Why not just go shoot your enemies?
Now hold on, this is a serious question meant to make you look at yourself.
Recently someone I once greatly respected from my perspective fell to the dark side when they wished death on someone and doubled down when it turned out they actually are dying.
If you disagree with this, then this isn’t aimed at you, but if we’ve established you’re cool with wishing death on people followed by them actually dying, or at least being mortally wounded, then can we agree the only thing stopping you is risk and cost? Can you admit if you could snap your fingers in secret and kill, you’d do it?
There’s a neat book about someone having the power to mind kill people.
I’m also reminded of Leto’s cynical assertion that “All rebels are closet aristocrats.” I like to think it isn’t true, but clearly if given the power to kill with impunity, you’d do it.
The question is what does this mean? Well, for my own part, I literally stop myself when I find myself wishing death on someone. I can’t help the initial emotional reaction and random thought of course, but I can at least instantly follow it up with what I know to be right intellectually and ethically.
As I’ve said in other places: It can be ethical to kill, to save yourself or others, but on the other hand, while context in reality can leave you with no good choices, wishes, especially from safety with plentiful time, can be as near perfect as you are capable of. So in my opinion if you can do better you should, and when it comes to wishing, you always can do better until you’ve reached best.
Making excuses and rationalized death wishing reveals in my opinion an evil mind. It’s cliche but once you start doing this you’ve shown you are not much better than the people you attack if your beef with them is their own violence/murder. You’ve essentially proven that the only reason you don’t do massive harm is because you lack power, and that’s pretty much it.
I try to live such that such a statement is not true of me. Perhaps I take the power to kill more seriously because technically, I actually have an easy version of it. Being an American with a deadly weapon permit. I guess before I even considered carrying a firearm I mentally confronted actually carrying the option to end adjacent lives.
I strongly suggest everyone do the same and accordingly check their mental propensity for violence. If you’re going to wish for something, aim for something better than killing and torturing people. Wish for evil people to become good. Maybe look into making that happen even.
