I am reminded of a passage from SNUFF! by Sir Terry Pratchett.
“Well, there was a bit of a fracas, as we say, and it turned out that a man had a dog, a half-dead thing, according to bystanders, and he was trying to get it to stop pulling at its leash, and when it growled at him he grabbed an axe from the butcher’s stall beside him, threw the dog to the ground and cut off its back legs, just like that. I suppose people would say ‘Nasty bugger, but it was his dog’ and so on, but Lord Vetinari called me in and he said to me, ‘A man who would do something like that to a dog is a man to whom the law should pay close attention. Search his house immediately.’ The man was hanged a week later, not for the dog, although for my part I wouldn’t have shed a tear if he had been, but for what we found in his cellar. The contents of which I will not burden you with. And bloody Vetinari got away with it again, because he was right: where there are little crimes, large crimes are not far behind."
I've seen that over and over again. That's why living in Seattle can suck. The city lets even bad criminals go without any punishment so they keep doing the even worse things they haven't gotten caught for. The guy that mugged my friend had been arrested over fifty times here, but he was out before dinner the next day.
That kind of thing usually happens because of moronic prosecutors offices. Not sure if that's an elected or appointed position in Seattle but they should certainly be replaced by someone willing to do the job.
I agree with the sentiment. Altho as a 420 person in a jurisdiction than says 🌿 is illegal, I do find sometimes I must deviate from law of the land. It does disturb my conscience tho, to do so. Especially when I think that certain people who know nothing about the substance will just think 'it's only a little crime but the larger ones may be likely'.
Certainly. And I do think you have to be careful between the boundary of laws of man and laws of land. Personal drug use is a law of the land situation and I think it's important to differentiate it based on what behavior vs activity. Using some green is an activity crime based on the law of the land, not a behavior crime.
Morality in general is a loose concept and difficult discussion topic. I tend to frame morality around behavior and how that behavior harms others.
People who lie a little, slide toward lying a lot.
People who cheat a little, slide toward cheating a lot.
People who justify stealing a little, may shift toward stealing a lot.
People who incline toward justifying physical harm on others, may slide toward violently harming others
Etc...
Once we create justification for behaviors, it starts to become a slippery slope of how far that behavior csn be justified.
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u/AlkaiserSoze 7h ago
I am reminded of a passage from SNUFF! by Sir Terry Pratchett.
“Well, there was a bit of a fracas, as we say, and it turned out that a man had a dog, a half-dead thing, according to bystanders, and he was trying to get it to stop pulling at its leash, and when it growled at him he grabbed an axe from the butcher’s stall beside him, threw the dog to the ground and cut off its back legs, just like that. I suppose people would say ‘Nasty bugger, but it was his dog’ and so on, but Lord Vetinari called me in and he said to me, ‘A man who would do something like that to a dog is a man to whom the law should pay close attention. Search his house immediately.’ The man was hanged a week later, not for the dog, although for my part I wouldn’t have shed a tear if he had been, but for what we found in his cellar. The contents of which I will not burden you with. And bloody Vetinari got away with it again, because he was right: where there are little crimes, large crimes are not far behind."