saxitoxin wrote:I love the process of, and bioethics of, death more than anything else. But, these days, it's difficult for me to observe it except through a personal story, which is rare to find, but we have one here. So, I'm temporarily lifting my ban to make one final, extraordinarily long-winded, comment ...someone wrote:They reproduce like mad, spread disease, etc. They were introduced to this country and have no real natural enemies to control them effectively. So, we pretty much have to kill them or be overrun.
Everything in that paragraph also applies to humans.
No one has the right to destroy life simply because the continued existence of that life is a personal inconvenience to them. Even sub-human mammals only, almost without exception, destroy life exclusively for either sustenance or defense.
Anyway, I'm a dialectic atheist, however, there is a parable in Buddhism in which - as a bodhisattva, Prince Gautama finds himself on a ship where he discovers a thief planning to murder the entire crew in the middle of the night. The Buddha kills the thief, not to save the crew but to prevent the thief from accumulating the negative karma that will accumulate from a mass murder. Being in the right place to allow Gautama to learn this lesson ascended the thief to godhead. The fact that T is able to express such enunciated regret indicates the babies he slaughtered may well have been his pirate-thief. He can use the transformational power of that horror to evolve himself into a person.
Speaking as someone who did not become a person until later in life I say T has been given a very unique opportunity and he can likely achieve total moral absolution for his crime by using it to shape himself. In the vastness of humanity I would amble a guess that not even a majority of humans have yet evolved into people. And yet we also have a human like maasman who, though only 18 (if I read his profile correctly), has already - I feel safe in saying based on revelations of his manner of phrasing in his short anecdote - become a person where many of us struggle toward that goal until late in life.
T - you should sit in a quiet, dark room right before you plan on going to sleep. It's important you be sitting-up, though, and not laying down. Spend five minutes reliving exactly what you were feeling at the height of the blood orgy. Then assign a sharp-edged shape to that feeling (a square or rectangle) in your mind and imagine the shape getting smaller until you can put it into an imaginary box. This box has a grill, or latticework, or some kind of holes drilled into the side. Close the box and imagine it being placed in a shelf. You should keep the box with you for the rest of your life. It is safely tucked away but easily accessible. Anytime you reach a cusp of decision you can view the contents of the box without letting them out.
Whatever you do, though, don't take the advice of the human-animals here who suggest you shrug it off or celebrate your ability to crown yourself the angel of death of the helpless or glibly accept it as a part of the circle of life. It doesn't take any special credential but if you want to evolve into a person only a person can give you advice on how to do it.john9blue wrote:i think i know why saxi's psychiatric license got revoked
c'mon, it was the '70's, we did things different back then... err, I mean the '80's early '90's
I appreciate the suggestion. I do have some limited experience with visualizations being used in psychotherapy, so this sounds like it could be useful. But I do have a question. How would I use this box to help me make my decisions? That is, what about this particular situation, and my extreme feelings during the situation, would help me when on the cusp of a decision in the future? And I am quite serious about the questions. I am not making fun of anything, I sincerely would like to know what you think about this.
Cognitive errors of that type are usually a good method to identify a non-person human. 
Ol' Saxi was just shakin' out some of the sillies! 
