Eventually you run out of monsters to fill the position (and the supporting positions below). At that point you now have people willing to make positive changes in the world
Comment on ah yes
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 1 day agoKilling a leader doesn’t get rid of the position of power that enabled their misdeeds.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
That is not how it works at all, and it’s actually a very childish way of thinking. There is not some finite pool of monsters these positions of power draw from, the positions of power make the monsters. “Power corrupts” is the most common trope in fiction since the advent of fiction for a reason and it’s baffling that so many people still don’t get it.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
Insisting that tropes are universally true just because they’re repeated is abaurd. It’s something a child would think up.
Go look at history. There’s plenty of examples of people who do the right thing when in positions of power. This is because power doesn’t corrupt - it reveals who people truly are. It’s just that selfish people are more likely to seek out power for personal gain.
Lumisal@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Killing people who keep abusing that position of power within an exact amount of time however would either get rid of the position or stop the abuse eventually.
There’s only so many times a person in a very specific position can be struck by lightning or have a heart attack before everyone sees that position as cursed or becomes superstitious about it.
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 23 hours ago
I mean, dictators have historically often met with a rather grisly end (Mussolini shot and hung upside down by his toes, Hitler blowing his own brains out, Gaddafi sodomized with a bayonet) and that doesn’t seem to stop people from pursuing the same power.
Lumisal@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
We’re talking year long consequences, after being in power for years. And then the next leader doesn’t meet said fate.
Every month though? Different story. Especially if it’s something like getting struck by lightning
athatet@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
If all that happened in the same month I bet it would get some people talking tho.
Colloidal@programming.dev 1 day ago
No, the position is occupied by the next monster. And so on. And so on. Dang, that’s such a nifty way of getting rid of sociopaths!
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
The entire theme of Death Note is that power turns people into sociopaths and that no matter how many “bad people” you kill you will never actually succeed in cleansing the world of evil, but I guess no matter how ham-fisted you make it people will still miss the point. It’s funny that a lot of people complain that Light has an unrealistically naive view of morality and yet this comment section seems to be teeming with people who are equally immature.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
First off, sociopathy isn’t a thing. It’s a made up term a fake psychologist made up to put people on death row in Texas for personal gain. Go listen to the Behind the Bastards episode on it. The actual diagnosis is “psychopathy”
Second, Light Yagami was already a psychopath at the start. Notice how in the show that there were 2 others that held the Death Note and they didn’t go mad with power over it.
Look at all of the growing injustice and inequality in the world, spurred on by CEOs, dictators, and billionaires. Just look at health insurance, where hundreds of thousands die each year from denial of care. Look at Elon Musk and DOGE defunding USAID, which resulted in over 100,000 children dying across the world. Look at the destruction and death that Russia has brought to Ukraine to try and conquer them.
Look at everyone in this thread who looks at all of that pain and misery and would want to do something about it. You’re calling them immature? No, you’re the one who’s immature, with all of your bullshit pearl-clutching.
Here’s a bit of a tangent: when the US invaded Vietnam, there were a lot of incidents where troops were ordered to just wipe out villages of people who had nothing to do with the war, including women and children. There was also a high rate of soldiers “snapping” and shooting their officers in retaliation. Those soldiers didn’t “snap”, they were the sane ones.
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 1 hour ago
I was only mirroring the language used by the person I was replying to. Great podcast though, I’m already a regular listener.
I agree that something must be done, and I understand where the desire to kill those responsible comes from. I feel the same frustration myself, but I also know that engaging in adventurism won’t solve jack shit. At best it can bring temporary relief, and at worst it can trigger an escalation of the violence/repression it was intended to address. The individuals who are most visibly responsible for the injustice in the world today are merely appendages of a much larger group of powerful institutions which are themselves motivated by incentives that are systemic. What I am doing here is not pearl-clutching; my objection is a strategic one, not a moral one. I won’t shed any tears for dead health insurance CEOs, oligarchs, or dictators, but I will always advocate for organizing with others to address the systemic drivers of injustice rather than acting alone and throwing your life away in an act of impotent violence. It’s better to live for a cause than to die for one.
See the problem is Light didn’t use the thing correctly. He could have written, “while suffering from a massive stroke, Senator ___ voted to pass nationalized school lunch.” Sure, the killing people sounds fun, but it’s what they do while dying that could make the world a better place.
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 13 hours ago
Problem is he completely lacked a systemic critique of society and fixated on crime, which he took for granted as the cause of all problems. For Light, all evil in the world comes down to individual moral failings, and by getting rid of the criminals he was eradicating evil.
eggpl4nt@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m built different.
Colloidal@programming.dev 1 day ago
Never watched it.