JCC ROYAL BABY: Today Parliament discusses changing succession laws

I make no apologies for what I wrote. I believe that all suicide victims deserve to only be regarded with scorn and ridicule, not sympathy. What is so wrong about that?

Timmoisthair this is a fascinating theory. please elaborate

Some people just lack empathy.

No matter what sort of problems you may have, there is still no reason to end your life. Part of being an adult is dealing with your problems in a rational manner. How can anyone feel sympathetic to someone like this nurse?

I have empathy for people who are alive and who make mature, adult decisions.

It's weird I agree with the individual points you make but when I put it all together it's idiotic

You have got to be trolling.

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!

NIAWYC

All the rest of these bleeding heart fools around here are acting like there's some sort of crazy disease that can disrupt your thinking process and make you act irrational through biochemically demonstrable and reproducible mechanisms.

Oh, wait.

Whether she had a mental disease or not is irrelevant. Ultimately, she was still the one who chose to pull the trigger or slit her wrists or overdose on pills or whatever. I cannot respect or feel sorry for anyone who makes that sort of decision, whatever the reason.

Whether or not she had a disease whose specific effect is to warp decision-making is irrelevant to an assessment of her decision-making? Okay.

People who can't walk have no one but to blame themselves. Whether or not their legs are broken is not relevant.

Being legally blind has nothing to do with it. Ultimately, he was still the one who chose not to see and dodge out of the way in time.

One of the most striking things about the television series Kings to me was that its depiction of the concept of a monarchy juxtaposed with a modern, technological city really drove home for me how grotesque the whole concept of monarchy really is. Even allowing for the fact that the British monarchy is now largely ornamental, this pop culture obsession with the "royal family" simply appalls me.

Clinical Depression is a choice. Just like Poverty and Obesity.

Actually, I'd say Kings made the opposite case for me. It highlighted the one circumstance where the logic of monarchy actually holds. Even in bygone eras, the other explanations really didn't make sense. Those built around the idea of king as protector or military leader had to lean heavily on propaganda, and even with the heavy advantages of superior training, early exposure, and superior diet, new heirs often struggled to maintain this. That's true even when members of the royal family proved fairly capable as generals. The only one that consistently works is accepting it as a sort of divine appointment. At that point it's no more or less reasonable than any other religious stricture (dietary codes, behavioral restrictions, etc). Trying to claim human superiority can vary so starkly between individuals as to justify the gulf inherent in social status between the monarch and all subjects is simply unworkable. Simple experience too readily proves it wrong. Invoking the divine instead is an understandable recourse.

EDIT: Also I have no sympathy for people with Alzheimers. They don't even put in enough effort to remember basic facts like what they were doing earlier in the day.

That's a pretty unfair conflation you've made there. While poverty and obesity are most certainly not fully autonomous choices in the sort of "heads or tails?" fashion, they are, to at least some extent, the result of bad decision-making weighed against constituent circumstances(and in poverty's case, certainly luck plays a substantial role). Clinical Depression, on the other hand, can be fairly said to be completely out of the control of the sufferer.

EDIT: Yikes, Wocky! I'm way too drunk to try to digest that, but as near as I can glean in my present state, such as it is, I think this ties back to my criticism that the show never really made clear whether "God" was an extant Guiding Force behind Silas' rule or whether he just invoked his name as a demogaugic tactic.

Both obesity and depression have a number of important predisposing factors that are outside a person's control, and both tend to be self-perpetuating. We could make some remarks about poverty along similar lines, albeit there are social rather than physiological mechanisms at work there so the discussion is somewhat different.

EDIT: Yes, obviously Even. But I am not certain Condition2 was here for that. Also, I'm pretty sure timmo actually was a loud advocate for both those positions when they first came up, which makes it less funny and just sort of sad.

Vivec was just referencing a JCC in-joke anyway.

Seriously J-dub how could you not remember the obesity is a choice thread

Of course, but they are quite different in that obesity is a physical pathology whereas depression is a mental pathology. Someone who is obese will certainly encounter a glass ceiling at some point in their life, but someone strapped in the debilitating chains of clinical depression is unlikely to ever even make it to a point where a glass ceiling is even a determinate factor in how high they progress up the ladder.

EDIT: And I've now just realized I shifted the goalposts of what the discussion was even about apropos autonomy. Like I said, I'm drunk. Oh well.

Okay look guys. Ye gods. Obviously I remember.