I saved a life today.

@TickTockMan,

TickTockMan wrote:

I saved a life today.
It was a grasshopper's.
I saved it from a cat who was trying to eat it.

Why would I do that?
What was my intention?
Who did I think I was saving anyway?

How are we to know your intentions?

@Mr Fight the Power,

Mr. Fight the Power;25726 wrote:

How are we to know your intentions?

I have no idea. I was hoping someone could tell me.

@TickTockMan,

TickTockMan;25724 wrote:

I saved a life today.
It was a grasshopper's.
I saved it from a cat who was trying to eat it.

Why would I do that?
What was my intention?
Who did I think I was saving anyway?

The life you saved was that of ego.
You killed that starving cat who depended on that grasshopper for sustenance. Because the cat died as a result of your shortsighted egoic need to 'do-good', the old lady who owned the cad crashed her car due to the tears in her eyes. She crashed into the man that would have invented the clean means of transportation that would have saved the planet..... that wiped out three civilisations in the Rigelian Star system due to a new virus, and on, and on...
'Who's' intention?
Who DID you think that you were 'saving' anyway?
*__-

@nameless,

How did the grasshopper come to be in the path of the cat?

Does the story change based on the fact that the cat is my
girlfriend's and I gave her the cat?

What a tangled web.

Infinity, it seems, works in every direction.

@TickTockMan,

Quote:

Infinity, it seems, works in every direction.

I think that's the general idea.

Anyway, I suppose you had some sympathy for the grasshopper, and less sympathy for the cat's desire to hunt. Sounds like the cat in question has a meal even if the grasshopper escapes.
Should you have sympathized with the grasshopper? Or perhaps you sympathized with the wild bird who does not have a sure meal, but might find a meal by catching the grasshopper which was spared from the cat.

@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas;25776 wrote:

I think that's the general idea.

Anyway, I suppose you had some sympathy for the grasshopper, and less sympathy for the cat's desire to hunt. Sounds like the cat in question has a meal even if the grasshopper escapes.
Should you have sympathized with the grasshopper? Or perhaps you sympathized with the wild bird who does not have a sure meal, but might find a meal by catching the grasshopper which was spared from the cat.

Sympathy not withstanding, whose life is the more valuable?
The grasshopper, the cat, the bird, yours, or mine?
Did my act deny the one and provide the other?
And if infinity works in four dimensions is there really
any consequence?

@TickTockMan,

I killed a life today.
It was a spider.
I killed it while walking from the street to the front door.

Why would I do that? --- I didn't know
What was my intention? --- I had no intention
Who did I think I was killing anyway? ---- I didn't think I was killing...

@Victor Eremita,

Victor Eremita;25797 wrote:

I killed a life today.
It was a spider.
I killed it while walking from the street to the front door.

Why would I do that? --- I didn't know
What was my intention? --- I had no intention
Who did I think I was killing anyway? ---- I didn't think I was killing...

I killed a (Ungeziefer) ****roach today.
His name was Gregor Samsa.
I think I saved him, but could be wrong.

How am I to be tried?
It is not as though I shot him on the beach
for a transgression against some dubious friend.

Without intention it is all
just empty gestures.
But I already knew that.

-----
Edit: I didn't type the ****. Wow. That's some censor there!

@TickTockMan,

Albert Schweitzer (philosopher, doctor, and Nobel prize recipient) posited a particularly good philosophy called "reverence for life."

The main gist of "reverence for life" is that you go about your life and how you live it, but do no harm intentionally. If you step on a spider by accident for example, you cannot be at fault because there was no malicious intent towards that spider, it was only an accident. In doing so, you maintain a reverence for life but also accept the fact that there are bad things and accidents that do happen. As long as it is not intentionally done.

The notion of "who's life is more important" is actually a very interesting, which is probably why I like Schweitzer's theory in this instance. The concept of ego is also addressed in the theory by considering any intentionality of going out of the way to harm something or someone.

We can learn much from Albert Schweitzer... as well as appreciate the sheer magnitude of his mustache.

@VideCorSpoon,

VideCorSpoon;25828 wrote:

The main gist of "reverence for life" is that you go about your life and how you live it, but do no harm intentionally. If you step on a spider by accident for example, you cannot be at fault because there was no malicious intent towards that spider, it was only an accident. In doing so, you maintain a reverence for life but also accept the fact that there are bad things and accidents that do happen. As long as it is not intentionally done.

I crushed an ant beneath my heel last night
He was in my way and I did not see him
I meant no harm, my intent was missing in action

Fluttering butterfly wings
can go live with the Devil
I wash my hands of the whole filthy causality

Meanwhile back in the year zero
the center continues to hold
and the rough beast remains unborn

@TickTockMan,

TickTockMan wrote:

I crushed an ant beneath my heel last night
He was in my way and I did not see him
I meant no harm, my intent was missing in action

Fluttering butterfly wings
can go live with the Devil
I wash my hands of the whole filthy causality

Meanwhile back in the year zero
the center continues to hold
and the rough beast remains unborn

I had lunch with a platypus
He said I had no soul
He said I could not go to heaven
But still I though him droll.

He discussed various thing with me
Like Marx and the logic of Mr. Spock
But still he was a platypus, and Platypodes can't talk.

So what remains of the conversation
That is left to deliberation.

Refrigerator.

@VideCorSpoon,

SUCH PROFUNDICITY!

@VideCorSpoon,

VideCorSpoon;25845 wrote:

I had lunch with a platypus
He said I had no soul
He said I could not go to heaven
But still I though him droll.

He discussed various thing with me
Like Marx and the logic of Mr. Spock
But still he was a platypus, and Platypodes can't talk.

So what remains of the conversation
That is left to deliberation.

Refrigerator.

I had dinner with a vulture
We fed on the remains of the past
He assured me nothing else mattered
And all emotion was the debris of our culture.

The platypus, whose Greek was showing
Took away his suffix and his knowledge
Retreating to some aquatic college.

He left to ponder human failing
And found instead quixotic flailing.

Cradle.

@TickTockMan,

Somehow, my mind desperately tries to assign meaning to this. I'll therefore now admit to said inability and go get some aspirin for my headache.

:poke-eye:

@Khethil,

Khethil;25892 wrote:

Somehow, my mind desperately tries to assign meaning to this. I'll therefore now admit to said inability and go get some aspirin for my headache.

:poke-eye:

It's all in your mind.

@TickTockMan,

TickTockMan;25724 wrote:

I saved a life today.
It was a grasshopper's.
I saved it from a cat who was trying to eat it.

Why would I do that?
What was my intention?
Who did I think I was saving anyway?

Many thanks for sharing your anecdotes,I found it hilarious.No one will do something devoid of any intention,the fact that you saved the grasshopper elucidates that you are benign.

@Ennui phil,

Quote:

I saved a life today.
It was a grasshopper's.
I saved it from a cat who was trying to eat it.

Why would I do that?
What was my intention?
Who did I think I was saving anyway?

I noticed something today.
It was that we are "philosophers"
Yet when faced with an ethical question
We wax poetic instead Wink

Why would we do that?
Why was our intention?
Who did we think we were saving anyway?

Wink

@madel,

madel;26762 wrote:

I noticed something today.
It was that we are "philosophers"
Yet when faced with an ethical question
We wax poetic instead

Why would we do that?
Why was our intention?
Who did we think we were saving anyway?

An ethical question is a matter of degree
A forced perspective no one can see
A tilted stage we all must dance upon
And find our footing amid roses and manure.

Words speak in pictures not in sounds
Our words wax and intention wanes
So we bottle our memories and save them
for tomorrow's dreams.

Philosophy Forum

I saved a life today.

Quick Links

My Account

able2know