I have not. Though I long felt that I had twice killed persons.
At sixteen a friend of mine was riding on the hood of the car I was driving. I got the idea to drive to the grass, break hard and shoot him off into the field. He saw what I was planning and lept from the hood, lost his footing and smashed his head of the street. Blood came out of his ears, he got up and talked nonsense, layed backdown, then he was taken to hospital where he passed away the following day. I was held by the police a short time then released. My father picked me up. A month later all persons involved in the incident gathered at his families home to discuss what had happened. I never apologized to them. At the time I was stunned, I had no idea what to think or do.
Five years later I watched a young girl drown. I watched her for several minutes, flailing slower and slower. I though she was playing. But then I knew no one could hold their breath that long. Another kid standing by the pool said something like, ‘she’s drowning.’ She was. I jumped in and pulled her out. Another lady there did mouth-to-mouth breathing on her. It didn’t do anything. The newspaper showed up and took some pictures. It was on the front page the next day of us standing around the dead girl. When I knew she was drowning I paniced severly. I was not blamed in any way for this death. No one I knew recognized me in the newspaper picture.
For years I felt horrible guilt about these accidents. And finally threw it off. It was talking to one of my sister’s friends one night and openning up about my feelings that finally let the guilt off.
Has anyone else been somehow responisible for a death, or killed someone. How did you deal with the feelings?
Wow. That’s a lot for one person to carry around Gorgias. I was curious if, after the one time that everybody got together to talk about the death of your friend, you had ever been back in touch with his family.
A certain happening often comes into my mind, where, happily, I caused no harm to anyone, but which could have had quite a tragic ending.
I was a relatively small boy, somewhere around the age of 7, playing in a designated area near my apartment, with other youngens as myself. It is there that I had found a piece of glass, about the size of palm, with sharp edges. I was quite a fan of Batman at the time and liked to consider this as a batarang of some sorts.
What happened is that at a certain moment, driven by an uncontroled impulse, I turned and threw the piece of glass in a wide gesture, but without assuring myself that there is no one in the way of my projectile. My heart stopped as I bearly noticed the piece of glass whoozing milimetrically past the head of a little girl. I dread to think what would have happened if I had hit her. I thank God to this day that for missing that girl. The image and feeling of the moment have still remained, though and thankfully they’ll be a reminder to never act so foolishly…
the closest thing i have experienced, and it’s really far away, is when i was in high school… i was in gym class, we had a substitute, the class had decided that touch football was boring, tackle was better, i tackled the kid with the ball, snapped his leg in two. not an inherently bad thing, but i found out later that he was a becoming a professional skater, the broken leg held him back for three years, he had to have multiple surgeries.
It wad during a basketball game and the young man was chasing after a member of my high school team who was on a fast break. The guy just tripped over his own feet and fell a very special way.
It ended up that he simply snapped his femur (the biggest bone in the body) in half, but as I sat on the bench watchcing him regressing, calling for his mom while in a semi fetal position I realized that if it was a compound fracture which split one of the major arteries in the leg - he could die.
He didn’t, and as they wheeled him past me on the stretcher, totally doped up, he rolled his head over and looked at me with glazed eyes to say ‘Good Game’ . Eerie to say the least.
I often imagine the worst, it is mostly myself dying but I often contemplate ‘what if this were to happen’. Thankfully I’ve never had to actually face such a reality.
I myself have been fortunate never to have caused such outcomes by my actions… mostly by the grace of god though as I look back on life. Its scary and amazing to think what would have happened if little things had gone differently. I do have two things to add though:
A friend of friend, who was a phys-ed teacher and keen athlete was leaning against a railing one day and he and some of his friends were playfighting and this guy ended up going over backwards and breaking his neck. He is now quadriplegic. They were doing nothing that many of us haven’t done many, many times, yet this time, for whatever reason this horrible accident occured.
In my life outside of ILP I am an EMT and I have cleaned up many an accident where people were “just goofing around” and where they never thought anyone would get hurt. The thing is, people do get hurt, and people do die from little stupid things. Preventable traumatic injury is the number one cause of death for those 18-35 years in old in North America.
So I know it sounds stupid, but really, take care of yourselves and each other. Be careful, think twice, teach your kids how to call 911 (except in Detroit ), and learn first aid.
Our fragile and corruptable bodies will only stop dieing and failing when we have physical upgrades, because for thousands of years our only real upgrade was subjective. The only thing that could really impower and expand the individual was things like knowledge, but even as his character and wisdom grew, his body died; all was lost.
This is why I am so transhumanistic, and why I want a superspecies to be engineered/created ASAP. “Human dignity” and “normality” can wait. I really hope that people see it my way in the future.
Next,
When someone dies,
This is system failure.
The machine was broken
And since the machine was not created by a master designer
There is no creator to re-create or fix the problem.
There is only the individual that very VERY slowly and oxymoronically evolves its own body.
Arrogant claims about the universe and God can wait,
The human brain should first focus primarily on how and why it personally fails. An eternal existence that is stable enough to not destroy its environment or itself–should be the first and main focus of all human life.
A cure for old age, sexual sterilization and drastic reduction of environmental impact/damage–these are the main things that I want to see in humanity.
All death really is–is a system failure.
And the observer of the death
Was not able to solve the problem
Otherwise he would have solved the problem by now.
Allot of these accidents happened during “play”.
The general principal behind human play–is the creation of a non-lethal problem, then the solving of it. Everything from boxing, to a game of chess–it is a method and process of problem-solving.
I generally avoid things like parties, horseplay and dangerous sports.
I’ve never “almost-killed” someone, and I’ve never seen someone die or get sevear damage by means of an accident, because I am not to be found in the dangerous places of earth. I am to be found in the safe places. I don’t even like driving, because I am aware of the death-dice rolling along side the less-then-perfect processes.
Though this does not appeal to our shallow reactive instincts as humans, I fight for and suggest all preventative medacine and logical existence/practice.
People that believe in things like heaven–they don’t view death and loss in the same way. Me? I feel like those superstitions where the “mental masterbation”, and the “all-mighty, all-loving salvations” where the orgasm. Fruitless, as usual. I am in firm belief of perminent death, antil proven wrong, and I think that a human life is very speciel–to be taken seriously, valuable, not to be squandered. etc.
I’ve faced personally death-at-the-doorstep kinds of situations before.
One of the main things I’d realized later on in life–was that people waste almost 100% of everything that they are! Their money, time, thoughts and feelings–spent on something other then their own safety, health, and future.
Natural impulses towards sex, for example–this is a natural instinct, but how many times does it become incoherent?, and how many times does it actually bring a pregnancy? All of that horny hit-or-miss, every orgasm, it has a high failure rate!
I believe that allot of instincts meant to motivate action have high failure rates. Logic, understanding and foresight are very VERY important.
But anyways, Gobbo, I will say:
Just try to live life carefully.
Try to understand the things that are most healthy, instead of the things that are most sensational.
Thought is like the games that the politicians play, but the body hardly revolts to the mind–and the body has not the wit to critisize the amazing stupidity potential of the brain.
Responsability for health is actually the mark of the finest leadership skills. And what is one of the biggest problems of human civilization? Bad leadership!
I know what my weaknesses are as a species, and that’s where the dangers lay.
But also, about 20 years from now a cure for old age will theoretically exist. If you can survive long enough, I think technology will give you the basic things needed for “immortality”, and once the death problems get sorted out–the most important things on earth can be focused upon clearly [because of how much time it takes to do the finest work].
Hang in there.
Fight for life.
Stay alert.
Stay smart.
The longer The human body lives without coruption of it’s coporial form, the more advanced or evovled the mind becomes. Once the mind out evolves the physical form the physical form will evolve to compensate for this change adn vice versa.
So if a Human could live long enough he/she would devolope this natuarly.
I was on a Scout outing and I there was this wall, about 5-6 feet beneath was this huge leaf pile that kids were jumping into. Twice some kid jumped on another hiding under the pile. I moved this huge rock becuase I knew that someone would eventually land on it and break something. I picked it up, was and threw it as far as I could. The second after I threw it, another dumbass little kid stood up out of the pile. If I had chosen to drop the big rock in front of me and roll it like I originally had planned but changed my mind becuase I wanted to see how far I could throw it, I would have crushed that kids chest.
), and learn first aid.