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Ravus
Not an EggshellWalker


Registered: 07/18/03
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Loc: Cave of the Patriarchs
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Torture
#5324870 - 02/21/06 05:19 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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What would you say is the worst possible kind of torture you can inflict on a human being? Any suffering or pain, physical or mental or social or emotional, out of all the endless possibilities, what do you think is the worst the human mind can experience?
-------------------- So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.
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SneezingPenis
ACHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!111!

Registered: 01/15/05
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Re: Torture [Re: Ravus]
#5325193 - 02/21/06 06:28 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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self inflicted grief is the worst kind.... hands down.
only yourself can cause the most pain and suffering to yourself.
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Silversoul
Rhizome


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Re: Torture [Re: Ravus]
#5325213 - 02/21/06 06:32 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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I think the worst torture would be watching a loved one get tortured.
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SneezingPenis
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but it would be worse if it was your fault they were in that situation.
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Chauntecleer
Exists

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Re: Torture [Re: Ravus]
#5325245 - 02/21/06 06:37 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
Ravus said: What would you say is the worst possible kind of torture you can inflict on a human being? Any suffering or pain, physical or mental or social or emotional, out of all the endless possibilities, what do you think is the worst the human mind can experience?
I believe you just answered your own question. Pain is relative, so I very much doubt there is one universal worst torture. It makes room for creativity, though. 
Personally I believe that mental and emotional pain overrides the physical. Physical pain (in my experience, at least) is transient and therefore not to be feared.
The two years or so I spent depersonalised have to rank up there, though.
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Ravus
Not an EggshellWalker


Registered: 07/18/03
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Indeed, there was a Nietzsche quote about how anybody can suffer, including slaves and martyrs, but to watch someone suffer because of your actions requires much more tolerance.
Though I'm not sure if I'd buy that. Which would hurt me more, seeing my entire family burned alive, or being burned alive myself? Undoubtedly, both would be painful, but I think unless your nerve endings are actually on fire, you're not in as much pain as you could be in.
-------------------- So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.
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SkorpivoMusterion
Livin in theTwilight Zone...


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Loc: You can't spell fungus wi...
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Re: Torture [Re: Ravus]
#5325430 - 02/21/06 07:08 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Paralysis. Not merely of the physical kind, mind you - rather, of the mind.
Imagine, if you will, a person who is fully conscious enough to experience happiness just as much as sorrow, elation just as much as regret, joy just as much as fear, love just as much as hate. He is aware enough to realize his accomplishments and his mistakes; independent enough to carry out his own life on his own terms and face the same risks that we all do by virtue of such independence. Yet, he is paralyzed by self-doubt, which is an immobilization caused the by the restrictive weight of self-defeating junk, which has been solidified by the careless accumulation of irrationalities, irrealism and arbitrariness abound in various forms today.
His immobilization restricts him from achieving ambitious goals of prosperity, happiness and security, and instead drowns in a sea of laziness, implicit fear of his very own greatness and reckless self-indulgent in the name of evasion - evasions of reality, however diaphanous or ephemeral. A fugitive of reason, he even submits to the gradually concretized notion that such a path he takes can be attributed with a noble quality - noble because he dare not step on others, dare not indulge in a twisted view of selfishness, and dare not shine in utmost brilliance, in a world of such darkness - oh forbid that he should ever disturb the darkness and shed light upon the world, for why should he deserve such greatness, he asks himself. Implicit in such a line of thinking is that someone else has more of a right to be so bold, so daring, so content with themselves that they actually live for themselves and carry out their ambitions, live out their dreams of opulence and romance.
Yet, somewhere deep in the back of his mind - like a splinter in his mind, there remains a shred of rationale that be buried under immense mountains of repression, but never cease to exist - for as long as he possesses a faculty of reason, as long as he lives in a world that remains sparsely populated by the self-realized and unimmobilized adults, he remains subject to his own torturous reason, a victim of his own intelligence, a fugitive of his own greatness. He must constantly live with sharp pangs of realizations of the prison he has created for himself, built with bars of irrational fear that immobilize him from productive achievement and self-cherisment. Only to deepen such implicit sadness as the years pass him by, he retreats within himself, regressing into senility and cynicalness.
As he reflects upon his years in old age, he gains but a pearl of insight, with only a value worthy to the young surrounded amongst him, yet with only a painful reminder to himself, of the greater life that he could've had but never achieved, all because he never let go of the very solidified weight of self-doubt, and committed not only intellectual suicide, but suicide of passion - passion for the love of life and all it has to offer, and the intellectual freedom to capture such fruits of life.
-------------------- Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.
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it stars saddam
Satan

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Re: Torture [Re: Ravus]
#5325777 - 02/21/06 08:17 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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One idea that seems like it would be extremely painful would be to force someone to stay outside in the nude when it is extremely cold, but bring them inside before they freeze to death and drop them in boiling hot water. I remember hearing that the Nazis employed this technique during the Holocaust, but I'm not sure whether that's true or not.
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SneezingPenis
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one of the torture techniques which was purported to have been used by the US was nearly drowning someone, as well as giving the impression that they were going to be drowned.
If anyone here has ever been close to drowning you know that it is probably the worst feeling possible. I would rather burn and freeze to death long before I would ever wish to drown.
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Ravus
Not an EggshellWalker


Registered: 07/18/03
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Loc: Cave of the Patriarchs
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I'd rather be repeatedly drowned or freezed than burned alive, personally. Being burned alive has to one of the shittiest possible deaths imaginable.
-------------------- So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.
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Deviate
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Re: Torture [Re: Ravus]
#5325871 - 02/21/06 08:35 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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id rather be burned alive than killed slowly. but this topic is silly, there is no "worst". there are literally thousands of things that would all be extremely unpleasant with virtually unlimited potential variations. how can i choose a worst?
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Ravus
Not an EggshellWalker


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Re: Torture [Re: Deviate]
#5325911 - 02/21/06 08:42 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Some people seem to have a worst, based on their phobias and fears. For some people, the mere thought of being buried alive can inspire a panic attack, in which case I'd consider that one of their worst.
The tortures are themselves all external objects, but it is the subject which decides. My only curiousity is how the subject decides which path would be the worst to take.
Kind of like that story where the killer makes the mother choose between her two children.
-------------------- So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.
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fresh313
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SneezingPenis
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Re: Torture [Re: Ravus]
#5326121 - 02/21/06 09:28 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
Ravus said: I'd rather be repeatedly drowned or freezed than burned alive, personally. Being burned alive has to one of the shittiest possible deaths imaginable.
no way..... I think being burned to death would be such an immense rush of extreme pain that you would become detached from it..... it would stop feeling like pain, and then you would suffocate on smoke/lack of oxygen.
Quang duc lit himself on fire.... no one can drown themselves.
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TheQueen
Kosmic Art Pulse


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I think the most painful kinds of experiences are the ones that are prolonged and intentionally designed to make one suffer. like Chinese water torture, dropping drips on the same spot of skin for hours and hours. The Iron Maiden of Nuremberg is of this same effect of long lasting suffering; deadly hours of being penetrated.
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it stars saddam
Satan

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Quote:
psilocyberin said: Quang duc lit himself on fire.... no one can drown themselves.
Tie a few bricks to your feet and test this theory.
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SneezingPenis
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what i meant was that you cant drown yourself of your own volition.... like holding your head underwater. No matter what, you will come up for air. I bet if you tied bricks to your feet and jumped into a lake you would be trying to get those bricks off after a while.
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Deviate
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Re: Torture [Re: Ravus]
#5326949 - 02/22/06 01:52 AM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
Ravus said: Some people seem to have a worst, based on their phobias and fears. For some people, the mere thought of being buried alive can inspire a panic attack, in which case I'd consider that one of their worst.
The tortures are themselves all external objects, but it is the subject which decides. My only curiousity is how the subject decides which path would be the worst to take.
Kind of like that story where the killer makes the mother choose between her two children.
well that makes more sense. what i was pointing out was the fact there could be so many variations, for instance if you say drowning is your worst thats such quick death. what about being totured by other methods for a weak and then being drowned? you could just go on and on with all the potential horrors.
by the way, its nice to see you posting again.
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Seuss
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> what i meant was that you cant drown yourself of your own volition....
You can swim yourself to exhaustion at which point you can no longer keep your head above water... been there, done that, in only three feet of water... couldn't even stand up.
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Asante
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Re: Torture [Re: Ravus]
#5327170 - 02/22/06 05:08 AM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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As you may know I very occasionally experiment with harmless but nontheless quite excruciating pain of extreme intensity.
When pain approaches loss of conciousness you will get massive endorphins release starting from minute 5, becoming clearly noticable at minute 10 and making the pain somewhat dismissable by minute 15. I've read this occurs this in severe physical torture and I know from my own experience that it happens - every time. I think this is the joy people derive from extreme S&M. For me it brings no joy whatsoever but the experience of extreme physical pain in the knowledge that it is biologically safe is an interesting realm of experiences to explore.
wiccan seeker - suffering great agony so you don't have to 
The thing I found is that it's of utmost importance that your psychological enviroment is favorable. You must have some degree of assurance that the situation is controlled as for safety.
All in all I'd say that intense pain is just a reinforcer of the actual torture which is mental.
Quote:
Any suffering or pain, physical or mental or social or emotional, out of all the endless possibilities, what do you think is the worst the human mind can experience?
Suffering, mental, social, emotional are all "mental suffering" whereas pain is "physical suffering". As I found out physical suffering has its limits with a blush of euphoria overtaking the agony pretty soon. So the main course has to be mental.
I think the worst suffering imaginable is to be slowly tortured by a sociopath, basically being pruned like a bonsai over the course of weeks, rather than being made to confess or produce a specific response which would end it. Being creatively and very slowly tortured for recreational purposes by an evil person, that would be the worst torture of all. Closest thing to this would be Auschwitz physician Josef Mengele, who for instance on one occasion injected the vaginas of 100 women with disinfectant to see if the ensuing festering wounds would effectively sterilize them. The women were fed meat from the Krematorium.
So yes, in response of the other thread: I believe Evil exists, and it resides in the worst cases of sociopathy.
-------------------- Omnicyclion.org higher knowledge starts here
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