Interesting conclusion theBurningBush, but I think you've missed my point a little. I wasn't talking about "The Herd" in a general, macroscopic sense, but to this case in particular, whereby it seemed to me (from this documentary where they showed interview clips, at least) that the indiviuduals involved had not properly thought through their own value systems, their garbled reasoning made no sense and they seemed to be being "lead by the nose" by Manson. If they had, IMO, thought through everything properly as individuals with good reasoning for their actions, even if that meant deciding to kill, then no - I honestly wouldn't have had a problem with that.


Thanks for the pep talk Apostate87 (and encouragment on posting)! You're right my first instinct was to ignore Billy but then i thought fuck it, might as well make my first thread a flamey one! I'll ignore him in the future: he's probably just trying to push a bad-attitude persona online because he's really timid in real life or something. Love and chocolate to you, Billy!


Cheers for more info on existentialism Sixx - it reminds me a bit of Idealism actually, except extrapolated a bit to include other minds or beings and their moral worth. Very cool! Thanks for tying it in with Manson too - I can at least see where he was coming from more clearly now.


Thanks for that Tainted Jesus - I agree with you people were easily influenced back then due to less cynicism, more drugs etc, but that doesn't mean that its not happening today as well: religion being an obvious form of that, as you pointed out. I do believe that people who follow any sort of belief system are sheep to a degree: but what really counts is where they stop relying on outside influences and start using their own instincts, to make their own custom-version belief system (which is essentially what i do).


x Jelly