"He didn't come out again for 27 years"... well except the 1000+ times he came out to steal shit. And yeah I'm damn sure 27 years of weekly break ins and theft "caused a lot of anxiety" christ that phrase is doing some heavy lifting. "he tried to cause as little damage as possible" which is a hell of a thing to say about 27 years of making the conscious decision to break into people's houses and steal their shit.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13878801
IIRC, the article indicates some cabin owners tried to ask him to leave them a shopping list (in part because he was so careful to only take what he needed and do no unnecessary damage -- including relocking the house when he left so no one else could readily get in after him).
Of course, ultimately, they actively tried to catch him -- and succeeded -- because the people in the area got tired of it.
... is a trick that Mike Finkel used in order to make Christopher Knight talk:
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Christopher Knight spent seven months in prison for his thefts, and has chosen not to speak to any journalist other than Mike Finkel.
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So he stole a few cans of food from houses that were mostly unoccupied - big deal. There's so much food that gets thrown out on a daily basis, and if you can afford a holiday house in the forest, you're probably generating more than your share:
> In the United States, food waste is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply. This estimate, based on estimates from USDA’s Economic Research Service of 31 percent food loss at the retail and consumer levels, corresponded to approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010.
https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs
National Geographic was just a little more thoughtful in their depiction of Christopher Knight:
> Chris Knight left because there was no good spot for him in this world. If you don’t fit in and you’re a murderer, they put you in jail. When you don’t fit in because of mental problems, there are other facilities for you. This is a guy who was extremely bright, but just did not fit in. Some people said, can’t we just give him a little bit of land and a few bags of groceries, and let him live peacefully?
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/04/north-pond-hermi...
Another article from Michael Finkel about Knight:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/mar/15/stranger-in-the...
If you are not part of our society, maybe going in and taking our stuff is not as much "break in" and "theft", but just pure and simple survival.
I don't even understand why you need to ask these questions. In the past countries routinely ignored other countries' laws by going to war. Even nowadays China is extraditing Chinese Americans who break Chinese laws even if what they did is completely legal in the US.
He just pitched a tent and didn’t talk to anyone for 27 years. He really just claimed his own campground for a long time.
Should you feel empathy for other people? If the answer is yes then their are a couple of consequences.
Firstly, you should be concerned about the people you take resources from. Not just in terms of money but in terms of emotional impact.
Secondly, we should be concerned about the welfare of starving people in the wilderness. We should have sympathy for them.
Both moral imperatives exist at the same time. And accepting one imperative does not eliminate the other. If you need to steal then you should feel bad about that. And we should care about the dignity of people, even when they do things to harm us.
Uh, yes. As far as "wrong" has a meaningful definition, that's wrong.
To be clear, they're not people because they're outgroup, not because they're not as smart as us.