USA should bring back slavery

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

The real reason suicide or attempted suicide is considered a crime in most places these days: damaging government property has always been a crime, the definition of "government property" just expanded.

While the rest of this is your usual doomer screed, suicide and attempted suicide are considered crimes in most places because otherwise the police would not be able to enter the house of a suicidal person to attempt a wellness check. As far as I am aware, "attempted suicide" has not been tried as a crime in the US save in extreme fringe cases along the lines of enforcing rules regarding not riding your horse backwards down main street.
I'm going to skip past the usual circuitious exchanges and ask you outright: do you believe that the average person has a moral grounds for suicide?

 

[Sprig of Parsley]

While the rest of this is your usual doomer screed, suicide and attempted suicide are considered crimes in most places because otherwise the police would not be able to enter the house of a suicidal person to attempt a wellness check. As far as I am aware, "attempted suicide" has not been tried as a crime in the US save in extreme fringe cases along the lines of enforcing rules regarding not riding your horse backwards down main street.
I'm going to skip past the usual circuitious exchanges and ask you outright: do you believe that the average person has a moral grounds for suicide?

It's their body, they can do whatever they damn well like with it as long as it doesn't involve someone else being hurt. Morality of it be damned, self-ownership trumps morality here.

 

[Sīn the Moon Daddy]

The real reason suicide or attempted suicide is considered a crime in most places these days: damaging government property has always been a crime, the definition of "government property" just expanded.

If you are in debt (some more than others, but most everyone is by now when you look at the details) you have had a value ascribed to your life and your labor. Someone's figured out what you're worth to your betters and they've got a plan to wring as much out of you as possible. You are another animal on their farm, there to have resources extracted from you. You will be fed a steady diet of junk news, commercials, and other misinfo to keep you as stupid as possible and as productive as possible. Your "elected representatives" are there to make you think your concerns are being heard and addressed, your police are there to make you think you're being protected, but it is all an illusion. The representatives do not serve you, they serve whoever cuts them the biggest checks - and that isn't you. The police have no duty whatsoever to protect you, they're there to make sure you don't become terribly inconvenient for your betters' plans. You are free only to mill about in your designated pen, to consume your designated media, to indulge in whatever designated vices are allowed to you, and even if you break out of your pen where will you go? To what corner of the earth will you flee? Where can you possibly hope to escape the eyes of countries with networks of satellites capable of reading license plates from low earth orbit? Where can you possibly hope to go that none of these countries' bullyboys can't find you and bring you to heel? You can flee from one pen to another, a new pen with new rules and new masters, but you will never be free. Your predecessors traded that away for comfort, and got what they deserved.

"What do people see in Marxism?"

When the devil you know is this horrible sometimes rolling the dice on a new one seems logical. I know that you disagree, and years later now my own opinion has changed. But it was an attempt to break their control.

That being said, if SocJus had never been hybridized with Socialism they would still be going full speed ahead with it.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

It's their body, they can do whatever they damn well like with it as long as it doesn't involve someone else being hurt. Morality of it be damned, self-ownership trumps morality here.

1. You haven't escaped morality by asserting that freedom trumps normal mores: you've just asserted that you judge something being moral based on whether it's a free act.
2. So you disagree with age-of-consent laws? After all, it's their body.
3. If someone wants to blow their brains out in front of their children after shouting "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT", you have no problems with that?

 

[Recoil]

I say make all the homeless and otherwise work incapable do all the work, they'll get in shape and they'll have to get fed to work. Problem solved.

The real solution is to feed the homeless to the hungry. Boom, 2 problems solved at once.

 

[Sprig of Parsley]

1. You haven't escaped morality by asserting that freedom trumps normal mores: you've just asserted that you judge something being moral based on whether it's a free act.
2. So you disagree with age-of-consent laws? After all, it's their body.
3. If someone wants to blow their brains out in front of their children after shouting "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT", you have no problems with that?

1. The moment your morality interferes with my personal autonomy, you can hang your morality. Period.
2. Children cannot give informed consent. Neither can some adults. Exceptions to children being unable to do this are vanishingly rare, and due to adult-to-child power dynamics would be extraordinarily difficult to even establish. Children are wards of their parents or guardians and said parents/guardians have a duty to protect and care for the child until an agreed-upon age of majority. After majority is reached and assuming the now-adult is not suffering from such severe mental defect that continued wardship could be reasonably justified, they are their own person and no one should be allowed to curtail their autonomy unless it is being used to harm another in a quantifiable fashion.
3. Shitty thing to do, to be sure. Give the kids counseling. Chances are that household was already a hotbed of psychological abuse, and unsurprisingly no one gave a fuck until it came down to someone putting a gun barrel in their mouth. You want to avoid that kind of situation? Start giving a fuck before it comes to a head, if you care so damn much.

 

[GethN7]

It's worth noting slavery is still legal in the US, but only as a punishment for a crime which one has been duly convicted, which seems eminently fair. It gives them another way to pay the debt they owe society, and since they are already in bondage due to their imprisonment, logical.

However, true chattel slavery coming back is somewhere to left of inane and idiotic to me on legal, moral, ethical, and even economic grounds in this day and age.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

1. You haven't escaped morality by asserting that freedom trumps normal mores: you've just asserted that you judge something being moral based on whether it's a free act.
2. So you disagree with age-of-consent laws? After all, it's their body.
3. If someone wants to blow their brains out in front of their children after shouting "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT", you have no problems with that?

Why do you do this? I see you make quality arguments sometimes, but other times it's this stupid gotcha bullshit where you try to put words in people's mouths until they give up on the conversation in frustration. Especially and specifically @Sprig of Parsley . I don't know if you've noticed the pattern, but it's very much there.

Back on topic, only if the OP is the only slave, then sure.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

Why do you do this? I see you make quality arguments sometimes, but other times it's this stupid gotcha bullshit where you try to put words in people's mouths until they give up on the conversation in frustration. Especially and specifically @Sprig of Parsley . I don't know if you've noticed the pattern, but it's very much there.

Back on topic, only if the OP is the only slave, then sure.

I'm not "putting words in his mouth", I'm trying to sound out his reasoning. Extreme examples work the best for this.

1. The moment your morality interferes with my personal autonomy, you can hang your morality. Period.
2. Children cannot give informed consent. Neither can some adults. Exceptions to children being unable to do this are vanishingly rare, and due to adult-to-child power dynamics would be extraordinarily difficult to even establish. Children are wards of their parents or guardians and said parents/guardians have a duty to protect and care for the child until an agreed-upon age of majority. After majority is reached and assuming the now-adult is not suffering from such severe mental defect that continued wardship could be reasonably justified, they are their own person and no one should be allowed to curtail their autonomy unless it is being used to harm another in a quantifiable fashion.
3. Shitty thing to do, to be sure. Give the kids counseling. Chances are that household was already a hotbed of psychological abuse, and unsurprisingly no one gave a fuck until it came down to someone putting a gun barrel in their mouth. You want to avoid that kind of situation? Start giving a fuck before it comes to a head, if you care so damn much.

1. I'm trying to understand how you're thinking, but it doesn't really follow to me: maybe that's because I'm not familiar with Libertarian philosophy. You argue that radical personal freedom is the highest moral good, yeah? With the caveat of "provided your actions do not deprive others of their personal freedom". Let me throw a few questions out there. Do you think someone should be allowed to:
-Blatantly masturbate in public?
-Blatantly masturbate in front of their own children?
-Blatantly masturbate in front of their own children while saying "you little sluts make me horny?"

Before @Corbin Dallas Multipass jumps in to play internet argument referee, let me clarify why I ask this: killing yourself in front of children is something that is going to scar them for life in a quantifiable fashion. Masturbating in front of children is also going to scar them for life in a quantifiable fashion. This may be because I'm missing something here, but I cannot imagine thinking that one of these acts would be permissible while the other would be forbidden.
In addition, do you believe in universal drug legalization, or the legalization of unnecessary surgeries if the patient requests it? (in particular, I'm thinking about those people who want to have a limb amputated or to become a paraplegic deliberately). Because if I'm following your argument right, that seems to be a pretty major implication.
2. And how were people supposed to know this in the first place? An omniscient surveillance state? Arguing that failing to prevent something bad from happening means you have no right to be upset that something bad happened strikes me as... pretty out there, as it seems to be a fully general argument for not caring about any bad thing that ever happens.

 

[Sprig of Parsley]

1. I'm trying to understand how you're thinking, but it doesn't really follow to me: maybe that's because I'm not familiar with Libertarian philosophy. You argue that radical personal freedom is the highest moral good, yeah? With the caveat of "provided your actions do not deprive others of their personal freedom". Let me throw a few questions out there. Do you think someone should be allowed to:
-Blatantly masturbate in public?
-Blatantly masturbate in front of their own children?
-Blatantly masturbate in front of their own children while saying "you little sluts make me horny?"

You added "blatantly" so I'm assuming you mean the creep that drops trou and strokes it in front of a crowd as opposed to the guy who goes off to a quiet corner where he thinks there's no one around to handle himself. Intent matters here. He intends to make you party to something you want nothing to do with, that's why that breed of public masturbator tends to move on to full-fledged assault before long. Involving kids is probably a violation of the whole "parent" thing I mentioned earlier, and it's probably being done for the same reason as the public masturbator mentioned ("blatant" being the differentiator - if some guy's kids walk into daddy's room and see him whacking it to old Jenna Jameson or whatever, he hasn't done anything wrong other than forget to lock his door). The last mentioned scenario pretty much just makes the intent absolutely unambiguous.

Before @Corbin Dallas Multipass jumps in to play internet argument referee, let me clarify why I ask this: killing yourself in front of children is something that is going to scar them for life in a quantifiable fashion. Masturbating in front of children is also going to scar them for life in a quantifiable fashion. This may be because I'm missing something here, but I cannot imagine thinking that one of these acts would be permissible while the other would be forbidden.

It's permissible pretty much solely because trying to take a gun out of a suicidal person's hands is about the dumbest fucking thing you can do anyway. If you can't talk them down, you might as well brace yourself. And what are you going to do, prosecute a dead person? Like I said, you cared so damn much about that situation that you let it get to the point it did. Suicides dedicated to captive audiences don't drop out of the clear fucking blue. You had all kinds of ways to address it without violating autonomy before that point, but it's only when autonomy comes into question that you start to give a fuck. REALLY MAKES YOU THINK.

And maybe the kids where you are just aren't made like they used to be made, but seeing someone playing with themselves falls a long way from seeing someone paint the ceiling with their brains.

In addition, do you believe in universal drug legalization, or the legalization of unnecessary surgeries if the patient requests it? (in particular, I'm thinking about those people who want to have a limb amputated or to become a paraplegic deliberately). Because if I'm following your argument right, that seems to be a pretty major implication.

Are they doing it to themselves? Let them. I'm not interested in saving stupid people from themselves, certainly not at the cost of making serious implications about where personal autonomy stops and starts. What they're doing is dumb, and they should have every right to do it if they're footing the bills. If they actively harm another to facilitate these, you nail them for that.

2. And how were people supposed to know this in the first place? An omniscient surveillance state? Arguing that failing to prevent something bad from happening means you have no right to be upset that something bad happened strikes me as... pretty out there, as it seems to be a fully general argument for not caring about any bad thing that ever happens.

Yeah because warning signs NEVER FUCKING HAPPEN EVER and there's no such thing as a community interest. A few might slip through the cracks, but social pressure is a powerful thing.

And the funny thing is, no one TRULY cares about any bad thing that ever happens to begin with until it hits them or threatens to hit them somehow. Sure, they'll piss and moan about it in public venues (Did you hear about what Bob did? How awful!) but it's not out of heartfelt concern for Bob or whoever Bob hurt, 99.9 percent of the time. If there's concern, it's predicated on "Bob might hurt ME next!". So we'd be going from a bunch of people who don't care but pretend we do, to a bunch of people who are honest with themselves, in your posited scenario. I'll take sincere assholes over phony assholes.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

You added "blatantly" so I'm assuming you mean the creep that drops trou and strokes it in front of a crowd as opposed to the guy who goes off to a quiet corner where he thinks there's no one around to handle himself. Intent matters here. He intends to make you party to something you want nothing to do with, that's why that breed of public masturbator tends to move on to full-fledged assault before long. Involving kids is probably a violation of the whole "parent" thing I mentioned earlier, and it's probably being done for the same reason as the public masturbator mentioned ("blatant" being the differentiator - if some guy's kids walk into daddy's room and see him whacking it to old Jenna Jameson or whatever, he hasn't done anything wrong other than forget to lock his door). The last mentioned scenario pretty much just makes the intent absolutely unambiguous.



It's permissible pretty much solely because trying to take a gun out of a suicidal person's hands is about the dumbest fucking thing you can do anyway. If you can't talk them down, you might as well brace yourself. And what are you going to do, prosecute a dead person? Like I said, you cared so damn much about that situation that you let it get to the point it did. Suicides dedicated to captive audiences don't drop out of the clear fucking blue. You had all kinds of ways to address it without violating autonomy before that point, but it's only when autonomy comes into question that you start to give a fuck. REALLY MAKES YOU THINK.

And maybe the kids where you are just aren't made like they used to be made, but seeing someone playing with themselves falls a long way from seeing someone paint the ceiling with their brains.


Are they doing it to themselves? Let them. I'm not interested in saving stupid people from themselves, certainly not at the cost of making serious implications about where personal autonomy stops and starts. What they're doing is dumb, and they should have every right to do it if they're footing the bills. If they actively harm another to facilitate these, you nail them for that.



Yeah because warning signs NEVER FUCKING HAPPEN EVER and there's no such thing as a community interest. A few might slip through the cracks, but social pressure is a powerful thing.

And the funny thing is, no one TRULY cares about any bad thing that ever happens to begin with until it hits them or threatens to hit them somehow. Sure, they'll piss and moan about it in public venues (Did you hear about what Bob did? How awful!) but it's not out of heartfelt concern for Bob or whoever Bob hurt, 99.9 percent of the time. If there's concern, it's predicated on "Bob might hurt ME next!". So we'd be going from a bunch of people who don't care but pretend we do, to a bunch of people who are honest with themselves, in your posited scenario. I'll take sincere assholes over phony assholes.

1. The person masturbating in public is making you party in something you want nothing to do with. A public suicide is making you party in something you want nothing to do with. The person masturbating in front of children is making them party to something they want nothing to do with. The suicide shooting his brains out in front of children is making them party to something they want nothing to do with. And, since you mentioned "intent matters": someone who shouts "THIS IS YOUR FAULT!" at someone before offing themselves has a pretty explicit goal of causing extreme trauma and guilt to another.
2. Alright, let me make this clear: domestic violence, child abuse, and depression are all serious issues that should be better addressed. The latter, for me, is also a personal issue. The fact that you act like it isn't, and I just don't want people to kill themselves out of virtue signalling or because I'm some kind of sadistic monster (or whatever reason you assume) shows a very distorted pattern of thinking.
3. If seeing a suicide is more traumatizing than seeing masturbation, you would think you would see it as worse, not better, to expose a child to that.
4. And, as usual, you lapse into your misanthropic "I'd rather live in a post-apocalyptic shithole than a civilization because then at least all of my biases about human nature would be confirmed" rant (NOTE TO CORBIN DALLAS MULTIPASS: since you insist on policing me, I defy you to read Sprig's post history, especially on the topic of human civilization, family, and behavior, and say that the above is more than mildly uncharitable to his greater worldview.) I will reiterate: maybe you should just post about the lolcows rather than talk about this sort of thing. On my behalf, I should probably stop responding to you, because in my opinion, people who have no skin in the game of human society shouldn't be taken seriously when it comes to... well, anything involving human society. In conclusion: I sincerely wish I had enough money to grant your wishes and ship you to Somalia, which by your standards is the most honest country (although not perfectly honest, since it hasn't devolved into a perfect Hobbsian war of all against all where anything human is a hindrance to survival.)

 

[Sprig of Parsley]

1. The person masturbating in public is making you party in something you want nothing to do with. A public suicide is making you party in something you want nothing to do with. The person masturbating in front of children is making them party to something they want nothing to do with. The suicide shooting his brains out in front of children is making them party to something they want nothing to do with. And, since you mentioned "intent matters": someone who shouts "THIS IS YOUR FAULT!" at someone before offing themselves has a pretty explicit goal of causing extreme trauma and guilt to another.
2. Alright, let me make this clear: domestic violence, child abuse, and depression are all serious issues that should be better addressed. The latter, for me, is also a personal issue. The fact that you act like it isn't, and I just don't want people to kill themselves out of virtue signalling or because I'm some kind of sadistic monster (or whatever reason you assume) shows a very distorted pattern of thinking.
3. If seeing a suicide is more traumatizing than seeing masturbation, you would think you would see it as worse, not better, to expose a child to that.
4. And, as usual, you lapse into your misanthropic "I'd rather live in a post-apocalyptic shithole than a civilization because then at least all of my biases about human nature would be confirmed" rant (NOTE TO CORBIN DALLAS MULTIPASS: since you insist on policing me, I defy you to read Sprig's post history, especially on the topic of human civilization, family, and behavior, and say that the above is more than mildly uncharitable to his greater worldview.) I will reiterate: maybe you should just post about the lolcows rather than talk about this sort of thing. On my behalf, I should probably stop responding to you, because in my opinion, people who have no skin in the game of human society shouldn't be taken seriously when it comes to... well, anything involving human society. In conclusion: I sincerely wish I had enough money to grant your wishes and ship you to Somalia, which by your standards is the most honest country (although not perfectly honest, since it hasn't devolved into a perfect Hobbsian war of all against all where anything human is a hindrance to survival.)

1. You can stop a public masturbator. You try and stop a public suicide by gun and you're like as not to get shot.
2. You benevolent-tyrants have had time to figure out how to deal with them adequately and failed miserably. Fuck off. Tyrannies carried out for the benefit of subjects are not better than any other.
3. Worse? Why worry about "worse" or "better" here? You can stop a masturbator. Like I said, try stopping a suicidal person with a gun. Go ahead. Try it. There's a reason that situation scares cops shitless. Letting the suicidal person off themselves at least keeps the body count to one.
4. I'm misanthropic because you people confirm every single bias every single day. You are all equally worthless and miserable in my eyes, some for different reasons than others. Lecture me all you want about how benevolent you are, benevolent tyrant. You all bleed the same when someone gets sick of your shit.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

1. You can stop a public masturbator. You try and stop a public suicide by gun and you're like as not to get shot.
2. You benevolent-tyrants have had time to figure out how to deal with them adequately and failed miserably. Fuck off. Tyrannies carried out for the benefit of subjects are not better than any other.
3. Worse? Why worry about "worse" or "better" here? You can stop a masturbator. Like I said, try stopping a suicidal person with a gun. Go ahead. Try it. There's a reason that situation scares cops shitless. Letting the suicidal person off themselves at least keeps the body count to one.
4. I'm misanthropic because you people confirm every single bias every single day. You are all equally worthless and miserable in my eyes, some for different reasons than others. Lecture me all you want about how benevolent you are, benevolent tyrant. You all bleed the same when someone gets sick of your shit.

Is your name Not Important?
Also, I only gave this post a hat because there's no "edgy" rating.

 

[Sprig of Parsley]

Is your name Not Important?
Also, I only gave this post a hat because there's no "edgy" rating.

This warranted a post? I suppose your ego wasn't satisfied with the rating, was it?

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

This warranted a post? I suppose your ego wasn't satisfied with the rating, was it?

It's called a shitpost. I rarely engage in them, but given I've exhausted actual communication with you...

 

[Sprig of Parsley]

It's called a shitpost. I rarely engage in them, but given I've exhausted actual communication with you...

"Communication"? Oh, the lecturing and scolding and fingerwagging. Yeah, now I remember why I find "communicating" with you types exhausting.

You're basically people that didn't get punched in the face enough, and I'm the kind of person who got punched in the face too often. Clearly there's some sweet spot somewhere, damn if I know where it is.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

"Communication"? Oh, the lecturing and scolding and fingerwagging. Yeah, now I remember why I find "communicating" with you types exhausting.

You're basically people that didn't get punched in the face enough, and I'm the kind of person who got punched in the face too often. Clearly there's some sweet spot somewhere, damn if I know where it is.

This is what I'm talking about. You aren't arguing with me, you're arguing with someone in your head who you've decided is me. You don't know me at all (partially because I try to avoid powerleveling as much as possible). Since this is relevant, and thus not powerleveling: I was sexually assaulted in high school and was suicidally depressed throughout my late teens to early twenties; I actually attempted to kill myself, and only failed because my parents called the police.
But this isn't a competition where we try and show who's life sucks more, because that really doesn't have a bearing on who's right or wrong.
Also, I would hazard that the ideal number of times someone should be punched in the face is somewhere close to "zero". But what do I know? I'm [$OUTGROUP$], and therefore wrong.

 

[Sprig of Parsley]

This is what I'm talking about. You aren't arguing with me, you're arguing with someone in your head who you've decided is me. You don't know me at all (partially because I try to avoid powerleveling as much as possible). Since this is relevant, and thus not powerleveling: I was sexually assaulted in high school and was suicidally depressed throughout my late teens to early twenties; I actually attempted to kill myself, and only failed because my parents called the police.
But this isn't a competition where we try and show who's life sucks more, because that really doesn't have a bearing on who's right or wrong.
Also, I would hazard that the ideal number of times someone should be punched in the face is somewhere close to "zero". But what do I know? I'm [$OUTGROUP$], and therefore wrong.

You're more or less like any other of your type I've encountered. You're convinced you'll lead us into a wonderful, caring future if we just give you a little more power. Just a little more. A little more.

And being punched in the face, metaphorically or literally, is something you deserve sometimes. It's a lesson. Pain is a fantastic teacher if you survive the lesson.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

You're more or less like any other of your type I've encountered. You're convinced you'll lead us into a wonderful, caring future if we just give you a little more power. Just a little more. A little more.

And being punched in the face, metaphorically or literally, is something you deserve sometimes. It's a lesson. Pain is a fantastic teacher if you survive the lesson.

Yes, the man who argues for existentialism in basically every DT thread is an authoritarian monster for not believing it's right to kill yourself in front of children.

Spoiler: As Sisyphus, I push this rock ever upwards

I don't believe there's ever a good reason to kill yourself, short of a wasting illness with no cure. That's just what I believe. I will argue for what I believe because, well... I believe in it. I don't think everyone should live like me; if you asked me what the best possible life to live is, I honestly have no clue, beyond "be as much you as possible". I also recognize that society is something that's needed for self-actualization, but that there are some people who's needs for self-actualization are very harmful to society. This conflict is the paradox of the human existence. I feel like this attitude of yours is actively blocking you from self-actualization; I say that because, from the outside, you seem extremely sad and angry. But, for all I know, you are actually supremely happy with where you are. Regardless, your worldview and mine conflict gravely, and so we will continue to argue with no clear winner; but it is this argument itself that gives life meaning.

 

[Sprig of Parsley]

Yes, the man who argues for existentialism in basically every DT thread is an authoritarian monster for not believing it's right to kill yourself in front of children.

Spoiler: As Sisyphus, I push this rock ever upwards

I don't believe there's ever a good reason to kill yourself, short of a wasting illness with no cure. That's just what I believe. I will argue for what I believe because, well... I believe in it. I don't think everyone should live like me; if you asked me what the best possible life to live is, I honestly have no clue, beyond "be as much you as possible". I also recognize that society is something that's needed for self-actualization, but that there are some people who's needs for self-actualization are very harmful to society. This conflict is the paradox of the human existence. I feel like this attitude of yours is actively blocking you from self-actualization; I say that because, from the outside, you seem extremely sad and angry. But, for all I know, you are actually supremely happy with where you are. Regardless, your worldview and mine conflict gravely, and so we will continue to argue with no clear winner; but it is this argument itself that gives life meaning.

Debating the right and wrong of it misses the point by a country mile anyway. Feel free to try debating the right and wrong of suicide-with-an-audience with a suicidal person sometime, report back with results. You're so wrapped up in "should be" that you can't get out of your own damn way here. Bad shit happening is a universal fucking constant. A lot of the time the most you can hope for lies in how well you can keep yourself clear of the blast radius.

Spoiler

You presume to tell me that you or anyone like you is of such great moral and intellectual fiber that you know my way better than myself? I ask that you leave me alone in my matters of self, and my second request for being left alone will be far less pleasant. This is not something to be argued over. I don't CARE what your intentions are, if I want help I will fucking ASK for it. I have had quite enough of authority with good intentions - they haven't gotten it right yet and they never will. External authority is a poor substitute for knowing how to take care of it yourself, anyway.