@hamilton,
hamilton wrote:
FBM wrote:
Just curious. The Osama bin Gotten story made me think. (Yeah, that's the sort of thing it takes these days.) This isn't meant to be too terribly serious, but how far would you go for $25 million? Rat on a couple of friends? Family members? Renounce your religion? Betray your government? What's your limit?
As for me, I'd betray any and everyone I've ever met, anyone you've ever met, their parents, children, friends, and anyone they'd ever met or fantasized about meeting. I'd betray my religion, your religion, if you have one, religious leaders, ideologies. Hell, I'd deify somebody and then betray his/her ass. Benedict Arnold? Dilettante. Judas? Sissy. And dumbass. You don't get the cash and then hang yourself.
I can't think of anything/anybody I'd not betray for $25 million, right offhand. But maybe after I think about it a little more deeply.
You?
you're quite the bastard...
Quite practical, really, when morals are impractical, and always were...
Look Ham; do you consider that all the trapping of mourning the dead is all a reflection of the feeling we had for the dead???... To me, there is much of denial in a black dress... We cry, and we have all cried, and should cry at funerals, but relationships are always difficult and often stormy... We think of there being magic in hard feelings, in hate, or anger... We think that looks can kill, or at least say as much, and that words can hurt, almost as much as sticks and stones though we may deny it... To say: I would betray you is liberating... People should admit their faulty morals... Have you not once wished death on some one who only wished you well???
I would betray people, and they would not have to strap a hungry rat to my face to make me do so... See there... I am now free... No pretense...A bald face in a clean mirror. No Romantic stupidity about how brave I might be in the face of danger, or how I would disdain money to know your charms... We can never begin to find our own strengths without being a witness to our own weaknesses...If you look at what we do for money enough to keep us alive -to worry about how we can do something else for more money until our lives are consummed totally, and we are used up, and life less, then there is no need to ask who we would betray... We have betrayed ourselves, our dreams of liberty and all the goods promised by the constitution...
We cannot afford any illusions about our nobility... We have no nobility... If we cannot save ourselves we will never be in a position to save others... If we cannot spare ourselves we will not be able to spare others... Since we are betrayed, all will be betrayed, for free, or forty pieces of silver... It is all meaningless, and it is not your fault, or mine... That is the world we live in where the only power we will ever have is the power to make things worse for some one else... And we may know, realistically that no one is going to offer us a penny to betray the others in our lives, so our only option is to do so for free..
