Edit: I intentionally put “bad people” in the title in order to provoke. 😊
If you don’t know what I’m talking about:
Black Mirror - Hated in the Nation
I’m not sure how to limit the scope of this discussion, since it touches upon so many areas of morale:
- the value of life
- the right to kill
- vengeance/revenge
- crime
- good and evil
So I encourage you to be articulate and to follow some structure: “what(thesis) - why(evidence) - what (thesis)”. Other easy to follow variations, such as “why(background + evidence) - what(thesis)” or “what - why - what - by the way(discussion)” or just a simple “what” are of course good too. I’m not trying exclude comments, and I won’t, just encouraging an easy to read discussion. As for me:
I would not kill using a Death Note, unless for some utterly personal vendetta. I would also not kill those that did, if we were talking about some sort of society wide phenomenon. I believe that taking action against human life on the macro scale, such as a nation state against another or such as one confined justice system against one of its subjects (state versus an individual, for instance) or in the fictive case of the above mentioned media, is wrong. This is because I don’t believe it right to through politics or legislation qualify or quantify the value of a human life, such as is done in jurisdictions that allow capital punishment. While I’m against such “marco actions” on human life, I for some reason have less of a problem empathizing with the individual victims involved, which is to say, I don’t think I’d rage against, say, a grieving mother avenging her murdered child by killing the murderer. But then again, not all individuals have the ability or the capacity to exact revenge and maybe they have to rely on their nation state for some kind of restitution? My opinion is probably logical mess, full of contradictions, but there it is. Feel free to poke holes, in a kind manner!
why stop with bad people?
Gaia has spoken. Noice.
I have thought about if I had a Death Note and the one thing that I would be deeply fascinated by is if it could cause things like people suddenly having Song of Saya style meat vision. If it could do things like that, then I’d probably be a little sadistic by making a few billionaires become “cursed” as a warning from “God” to get rid of their greed by getting rid of their wealth. That’s also presuming I would be also allowed to basically plant voices in their heads as well.
Feel like I could just get away with killing people who are like clinically brain dead and can’t be allowed to die due to religious or legal reasons.
I can barely be trusted with that, but I feel like that’s a limit I could stick to and spend the rest of my time just making sure the book doesn’t get into the wrong hands.
There’s still moral implications to being an angel of death and it could go wrong really easily but it feels much less tricky than deciding some dude fits my personal criteria of evil and thus deserves death.
Killing is the morally correct thing to do in acts of self defense
Billionaires, just by hoarding the wealth that they have and using it to run this system, are an everyday threat to the lives of the most vulnerable people in society
They are above the law. Nothing will happen to them if I don’t do something. That’s who I would go for without hesitation
None of that ego bullshit, no Kira nonsense. Just do what has to be done in whatever accidental or coincidental method
From a strict utilitarian perspective, it’s easy to look at this as a trolley problem. I can easily think of a few monsters at the very top whose deaths would definitely save far more lives in exchange.
But the harder question I’d struggle with is, where to stop? I can start with the most obvious targets and feel no remorse, but how long do I keep going down the list for? What would really keep me up at night is wondering what’s worse: using it too much or not using it enough?
I would absolutely use it. Billionaires, war criminals, fascists, they’d all be targets.
Once handed the death note, I’d give it a test run on a singular target, with very specific means of death. Just to make sure I’m not wasting my time.
Once it’s confirmed as functional, I’d set a date roughly six months in advance. Then I’d hop on Tor and do fuck loads of research for about 5 months, setting the date of death for those billionaires, war criminals, fascists, all for the same day. I’d try to make sure it’s a global thing, not just centered within “western” countries.
The world would go into a bit of a panick, as fuck loads of very powerful people would overnight be gone. The status quo of the world wouldn’t change too much I wouldn’t think, but the rich and powerful would have a wake up call. Some of them would be missed, some of them would have estates going to children. I wouldn’t target minors, but adult children who retain that lovecraftian wealth would themselves become targets for round two.
Round two would be significantly harder to implement. The rich and powerful that slipped through the cracks in the first round would be taking big steps to hide their presence. The research to find these traitors of humanity would get significantly harder. But just as before I’d set a date about 6 months out, and do 5 months of adding names with the date.
I’d like to hope that the second round would be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and gets the currently rising tide of fascism to stop, wealth to become unwanted, etc. It will have hopefully established a pattern which makes those with the opportunity to become billionaires, war criminals, or prominent fascists to not go down that path.
Twice a year every year the process would continue, and every year it would get harder and harder to discover targets. But I think it would be the safest way for an individual to use the death note to move the world to the right track.
Why not add a clause that they donate their vast wealth and assets to public causes.
IIRC the means of death has to be something they would conceivable do, and in a very short time span of a few minutes.
So you can’t have the targets say messages with information they didn’t know, or have them take actions that would be too out of character, or long in duration.
And the process of having a billionaire give away all their wealth is a long process. At best it would take days, if not weeks for all their stocks, art, assets, money to be donated/sold/etc. It would get even worse with round two, because there would be far less willingness to take ownership of those wealth vehicles, knowing that there may be a risk of your own head being on the chopping block.
The closest would be having war criminals recant their actions, but that just takes up more space on the page, and more carpel tunnel.
While I obviously disagree with your views, your writing is THE BOMB. Please make this a short story or novel - preferably in gory naturalistic style - and post it!
You might enjoy the comic The Day All Billionaires Died
Thank you, I appreciate it.
I’ve been toying with the idea ever since I watched the show. It is in effect, political fantasy masturbation.
But it is fun to jack off sometimes.
I could see myself making a short story on it. Definitely not a novel.
I would 100% go mad with power. Fully convince myself that I knew what was best for humanity and try to sculpt the world through deletion.
I would use it. But I wouldn’t use it against regular people who are in jail, they are serving their time for their actions.
I would use it against those who have the resources to avoid jail time.
There are many people who contribute or cause people’s deaths who should have their ability to cause harm removed from society, but who continue to roam free as a result of their disproportionate influence and the corruption of the system (which they often contribute to). Given the lack of alternate means, I would choose to remove them in the most expedient way possible while also minimizing the opportunity for recidivism. I view this as the most utilitarian approach to maximize life, liberty, or even general happiness.
I feel like I would kind of have to, the potential upside is just way too big
I know of some powerful people I would want to write the name of. I’m not sure if it will end the wars and suffering they’ve caused, but I believe the world would be a better place without them.
Yes.
However, in the long run the DeathNote would make me a corrupt PoS. I genuinely believe no one should have such power (DeathNote, Geass, Makima’s Control etc).
I’d make Thanos look like a pacifist.
i wont use that death note in the first place and i would likely burn it
I have no idea what I would do, but I know it would destroy me, either from guilt due to inaction or guilt due to action.
If you asked me this years ago I would have said no. Today though it would seem like such an opportunity to mitigate the effects of climate change and pollution and greed.
