Rape

Chatted with Ed until 1am last night, covering a variety of subjects, including this one and one which will apear shortly in a journal entry of its own.  And those of you who are going to be offended by the following discussion will by now hopefully have now passed on to a different entry.

We ended up talking about the fact that many people consider rape to be worse than murder (Ed being one of those people), Ed's reasoning being that murder (generally) consists of a few moments of suffering for the person being murdered, whereas rape leaves scars that can last a lifetime.

I disagreed, saying that "Rape is worse than murder" indicated that it was better to be murdered than raped, effectively saying to rape victims "It would be better for you if you were dead." and denigrating those women who do get over rape and have happy lives.  Also, being a materialistic type, I view death as the end, so by killing someone you've just taken away from them whatever future they had, generally a far worse thing to do than making their life worse.

The difference seemed to boil down to whether you looked at the future of the victim and took into account just the bad effects of the crime or the totality of their lives.

The first account for a short period of pain for a murder victim, longer pain for a rape victim in addition to depression and trauma lasting (possibly) for many years.  The second means comparing a short period of pain _and then nothing else_ with the possibility of many years of life, large amounts of which may be happy, leading to a life which is, on balance, a happy one.

There are a few things that I'd rather be dead than endure (constant crippling pain, brain diseases that leave me unable to function in any meaningful sense), but by and large I'd rather be able to try and make my way somewhat happily in life, even if that means living through some terrible things along the way.

[Poll #255466]

Distorted Reflection

I have a fairly large chunk of self-confidence. Which isn't to say that I think I'm perfect - I have plenty of people around who will happily put me straight if I veer too far in that direction - but I do think that I'm fairly interesting, smart and fun to be around (if you're my kind of person - I'm probably not much fun to be around if you're into football, eastenders and gangsta rap).

Anyway, I'm fairly confident in my own general goodness. I don't need reassuring on this, partially because I get enough general background levels of reassurance and partially because other people's opinions don't actually matter a hell of a lot to me when it comes to matters of aesthetics - _I_ like me.

What baffles the hell out of me is why people that seem obviously cool to me - smart, funny, interesting people, who are capable, creative, fun and generally froody, _aren't_ self-confident. They need other people to tell them that they're worth knowing. They need reassurance. They don't believe, deep down, that they're good people.

Ed pointed out yesterday (yeah, this was the other conversation we had. Well, we chatted a lot about a wide variety of silly things, but I don't tend to catalogue silliness most of the time) that people look at themselves and see faults. That a cool person looking in the mirror may see nothing but the faults they have, much in the same way that an anorexic may look in the mirror and think "If I was just a stone lighter..." when they're already a bag of skin and bones.

So, all you people with low self esteem - why is it that you feel that you're a bad person? Do you think that you are undeserving? Or that you are deserving, but that the world will never recognise that? What do you need reassurance about? What would make you believe that you were good?

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Courtesy of spaj :

( Fuego! )

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I have a story in the voting queue on Kuro5hin at the moment. 69 votes so far. 29 for, 23 against, 17 abstained. I need a balance of +95 to get posted, which is going to take a while considering the +6 I'm currently on.

Bloody annoying, considering that nobody has so far posted saying "I voted you down because of XXX".

All the good news that's fit to print

Spoof of Google News including nothing but good news.

Oh to live in that world.