Happy Atheist Forum

General => Current Events => Topic started by: Randy on June 26, 2020, 04:40:17 PM

Title: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: Randy on June 26, 2020, 04:40:17 PM
A teenager who threw a 6-year-old boy from London's Tate Modern museum has been jailed for at least 15 years

(https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/26/uk/jonty-bravery-sentenced-intl-scli-gbr/index.html)
This is disgusting. The teenager did it to get on TV.
QuoteJonty Bravery, of West London, admitted one count of attempted murder at London's Old Bailey court in December, saying he threw the child from a balcony of the Thames-side tourist attraction in August with the intention of killing him so he could be on the news.
The boy survived but suffered life-changing injuries as a result of falling five floors from a 10th-floor viewing platform. He suffered a bleed to his brain and a number of fractured bones.
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: Dark Lightning on June 26, 2020, 05:27:04 PM
 >:( He could also just have jumped off a cliff to get in the news. That is one messed-up act.
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: billy rubin on June 26, 2020, 09:26:41 PM
they're talking about him as if he were mentally ill.

is he diagnosable, or is that messed up act simply an indicator in people's minds of illness?

i used to hang out on the weekends with a pakistani motel keeper when i ran a farmer's market booth in the big city. we discussed the nature of violence and evil once. i said that i thought evil was a malady, that sane people wee not evil, and to like evil there had to be something broken inside you.

he disagreed, and maintained that perfectly ordinary and sane people practiced evil as part of their psyches while being sane.

i've never made up my mind about this question.

i never knew that pakistanis told sikh jokes the way americans tell aggie jokes.
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: Dark Lightning on June 26, 2020, 11:49:14 PM
Sikh jokes? What, just puns?  ;D I regularly plotted methods of demise for the jackasses who made everybody's life miserable on the freeway during the commute home in the afternoon. But I never acted on any of them, and never even felt compelled to.
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: No one on June 27, 2020, 04:27:27 AM
If it were my child, this prick would be taking the dirt nap. We'd take the scenic route.
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: billy rubin on June 27, 2020, 12:14:52 PM
theyre long jokez

you ll have to wait
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: xSilverPhinx on June 29, 2020, 01:22:37 AM
That's really fucked up. 
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: Randy on June 29, 2020, 01:31:09 AM
It would be nice to see how the little boy is doing. We probably won't hear about him though, sadly.
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: xSilverPhinx on June 29, 2020, 01:32:04 AM
Quote from: billy rubin on June 26, 2020, 09:26:41 PM
they're talking about him as if he were mentally ill.

is he diagnosable, or is that messed up act simply an indicator in people's minds of illness?

i used to hang out on the weekends with a pakistani motel keeper when i ran a farmer's market booth in the big city. we discussed the nature of violence and evil once. i said that i thought evil was a malady, that sane people wee not evil, and to like evil there had to be something broken inside you.

he disagreed, and maintained that perfectly ordinary and sane people practiced evil as part of their psyches while being sane.

i've never made up my mind about this question.

i never knew that pakistanis told sikh jokes the way americans tell aggie jokes.

That's an interesting discussion I think. IMO everybody has the potential to be evil (not going into what evil is) and some circumstances and environments are favourable for evil to flourish. Of course, not all people are the same, we have different experiences and genes -- but some have a lower threshold to commit evil acts than others.
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: billy rubin on June 29, 2020, 01:35:44 PM
i think i can define evil as the mental state that considerz performing or permitting harm to others to be acceptable or desireable.

i consider war to be evil, for example, for tge same reasons as murder.

after tbat it gets gray.
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: Randy on June 29, 2020, 02:23:14 PM
I've seen evil first hand. It's too long to print here but it's in my autobiography if I ever finish the darn thing.

Anyway, this evil came from a superiority complex along with an overwhelming selfishness. She ruined the lives of four people, my family. We had to rebuild after it was over. It took about six years.

I guess what I'm pointing out is there are all sorts of traits and all it takes is acting upon them to become evil.
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: billy rubin on June 29, 2020, 03:51:40 PM
so youre defining evil as an act, but not az a disposition?

ive been trying to decide.

for example, if it is evil to set cats on fire, is it also evil to enjoy thinking about other people doing it?
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: Randy on June 29, 2020, 07:50:45 PM
Quote from: billy rubin on June 29, 2020, 03:51:40 PM
so youre defining evil as an act, but not az a disposition?

ive been trying to decide.

for example, if it is evil to set cats on fire, is it also evil to enjoy thinking about other people doing it?
That's a good question, something I've not pondered before especially if other people are burning cats for real and someone is enjoying the thought of it. Is that person evil?

Here's something else though; we watch action movies and get to see people killed in some form or fashion. Sometimes it's slow torture. It's fiction and no one is harmed but we enjoy it and root for whomever the protagonist is. Does this make us evil? Does it make the filmmakers evil? At what point do we draw the line?
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: billy rubin on June 29, 2020, 10:50:06 PM
where that line is drawn is a critical question that is not often asked in my culture.

my children grew up without television programming or motion pictures in their lives, except what they saw in motels while we were making our living doing farmer's markets selling honey bee stuff.  they have mostly developed a studied sophistication regarding brutality in television or motion pictures, but i have gone the other way.

the older i get, the less tolerant i am of watching depictions of violence or evil as entertainment. i havent watched a so-called horror movie in perhaps thirty years. accepting evil as entertainment to me is equivalent to performing it myself, and i refuse to participate. i walk out on violent motion pictures, and i won't play my kid's murderous GTA-style games with them. we have some sort of streaming video now in the house, netflix or hulu or something similar, but there is very little that i can watch with my family. i just stand up and leave.

you are what you eat, as i see it, and you become that which you accept.



Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: Dark Lightning on June 29, 2020, 11:57:04 PM
Well said. I've been in the same boat for decades. The shite that passes for television programming is unbelievable. My wife watches the Lifetime Channel. I call it the Deathtime Channel. So much mayhem. We get inured to the violence we see, I think. I don't like going to the movies either because of the violence (and the sound levels are injurious). And I don't like chick flicks, needless to say. My wife wanted to go see the new "Robin Hood" movie awhile back. I figured guys hiding behind trees shooting arrows. Instead it was battle field loud in a lot of places. And I had forgotten my ear plugs.  :(
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: xSilverPhinx on July 02, 2020, 02:14:36 AM
Quote from: billy rubin on June 29, 2020, 03:51:40 PM
so youre defining evil as an act, but not az a disposition?

ive been trying to decide.

for example, if it is evil to set cats on fire, is it also evil to enjoy thinking about other people doing it?

IMO evil is an act, something that is not purely inside someone's mind but 'materialises' in the real world to affect other people. Unexpressed thoughts are just thoughts and don't necessarily affect other beings.

I think if someone enjoys the thought of other people setting cats on fire, they may have a very low threshold to commit evil acts. To enjoy the suffering of others, especially defenseless or innocent animals seems like a highly psychopathic trait.
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: Randy on July 02, 2020, 03:18:50 AM
When I was a kid, I came up to two other kids who just smashed a turtle. It was still alive and they were laughing. I felt sorry for the turtle.
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: billy rubin on July 02, 2020, 05:15:37 PM
well, what about someone who likez to watch people drown?

suppose this person hangz around the beach and waits for someone to get into difficultiez, then watchez them die rather than call for help.

this individual has performed no act of evil, but haz failed to perform an available act of good.

is he guilty of anything?

here in america that did not uze to b.v e the case. there is a growing public consensus that failure to render aid is a crime, but its quite new
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: Dark Lightning on July 02, 2020, 07:16:18 PM
I'll bite. It is entirely possible that that person can't swim. If s/he is the only person on the beach, they'd be putting their own lives at risk. I personally would try to reach or throw, but I'm not a good enough swimmer to save my own life, were I in deep water.

Many years ago when I was training as a HAZMAT worker, one of the issues brought up was when one would be required to perform a rescue. Case in point was a wrecked semi hauling glacial acetic acid. The Fire Department was not equipped to safely approach the scene because of the ruptured tank. The driver's family sued and lost, because nobody, even life-saving personnel, is required to risk their lives to save another.
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: billy rubin on July 02, 2020, 08:26:14 PM
that would be an exceptoon, certainly


im still not convincex that evil requirez action. tho. tbeoretically an act that is truly evil in its execution stems from an evil thought. the act cannot occur before the thought occurs.

the thought of evil therefore is a prerequisite for evil actz, ans exists indeendently of acts. while the acts cannot occur before the evil thought.

one is prior and the other dependent. so i suspect it is possible to be evil even without acting
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: Dark Lightning on July 02, 2020, 08:36:26 PM
I consider evil undone to be a thought crime. I'm OK with that.
Title: Re: Jonty Bravery - Sentenced
Post by: billy rubin on July 02, 2020, 10:48:18 PM
in america we punish people all the time for conspiracy, thinking about or talking about crimes they never committed.

i haven't made p my mind about that. there's lots of things we criminalize that i don't see as criminal, such as hate crimes, in the sense of making a penalty for an act more severe if the motivation for the crime was bigotry