If A Knive Maker Thinks That Somebody Could Be Killed With His Tools, Would He Quit?

[Mesopotamian]

For much of my life, I held a steadfast belief that it was possible to have a job and live a life that causes no harm to anyone. This ideal guided my choices, pushing me to seek a path that would contribute positively to the world without causing suffering. However, recent reflections have led me to a sobering realization: achieving a life that is 100% free from causing harm is virtually impossible.

Consider the role of a knife maker. Their goal is to create the sharpest, most efficient knives. But what if one of these knives is used to harm someone? Should the knife maker stop pursuing their craft because of this potential misuse? This ethical dilemma extends to many professions:

Weapon Manufacturers: Designed for protection or deterrence, yet often used for harm.

Junk Food Producers: While providing enjoyment and convenience, they also contribute to health issues.

Hotel Owners: Offering shelter and comfort, but sometimes these spaces become scenes of crime.

Engineers and Urban Planners: They design streets and infrastructure to improve our lives, but these same streets can become sites of accidents and fatalities.

Car Manufacturers: They create mobility and freedom, yet traffic accidents claim millions of lives annually.

As I pondered these examples, it became clear that almost any action in life can lead to someone's suffering. This realization can be deeply unsettling, raising questions about the very nature of ethical living. If every profession and every action carries the potential for harm, how do we navigate our moral responsibilities?

Even inaction or extreme actions, like choosing to end one's own life, inevitably cause pain and suffering to those left behind. It seems there is no escape from the web of impact our lives have on others.

[Princess Arabia]

1 hour ago, Mesopotamian said:

This realization can be deeply unsettling, raising questions about the very nature of ethical living. If every profession and every action carries the potential for harm, how do we navigate our moral responsibilities?

Just your post alone has potential for harm. The mind feeling unsettled because of it's thinking is the harm. It has got you on hold and is living in it's "Palace of Continuity". Now it has a place holder and will continue to torment you with it's "moral responsibilities" and navigate it's way to more unsettling thoughts. Free yourself from it's hold and focus on life itself and how you can navigate your way to freedom from the mind and it's recklessness and destructive patterns. You are sitting on your couch (if that's where you were writing this) and have put the body through tremendous misery and pain by living in a world of thoughts. Now it got so entertained and had to share. Thoughts are just looking for a host to live and you have hosted these thoughts and now gave them life where they want to make their mark and continue their destructive pattern. 

Let them go. They will only leave you in despair and spread like a disease. This might fly right over your head but it's just the nature of existence, one that gets ignored because of how physical things seem to appear. It's all mind; and you are creating a world within you that can only lead to more thoughts that will enslave you and leave you pondering about things that is beneath your control. Life is happening, it's the thoughts about life that is being suffered and the more you entertain these kinds of thoughts, the more unsettled you become.

[Danioover9000]

@Mesopotamian

2 hours ago, Mesopotamian said:

For much of my life, I held a steadfast belief that it was possible to have a job and live a life that causes no harm to anyone. This ideal guided my choices, pushing me to seek a path that would contribute positively to the world without causing suffering. However, recent reflections have led me to a sobering realization: achieving a life that is 100% free from causing harm is virtually impossible.

Consider the role of a knife maker. Their goal is to create the sharpest, most efficient knives. But what if one of these knives is used to harm someone? Should the knife maker stop pursuing their craft because of this potential misuse? This ethical dilemma extends to many professions:

Weapon Manufacturers: Designed for protection or deterrence, yet often used for harm.

Junk Food Producers: While providing enjoyment and convenience, they also contribute to health issues.

Hotel Owners: Offering shelter and comfort, but sometimes these spaces become scenes of crime.

Engineers and Urban Planners: They design streets and infrastructure to improve our lives, but these same streets can become sites of accidents and fatalities.

Car Manufacturers: They create mobility and freedom, yet traffic accidents claim millions of lives annually.

As I pondered these examples, it became clear that almost any action in life can lead to someone's suffering. This realization can be deeply unsettling, raising questions about the very nature of ethical living. If every profession and every action carries the potential for harm, how do we navigate our moral responsibilities?

Even inaction or extreme actions, like choosing to end one's own life, inevitably cause pain and suffering to those left behind. It seems there is no escape from the web of impact our lives have on others.

   IMO if the argument is merely thinking your own tools might kill people, therefore I should quit, that's a weak argument. I think that there needs to be both thinking about those consequences, but also the empathy and maybe even seeing the effects yourself. It's just not enough to think it and then quit, there needs to be more than thinking it.

[universe]

Reality includes harm and suffering, you are trying to cripple reality.

Other examples in which you could try to control reality

• Getting rid of pastors because they spread belief
• Killing babies because they could experience joy

Yet - none of these would actually stop belief or joy forever - because they are fundamental to reality. You would just be neurotic.

Just while writing this comment my body must have killed millions of organisms. Yesterday I killed 2 insects maybe more.

Stop fighting reality and get over it.

❤️

[Danioover9000]

@universe

4 hours ago, universe said:

Reality includes harm and suffering, you are trying to cripple reality.

Other examples in which you could try to control reality

• Getting rid of pastors because they spread belief
• Killing babies because they could experience joy

Yet - none of these would actually stop belief or joy forever - because they are fundamental to reality. You would just be neurotic.

Just while writing this comment my body must have killed millions of organisms. Yesterday I killed 2 insects maybe more.

Stop fighting reality and get over it.

❤️

   I agree, you should tell that to those stage yellow thinkers like Nate Hagens and Daniel Schmachtenberger. Especially his takes on optimism which I actually disagree with. Optimism is powerful, and naive realism is actually more dangerous.

[Basman]

Compassion is a luxury problem. It is good to find ways to reduce suffering once you achieve a certain standard of living, which is broadly happening as human civilization is continuing to develop, but you'll never truly eliminate suffering on a fundamental level. We live in an imperfect world in that way.

 

[Danioover9000]

@Basman

11 minutes ago, Basman said:

Compassion is a luxury problem. It is good to find ways to reduce suffering once you achieve a certain standard of living, which is broadly happening as human civilization is continuing to develop, but you'll never truly eliminate suffering on a fundamental level. We live in an imperfect world in that way.

 

   Yes, tell that to Daniel Schmachtenberger and people like him that have high lofty ideas. Honestly if you're going to tell me that naive techno optimism is evil and wrong, therefore optimism is evil and wrong, then you're just wrong fundamentally speaking. OPTIMISM IS SO POWERFUL!