Here’s my bit of magical thinking:
My paternal grandmother received an heirloom (a dirk) from her fiancé for safekeeping who then died in WWI. She did not return the heirloom to his family despite the marriage not proceeding, and it being subject to male primogeniture. To this day it has brought nothing but discord to his side of the family as they have pointlessly fought over possession of it (as a of token of symbolic authority).
The object brings ruin to those that covet it. It is cursed.
To me, this is a physical manifestation of the costs of moral wrongs (specifically in the historical context of this type of dirk, as an act of oath breaking). If you choose to do wrong then ruin will come to you (justly, I might add). They all know this thing is stolen, and whilst it doesn’t belong in the family it has even been ‘stolen’ within the family itself. They all still want it.
I don’t believe the dirk to be sentient per se, but I do believe it has an intent and the ability to influence indirectly. It gets in people’s minds. It don’t know if it cares about going back home or not, but it clearly wants to let people suffer the results of their own wickedness. I don’t think it is an accident that this object is literally a weapon either. It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do under the circumstances.
If I had it I’d either return it to its rightful owners, or failing that I would destroy it to put an end to the situation. Given this is a multigenerational curse I think that barring absolute disaster resulting from pissing the dirk off by ‘killing’ it the individual costs of getting rid of it for the benefit of future generations are justified.
On the other hand, there are a lot of crazy people out there and I don’t really want to wade through dumb stuff by flat-earth types.
Well, I might be disqualifying myself by virtue of being mentally ill here, but if you want to avoid crazy but still go to the territory of doubted beliefs with possible merit then I suggest looking at those who are hated.
Being hated doesn’t make you right, but it does make you interesting. The more intense the emotionality of the hatred the more interesting the subject will be. When someone’s wrong you just do what you did with the flat earthers: you say “you’re nuts” and let it go, but when someone has a kernel of truth that you don’t want to accept, that’s when the real venom comes out (and the most potent poison is reserved for apostates. The people who had faith and renounced it possess the most dangerous thing of all: the ability to sow doubt).
As a corollary to that, consider the case of indifference where there should be outrage. Where people talk a big game and then show their true feelings in (in)action. There are no shortage of obvious and intolerable wrongs that nobody gives a shit about in the world. Again, this is a signal of interesting territory.
Anger is predicated on unmet expectations. That’s why you can be angry at things and concepts.
No, acts can be evil. Thoughts are just thoughts.
I think about hurting people all the time. Do those thoughts make me evil, or does my choice not to act on them make me good? How about neither? Most of your thoughts and emotions are little more than weather in your mind. One day the weather will be better, the next worse, but every day there’ll be weather.
Furthermore, self defence is valid. Anger can be part of that.
An interaction is exactly that. You could certainly be a piece of set dressing in that person’s life, but IME people do things they’re blind to constantly. No, you’re not responsible for other people’s emotions, but you are responsible for your own situational awareness.
Not all anger is equivalent.
I can have anger as a product of perceived injustice. This is the anger I use to get just outcomes. This is my vocational/utility anger. This happens as a product of external events interacting with my values.
Then there’s my insanity anger. This is anger that just happens as a by-product of my illness. It is affect anger. I don’t have a choice about feeling this anger, and it fits the case you’re raising here.
The question I ask of all emotion is whether it is contextually appropriate. If you are angry and it makes sense for you to be angry given the situation you’re in then everything is working as it should be. If you’re angry no matter what’s going on then that is disease.
The problem with a genocide is that it is a one size fits all solution for a far more specific problem. No genocide ever happens without friction.
If you don’t want people to kill you then that’s ultimately about fitting in where the territory is limited. Genocides are always about us and them and never about just us. So many people don’t get that the goal has to be to become us rather than the tolerated them.
Without anger or depression I slow to a standstill. When I’m appropriately drugged I simply stop wanting or not wanting anything, or doing anything but the bare minimum. When I’m drugged, I don’t care anymore. No investment, no anger (or much of anything else). It’s like I go into power saving mode. At least when I’m angry I have a direction.
People take their normal psychology completely for granted.
Have you ever noticed that there’s never any pop culture advice for people that are the problem that everyone’s trying to avoid? It’s quite irritating. You’d think someone would have written a book on it, but I’ve never seen one.
I suppose the question I would ask you is why don’t you grind to a halt in the absence of anger as I do? Where is this happiness coming from?