To think that anybody is ever “deserving” of misfortune, pain, suffering, death, etc., is to fundamentally misunderstand them, and it’s also, in my opinion, philosophically unjustifiable to issue retribution

I mean, you have to admit that (a) it causes harm to another, and (b) there’s actually no justification for it that I’ve -ever- seen anybody able to make beyond vague things like, they ‘deserve’ it or ‘they had it coming’ or ‘it’s justice/balance/payback’. Two wrongs don’t make a right; that’s not justice or balance. To paraphrase ‘Batman Returns’, justice is about harmony. Revenge is about making yourself feel better.
The entire basis of revenge is really sweet hatred and bitterness, which are really just vile, destructive emotions.

And we make exceptions for when we understand them well enough to know that, in their particular case, there are reasons they are the way they are, i.e., that’s it’s not their fault, but the truth is that ever thinking there aren’t sufficient reasons is always a case of lack of understanding.

Whatever the reasons they do something, they can of course only boil down to “nature”, “nurture,” and free will (for those who believe in free will; and for those what don’t, whatever business do you have blaming someone anyway?), and the “nature” of someone itself is also due to reasons, such as genetics, or if they have a soul, then to past-life circumstances (“nurture”) and decisions (“free will”), and the idea that they deserve it because of the choices they made out of their own free will doesn’t really hold up either, because you have to ask, if you have free will, and they have free will, but they use their free will in a way that you never would, then what’s to account for that? Again, that’s further “reasons” (and/or possibly meaningless randomness, but meaningless randomness isn’t blamable either).

The above arguments should be sufficient in and of themselves, but just in case it helps, I also suspect that the reason people condemn others is that they instinctively attempt to put themselves into their shoes and think, “well, If I were to do that, I would be committing a serious betrayal,” but the truth is that we can never adequately put ourselves into another’s shoes to account for the true differences in mind between them and you; it’s all projection.

In Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch, it says, “Nobody ever does anything wrong given their own model of the world.” You may think, well, that’s not true, because I’ve done plenty of things I thought were wrong, but it’s not that simple: you ultimately thought it was right for some reason to do something despite considering it ethically or morally wrong, or you wouldn’t have done it–either that or you just couldn’t help yourself, which isn’t a matter of free will.

‘Have you ever wondered how you might behave in someone else’s shoes? If you have, you’ll likely admit that this kind of thinking is usually critical of the person of the person you’re thinking about. The truth is, you are the other person, and they are behaving exactly as you would if you were indeed in the exact same shoes–however inconsiderate, abusive, outrageous, or immoral their behavior is.’

‘True, you are probably more thoughtful, fearless, loving, and honest than those who disappoint you. But you are also at a different point in your journey, maybe “more advanced,” or maybe just more at ease for having chosen a less “challenging” path. We’re all of “one,” exhibiting different colors of the same light, and rather than passing judgment, it’s best to remember that each of us is just doing the best we can.’

-Mike Dooley, ‘Choose Them Wisely: Thoughts Become Things!’

Oh, I forgot to mention one thing: whenever I hear the heartfelt cries and pleas of someone who’s being punished or going to be punished for something wrong they did, I can’t help but have compassion for them, and I know that that feeling is right. It’s not just having a “bleeding heart”, you can never have too much of a bleeding heart, and I know that I shouldn’t override the heart with thoughts anyway, at least/especially when what the heart feels is forgiveness or compassion and what the thoughts are are bullshit negativity. And also, the fact that they care about their own value and wellbeing (on such a heartfelt, universally human level) so much is proof in some way, to me, that they really are worthy.

The fervent popular drive to explain (and explain away) consciousness is heavily misguided; I’d say pathological, but then people would get offended.

First, it’s founded in the fallacy that everything else is more or less generally explained already and consciousness is the one remaining “problem,” which is itself an illusion. The illusion can only be maintained by actively ignoring or dismissing an abundance of personal experiences people have, via the facile labeling of them as “anecdotal evidence,” and secondly, by rationalizing one’s own mystical and/or paranormal or parapsychological experiences that almost everybody has now and then, on the grounds that it “must” be due to some known cognitive bias or other mental distortion.

Second, the idea that we must or should explain everything in the world and the universe is a sick form of unrest particular to the modern zeitgeist. (This is why I put “problem” in quotes above, as in “the hard problem of consciousness.” You may think it’s just a word, but the branding of consciousness itself as a “problem” is actually extremely telling.) What the heck are we seeking so hard? Perhaps you romanticize it as bold exploration, progress, pursuit of knowledge or the satisfaction of healthy curiosity. In reality, we’re not happy until something is explained, no matter how big or small; in fact, if something happens that’s genuinely puzzling and is or seems unexplainable, it deeply bothers us until we “explain” it. And all our explanations we seek are necessarily grounded in physicalist first principles, which is a wholly dry, dead and unfulfilling basis of understanding anything (or at least living things), so whatever we’re seeking by explaining things, we’re not finding it. We ought to just be comfortable with the mystery. The point of life is not to figure it all out, it’s to have a contextual experience.

Third, the ambition to explain consciousness in any way is ultimately futile. It won’t be explained physically, though some people try to come up with clever solutions that are all ultimately trying to churn stone into magic. In some domains, explanations based on first principles other than material ones would be useful (and more satisfying to a living being), but in this domain, not even that will suffice; consciousness is ineffable magic all the way down.

A further thought: in aiming to explain consciousness (which is, really, trying to fundamentally explain ourselves, our living force), we are probably really seeking to find ourselves. There is so much more to us beyond the tip of the iceberg, we have a liminal understanding of this, and we crave full realization. We unconsciously hope to find the juicy nugget of meaning and the key to the universe somewhere down there at the bottom of all the paperwork of explaining consciousness (or perhaps we truly seek the liberation of realizing we’re still here and were never really any of that, after the ouroboros seems to successfully eat itself (as in consciousness explains itself away)), but in the end, it’s the carrot in front of the horse because we’re barking up the wrong tree.

This is what the movie Dark City was about, by the way. In some ways, fiction tells us a lot more about reality than anything else.

By the way, also think about the fact that the aliens in Dark City who were trying to figure out what makes us human (who are really just metaphorical for ourselves) were afraid of water. We fear the very thing we want most. Correspondingly, we also mortally fear anything happening that we genuinely can’t “logically” (i.e., physically and mechanically) explain and desperately seek a resolution as soon as possible.

I know we’re supposed to respect each other and try to unite the divided political populace rather than further divide it, but I can’t help but loathe, look down upon and feel righteous indignation toward the Republicans, especially the Trump supporters (which are, mind-bogglingly, most of them).

The amazing thing the Republican party manages to do (and has always managed to do, even before Trumpism, but especially now) is to be on the exact wrong side of virtually every issue. This makes sense if you think about the fact the Republican party’s whole basis of identity is basically that they’re “not the Democrats,” as it means that any Democrat position that happens to be based on common sense and/or compassion will naturally be opposed by the Republicans.

But still, not having the mental or moral capacity to act/vote in a way that’s beneficial to humanity as a whole makes me categorically not respect them, and furthermore, honestly not even to feel that they deserve to exist as people.

And it’s not just that, the Republican party and Trumpism is the party of the Christians, which is so hypocritical because it’s the exact opposite of anything Jesus actually said, did or stood for.

I think I’ve identified the fundamental difference between a Republican and a Democrat to be (besides the issue of willful ignorance, science denial and being statistically less educated) that the Republican is absolutely not willing to temper any of his personal libido for the sake of the greater good. Hence the large, imposing, gas-guzzling trucks, hence the hyper-individualism and machismo, hence being anti-regulations, anti-climate science and anti-environmentalism, hence being anti-gun control and anti-vegan, hence preferring not to pay taxes for any social programs, hence being nationalistic and therefore anti-immigration and pro- extravagant military spending, hence being the party more willing to undermine all of democracy via manipulation of voter rights, Jerrymandering, creating and supporting things like Citizens United, etc., and hence the Republican’s view of Democrats as being communist and authoritarian or oppressive (while, ironically, the Republicans are actually the party of fascism).