General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The death penalty needs to be abolished ASAP [View all]petronius
(26,696 posts)And while I agree that the darker, more visceral, impulses toward violence and vengeance are disturbing, it would be even more disturbing to not be aware of them (if one could be disturbed by being aware of being unaware of something one was not aware of, of course... :
). It seems like a function of intelligence is to recognize and discriminate between rational, emotional, ethical, and/or moral forms of reasoning.
I'm reminded of the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote that I believe I saw here recently: "...the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
(And in the case of the DP, I'm in the no-not-ever camp - no matter how much my deeply-rooted lizard-brain would like to be the one to pull the trigger in some cases...)