Young Hikers Missing in Joshua Tree Since Thursday [7/27/17]

[Wildhorse]

I wonder why more of us don't shoot people who are suffering and may be dead soon anyway? Or people like the girl in Canada who was not dying but faced many years of suffering. He insists it was an act of love.

[cynthia23]

I still feel quite haunted by that Terri Schiavo case. To me, the husband's motives did not seem purely disinterested. But perhaps that's very nearly always the case with euthanasia.

[Sean]

I wonder why more of us don't shoot people who are suffering and may be dead soon anyway?

Probably because we've never been confronted by that choice. I try not to get lost in the desert during summer.

These poor folk succumbed within five hours.

[Wildhorse]

One theory about criminal acts is that any of us would steal, murder, etc., given an opportunity, if we were under pressure and could rationalize the act. Another theory is that we learn to be criminals from others. Another is that some of us are born criminals. More than one friend working in the justice system has told me that they believe there are two kinds of people: normal people and criminals, and they don't act the same way, and their minds are different.

In a compassionate murder, if there really is such a thing, love is the rationalization. What is the pressure? Maybe that is love too, or maybe hate. Darwin wrote that nature is indifferent towards them.

Maybe the guy shot the girl, realized the horror of his crime, cursed love, or hate, and then killed himself because the pressure of guilt or eventual disgrace and punishment overwhelmed him. He might have struggled with this for some time before he killed himself. Maybe he first fled and returned to the scene facing the awful truth that his only escape was death. If his mother's feeling has any correspondence with timing, he may have suffered for days before his last pull on the trigger.

Existential guilt can overpower the existential fear of death.

[cynthia23]

Interesting thoughts, Wildhorse.

This story is almost like Rashomon.

[Sean]

In a compassionate murder, if there really is such a thing, love is the rationalization. What is the pressure? Maybe that is love too, or maybe hate. Darwin wrote that nature is indifferent towards them.

The pressure is unbearable suffering. The rationale is relief from unbearable suffering.

[Wildhorse]

Rashomon sounds very interesting. I had not heard of it before.

I have been reading John Gray, Straw Dogs. I think they go together. So many deceptions make up our lives, and illusions, and needs that control us.

[cynthia23]

Rashomon is a wonderful film. I recommend everyone watch it. It actually has given its name to a phrase denoting the fundamental subjectivity of things, called the Rashomon Effect.

If the FBI can't clearly explain this case, we may have to turn to art, film, and literature to understand.

[zippetydude]

Or to Sean.

z

[Graboid]

If my coordinates are correct, from the hikers final spot -- or very close by -- civilization would have been visible 3 miles away to the NW -- downhill.