(no subject)

Killing is wrong, but why? If pain is why, then painless killing is fine. But the thought of being killed painlessly is not much better than the thought of being killed painfully. Do I not want you to kill me, painlessly, in my sleep tonight because the prospect of being dead so soon is itself a kind of pain? If so, then it isn't wrong for you to kill me painlessly in my sleep so long as I have no inkling that you're going to do it.

I guess the wrong can be in your, the aspiring murderer's, own mind: it proves to you, not intellectually but physically, that such an occurrence is possible, which renders you yourself less secure. And that may be why others object to it: the discovery that this can be done makes the discoverer feel less safe, makes them feel the pain of thorough insecurity. But that's only a problem for those who know about the killing: if the killer successfully keeps the secret and stands to gain enough by my death that her own increased sense of personal fragility is compensated for, then there is, thus far, no objection.

But do I myself object to this? I'm actually not sure--thinking about the act of your killing a me who isn't me is hard. I have a hard time avoiding the different, definitely painful inkling that you're killing the me that is me; and I also feel less secure even pondering the subject, because it makes me overaware of my own fragility: that pain again.

So it might be okay for you to kill me totally painlessly, but it's painful to me to admit the fact--therefore I deny the fact and also dodge the issue. Murder stays in the "wrong" category by a sort of default: to realize it might not be wrong is correct, but the realization is itself a wrong to the realizer. So the issue's not existential, but one of pain. But if we have laws against murder because it induces mortality fears, should we have laws against anything that makes one feel painfully mortal? Is posting this livejournal entry where someone might read it worse than slapping that someone? I guess free speech issues kick in here. And also social issues--a society is composed of individual assenters, and you can't assent to the society if you're dead. The government preserves you because it needs to preserve itself. But mathwise, what's a little leakage here and there? But if certain principles fail, that can lead to a lot of leakage, to positive feedback--and the more things leak, the less secure people feel, and that may make them erratic assenters.

Or am I missing several thousand other obvious dimensions?