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Heavy Thoughts

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Kabrinski:
Every once in a while, I fall into a though heavy state-mainly when I'm listening to music, so I thought I'd share some of them.

The wieght of human life.

How does one weigh human life? Can we truly justify the death of any living being, regardless of the crimes they have committed? I have recently begun to ponder just what that means. What brings this up was an incident that happened nearly 4 years ago-as well as the fact I heard this question somewhere.

If we took it at face value-the convict who has murdered dozens, and those who have fought and died to secure our current way in life-heroes who deserve all the respect in the world-the convict would be hauled off to prison, the war heroes both living and dead would be honored-but what would happen if those roles were reversed-what would happen if the convict became the hero-doing what we could not-and the heroes cast out of our society? I say this-that while this situation is unusual and somewhat perverted by many people’s standards, it goes to show that even the lowest of humanity are capable for putting it on the line for the greater good and that the highest, most honorable men and women are capable of heinous crimes.

For some, perhaps race may be a good example-let’s say you saw some colored man hanging out with his homies, rapping and acting all tough and dressed in fancy clothing. What would you say? This man is a criminal-the scum of the earth with nothing to contribute to society? Perhaps this is true-that these men are a group of thugs-terrorizing the local people and otherwise making life a living hell. But yet, perhaps not-perhaps these people have simply adopted the looks, but are actually good people-doctors, police officers, and perhaps even business men. How they are perceived is not a world view but YOUR view-you taking what they are on the surface rather than within…or perhaps the opposite in hoping that things will turn out for the best.

And then comes the darkest part-the justification of the death of another. The weight this can bear on you is enough to break even the strongest sprit-what has this person or persons done to you that is so wrong that it justifies their death? Can you truly be so petty as to take the life of another over some slight-or have you become so blinded by rage over what they have done-whether for an insult or them killing another that you descend to their level, or below them? For those of you who have, and I should hope not-this opportunity, it was undoubtedly among the darkest hours of your life. The rage, the feelings of injustice towards yourself…enough to send cold shivers down your spine at what you may have done. My only words to conclude this is that we all have a dark nature, but it is our choice whether or not we acknowledge it.

Motorheadbanger:
You say it like I already murdered those guys.

Klear:
You're posing some interesting quetions and then provide arguments that have little to do with it. Eg. weight of a human life is something to consider, but what does it have to do with killing somebody out of rage/spite? The first part can be answered in relation to society, its values and whatever morals you subscribe to, the second is a matter of temperament and is completely subjective.

In any case, the most straightforward answer I can give you is that worth of a human life cannot be quantified, partly because you can't ever have enough information to judge it, partly because "worth" is a quality you can't simply connect with human life and describe it in some (implied) units.

You could at best try to compare worth of the lives of two people, but unless you take some extreme examples (say, Stalin vs. Ghandi), you'll be left with a classical moral dillemma which can't have an objective "correct" answer; such questions are best suited to point out differences between moral systems and philosophies, or to illustrate your own, but not to reach some objective answer.

Also, I may have not read the OP carefully enough, but what is the incident you refer to in the first paragraph?

Matt_S:

--- Quote from: Kabrinski on August 08, 2012, 04:56 ---How does one weigh human life?

--- End quote ---
When you say it like that, it makes me think of "weighing" one group of people against another group to decide which one is more important.  I think that sort of thinking is dangerous.  My answer would be "don't weigh it".  The idea reminds me a lot of trolley problems which generally offer only two choices, let group A die by default or kill group B to save them, with there being a catch to the choices (a lot of the times the catch is rather silly and unrealistic).  I'm not saying that there can't be good, well-reasoned responses to such problems (my general approach to these problems revolves around determining why group A is the default to die, and whether group B could just as easily have been the default except for some minor circumstance of the problem.  So yeah, I'll maybe flip switches but I won't push fat people in the way, for example), but when neither choice is any good I don't like the idea of forbidding some choices or requiring others.

Heck, here's a twist on one of the trolley problems: you're sitting beside some trolley tracks, watching 3 men working on the tracks some distance away, and you can see they're all listening to iPods so they can't hear anything.  Suddenly you hear a trolley coming, and a fat man falls out of the sky onto the tracks.  Looking up, you see a moralist standing on a bridge who looks rather shady.  The fat man's alive but injured and can't get off the tracks unassisted.  You now see the trolley approaching.  Using your super deduction skills you realize that if the trolley hits the fat man it will stop and the workers will live while the fat man will be killed, but if you help the fat man off the tracks the workers will be killed by the trolley.  Question: Do you save the fat man?  Yeah, now the shoe is on the other foot, trolley problem.


--- Quote ---Can we truly justify the death of any living being, regardless of the crimes they have committed?
--- End quote ---
Are we talking about the death penalty or self-defense here?  I think self-defense is entirely justified.

And here's a good moral problem I heard a while back: You're in a lifeboat with a baby, a convicted felon, and a geriatric old man. You will be rescued, but not before you'd all starve to death. However, if the rest of you eat one passenger, you will live long enough to be rescued. Who do you kill and eat?
Spoiler: My answer (click to show/hide)I agree with this answer but I don't believe there's any moral obligation to offer your own life.  I do think mutual starvation is better than murdering one of the other three or being murdered.

Klear:
My response to the trolley problems is always "I suffer a mental breakdown, making me unable to act, condemning the group of people in immediate danger to death. This experience leaves a great scar on my psyché and I won't ever be able to forgive myself, despite spending long hours awake at night examining the situation from all angles."

In any case, as I wrote in my first post here - these things don't have a correct answers, just answers that are correct under some moral systems and as such an answer cannot be judged as correct, only the moral priciples that the answer implies.

Also, I'm pretty sure nobody takes these things seriously anymore. Today it's game theory that is popular =)

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