• ClassIsOver [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    17 hours ago

    My brother in law is using his engineering degree to work for various arms companies, including DARPA. His wife justifies it by saying “He only makes things for good countries like the US”.

    A few years ago, he, his wife, my wife, another sister in law and his kids were in a car, and he was talking about why it’s justifiable to drone-strike school buses. He said “Well, there were some really bad people on those buses.” I ask “What makes them bad?”, and he says “You know, they make bombs, that sort of thing.”

    I turned to him and said “YOU make bombs. By your rationale, this car with your entire family is every bit as much a justifiable target as those school buses.”

    The entire car went silent, and later, my wife thanked me for not going any further.

    He’s the most morally-bankrupt person I’ve ever met, and I hate being in the same room as him. His wife isn’t much better, and is the epitome of the portion of the working class that’s been tricked into thinking they’re better than that. She’ll handwave away the fact that in her career, she’s been directly responsible for firing thousands of people “for the good of the company”.

    • crapwittyname@feddit.uk
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      9 hours ago

      For what it’s worth, I believe at the moment of death, people can no longer lie to themselves and have to face what they’ve done through the eyes of their inner child. Some people have these realisations at some earlier point, too. But I don’t believe anyone gets away with it.
      That’s what “live each day like it’s going to be your last” means to me. Face up to the decisions you made as if you’re your own jury, because eventually you will be.

      • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        8 hours ago

        At the moment of death you make a gurgling sound (unless you get like, splattered or whatever) and then it suddenly goes black like the end of the sopranos because your consciousness shuts off. Well it’s not really that, it’s inconceivable, it’s nothingness, it returns to the state prior to being born. Your consciousness is not magic or mystical, it’s merely an illusory byproduct of very high quality stimulus processing and extremely intricate nervous system for sensory input coupled with the capacity for short and long term memory. There is no magic moment of reconciliation unless self induced through social conditioning (eg religious guilt) and people like Trump and musk ultimately win by having a life of hedonistic excess with no repercussions while the rest of us slave away for a half day off and an aliexpress trinket here and there.

        (sorry for spoiling a show that ended 18 years ago)