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To: Hawkmoon who wrote (95290)	10/6/2012 11:05:20 PM
From: Joseph Silent	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218926

Hawk .... of course, the action is indefensible. All such actions are indefensible. Leave alone taking a life, actions that intentionally cause suffering are indefensible, and not being able to understand it (just as I cannot comprehend rape), I am not equipped to describe the experience. I am, however, addressing a subtler point. The only way to understand this point is to draw upon one's own experience and see if it strikes a chord somewhere. I argue that an individual's awareness is thoroughly and completely absent when such an act is committed. What is present is something akin to an algorithm, where the state of the computation is ready for inputs, and when the input is fed the execution sequence is triggered. The rest is automatic, for the computation depends on things determined in the past. There is no aware thinking (even in the sense of "what is going on at this moment? where am I? what is it that I am actually doing now? what are my hands doing? what am I touching? what am I feeling? who am I at this instant?") . I am not talking philosophy or analysis. I am talking about one's contact with life right now. I recently was so focused on my talk at an important meeting (where I had to present something) at town X that I drove two hours in the opposite direction from X. Of course, I was not only absent at the meeting, I was also absent as the driver of the vehicle; I did not see a single recognizable expressway marker, even though I am intimately familiar with all of them. If you ask me where I was, all I can say is I do not know, but I was consumed by what I was going to say. Two hours of continuous focus. The experience shocked me and left a marked impression on me. [The fact that the presentation was a surprise and I had about 15 minutes notice before having to leave may have played a part. :)] So now, fine. Society will decide we have a murderer who must be put to death and that is all very well. My point is this: at the instant this murderer is put to death, what is being put to death is a man, but not the lack of awareness in the man at the instant the crime was committed. He may now understand his situation, the background and consequences, but I am willing to bet that he is as puzzled as anyone else as to what was in control of the execution sequence. That driver is whatever informed his makeup from some distant time past, along with other inputs. It's quite possible that I am not explaining this very well. I do what I can. :)

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (95290)	10/7/2012 3:44:30 PM
From: Joseph Silent	1 Recommendation Respond to of 218926

Revulsion, disgust, recoil, horror .......... are all good and praiseworthy reactions in thinking, feeling human beings. To what extent these things are felt vary with the individual. These are not easy things to think about and talk about, because if we did ...... we will recognize that we are part of the mob that slits open thousands, if not millions, of such mothers a day. The intent is not to be horrific. Not even to compare. It is only to say that such pain and suffering is also in places that do not make the newspapers. We get conditioned to ideas. youtube.com