist. It's real don't be a dick territory IMO.

How about if you say the nice words the dying woman asked and crossed your fingers behind your back? Would that let you put someone else ahead of your own supposed principles? Because your principles are making you really selfish in this scenario and missing the whole point. It is not about YOU it is about a woman who is about to die.

You don't get any gold stars for putting your principles above kindness.

I'm not looking for gold stars. And anyone who asks me to pray, knowing that I'm an atheist is the dick. You and I have a fundamental clash of principals. You don't agree with mine and that's fine, but mine are no more wrong than yours. Just different.

And, as a side note, you're wrong that no one wants to have sex while they have the flue. I know this for a fact.

 

[JarodRussell]

Would you save a child's life if that meant you could be killed in the process?

 

[Luminus]

Would you save a child's life if that meant you could be killed in the process?

I'd like to think so. My immediate answer is yes, but I can't know for sure until I experience it.

 

[JarodRussell]

Would you comfort it saying "Everything's going to be alright" and stuff like that even if you knew the kid died no matter what?

 

[Luminus]

Would you comfort it saying "Everything's going to be alright" and stuff like that even if you knew the kid died no matter what?

No. I despise being told everything's going to be alright, when it's not. That will be up to someone else. You might think that's the right thing to do, but I don't. And, yes, I understand why you would do something like that, which is why I wouldn't stop anyone that would.

Yes, it is a little conflicting but there it is. Life isn't a ball of neatly wrapped presents, so to speak.

 

[Rincewiend]

Yes, but who is going to be gutting chickens, rabbits and fish in the city? Those things aren't just walking around.

Well, this obviously depends on where you live...
But rabbits/bunnies are kept as pets by people in cities as well as chickens...
And most cities have fishponds with fish like carp in them...
Chickens are better than rabbits though...
While you wait for the chicks to grow so you can kill
and eat the older generation you can eat the eggs for protein...
Offcourse, the question is; where to get food for the animals?
Allthough chickens are omnivores, so another reason to prefer chickens as a post-apocaliptic food-source...