Recusant said:
Sleekit said:
it's not really a legitimate question. you're alive; to a certain extent you don't have a choice in the matter.
you will do what your brain tells you feel is necessary to survive.
It is a completely legitimate question; human beings aren't machines. Yes, your brain will tell you what to do; you are in no way bound to listen. We have suicides, we have martyrs. You
can choose to decide that some things are more important than continuing to live, and you
can act according to those decisions.
I live in a country with social programs; they're inadequate and underfunded, but they'll keep you alive. I live in a subculture that understands the importance of family, especially in these matters, and I'm lucky enough to have a huge chunk of it still alive. It's quite unlikely I'd wind up in a situation where all of that changed and I was still alive; much less one where "crime" still held any meaning. But assuming it did... Very little. In a society that poor, crime isn't going to be reliable way to put food on the table. Above and beyond the inherent risks, there're going to be times when there's nothing to steal. I've seen what starvation looks like, and can only conclude that a life where you get just enough food to die slower is, if anything worse. I may be willing to run with it myself for a while, chancing that things will get better, but in the long term? There comes a point where you have to simply say that enough's enough; if the only way to stay alive is to lose your humanity, it's probably time to call it a life.
ye that's all very interesting.
i live in a country were the poor are often left with absolutely no means to survive.
its very possibly the same country.
i'm 45 years old and i remember, and lived through the very worst of "thatcherism".
i'm not some child you lecture on the basis of unlived theoreticals.
in the past many of us turned to "crime". stole food from fields. even animals. to feed our families. it became so common it was featured in "kitchen sink dramas" about the
former working class and the scale of deprivation was vast. millions upon millions of people living "below the breadline" near wholly sustained by "the grey economy".
you've
seen what starvation looks like ? what like Band Aid or some such on the TV ? i have cerebral atrophy because of having lived through prolonged and sustained periods of undernourishment/malnutrition...
"lose your Humanity". ye sure. whatever. do want an award for that level of melodrama ? i don't know what you think "turn to crime" means but unlike on the TV it does not involve dramatic cords or suddenly hooking up with "the criminal underworld" (all of whom are still Human regardless btw).
in the end, like everyone, you'll prefer to survive (unless you've succumbed to mental illness). and no you're not actually "100% free will" or whatever. the truth is you have just enough Human "arrogance" to believe that to be the case but that's a completely different thing.
i read your post and y'know what i think ? i think there speaks someone who's never actually been "hungry". lucky you.
