Let us assume a fully grown, completely healthy Clydesdale horse has his hooves shackled to the ground while his head is held in place with a thick rope. He is conscious and standing upright, but completely immobile. And let us assume that -for some reason- every political prisoner on earth (as cited by Amnesty International) will be released from captivity if you can kick this horse to death in less than twenty minutes. You are allowed to wear steel-toed boots. Would you attempt to do this?
I think there is some more thought that has to be put into this question then just could I kick a horse to death in 20 minutes. Let me first address this question assuming I want political prisoners released. It’s going to be really hard to kill the horse in 20 minutes. If I just kept kicking it in the belly, I have a hard time figuring this is going to be a quick death. It reminds me of the cow scene in Me, Myself and Irene. I wouldn’t really be able to jump kick its head so easily either which limits the amount of damage I can do. I’m not even sure if I could physically make this happen in 20 minutes. Take 30 kicks a minute, 600 kicks in 20 minutes to a motionless horse, I think if I could stomp its head I’d kill it but without that access I probably would just be damaging its internal organs. This would just be something to consider before embarking on a nearly impossible quest.
So that current scenario is assuming I decided to go ahead with the physical process rather then questioning can I morally kick a horse to death. For something as dumb as freeing political prisoners, I wouldn’t waste my time kicking a horse. I’m sure people out there are die hard freaks and freeing political prisoners means something, but I don’t see it changing anything in my life and this doesn’t rank up there on my priority list. Plus, generally political prisoners are in there for a reason and they seem like very opinionated people, and whose to say they don’t find themselves right back in prison a couple weeks after my amazing horse beating. If you said I had to kick the horse to death if my immediate family’s lives were at stake, I’d turn into Van Damme quickly and would have no problem trying to off a horse. I don’t know whether Klosterman used the political prisoners to help determine how much political events mean to you but I really couldn’t care less.
The other part of the question could you kill a living animal under certain circumstances, I fathom I could. It would be against my belief system but when push comes to shove, my morals can easily be twisted. Plus I can rationalize it’s only one time and I’m not going to become a murdering psychopath kicking Mr.Ed’s to death on a daily basis. I personally don’t think the reward is big enough for something that I do believe to be nearly impossible. It would also be something that wouldn’t be so easy to forget like the dead body coming up from the lake in the end scene of Deliverance.
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