posted
I originally posted this in Toretha's thread asking for important but little-discussed topics for a debate speech. But I realized I really am unsure of what I think about this question, and I would like to hear what hatrackers think. Some of us have expressed interest in holding public office some day. What will be our answer to this in that case?
When you begin to think about government policy, you are always facing sins of commission or omission. If we invade Iraq, hundreds of innocent people will surely die from the fortunes of war. If we don't when we could, Saddam Hussein will continue to execute his people by the hundreds of thousands. Whichever decision you make, you are directly or indirectly responsible for the death of the innocent.
If you decide to put more funds into education and school lunches, instead of healthcare or pensions for the elderly, old people will die. Some of them will have their power cut off in the wintertime and freeze to death. Others will get poor nutrition and succumb to poor health. On the other hand, if you take care of the elderly, the kids go hungry and without good schools. This means more violent crime, more learning disorders, and so on, as well as a less-educated population down the road.
If you don't upgrade the infrastructure of the power system or the highways, people die in blackouts or auto accidents. If you spend money doing one thing, you take it away from something else, and the net result is that some number of people in your homeland die.
Is it possible to be president of a large country and still be a moral human being? Is every prime minister a murderer? How do you make decisions like this and still do what's right? Are there different rules of morality for those in power as opposed to we common folk?
Posts: 5509 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I think it is...but I guess it is on how you look at the garden of eden.
Some people say that adam had to choose between 2 evils..disobey God and not have kids, or disobey God and get kicked out of the garden.
I don't see it that way. I think God often gives us 2 contrary commandments to see how we will choose.
Ie. Garden of Eden Ie. When Jesus commands his disciples to leave their families to join him (otherwise they are not worthy). That seems at odds with believing in Jesus to stay with your family.
We are forced to choose, I think, so we can learn about consequences and what we believe. It is not a choice betweeen two evils, but two goods.
A leader MUST deal with limited resources and unlimited demand, the process of making choices shapes character. Pleasing everyone is not the criteria of a moral person in my mind.
Posts: 1034 | Registered: Mar 2004
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I think you ask the right questions. Answering the questions kind of depends on actually being in the hotseat.
in that respect, from a political POV, I don't think we've seen too many candidates for the hotseat that really want to be there, for the right reasons. Bush and challengers inclusive.
posted
Yes it is possible to truly do the right thing, it's just that that is difficult. Doing the right thing, after all, can make a person appear weak because it's not always about going to war. Half the time going to war just says, Don't mess with us.. Which does nothing to truly cure the problem. Sometimes the solution is outside of the box and few want to go there. They focus on the short term instead of the long turn, the stories end up being complex, confusing and complicated. The only thing to do is to have a leader who cares truly about making things better for all people involved and not a select few. We need leaders that actually have a vision and we don't have that yet and probably never will because it seems like the political system as well as many businesses is so corrupt that a good soul gets dirtied in seconds.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
To me it almost seems like the very process of thinking of things on that level is immoral. To make any decision that would result in a child dying, for instance, makes me, the way I see it, directly or indirectly responsible for the child's death. Yet a leader MUST make such decisions. Does that mean that no leader can be a moral person in the same way an individual can? Or are there different rules for morality for leaders?
Take it to an intermediate level, and think about commanding a mission to carry out some dangerous wartime task. You decide to put one person on lookout and have another one kick the door in, and so on. If you choose the wrong person for a given task, it might be that they are killed, or the whole group is killed. You are responsible for these life and death decisions. You may even think to yourself ahead of time that the difficulty of the objective will mean certain casualties, and even have some idea who in the group isn't going to make it, based on their skills and the task you've assigned them in the mission. But you make your plans to maximize the overall chances, as you see it, of success with the fewest casualties. Anyone else would have chosen differently in some regard or other, for certain. What do you say to those people's families, after the mission is over and if they didn't make it? Don't you bear some responsibility for their deaths, since they trusted you, their leader, with their lives, and you assigned them a task you had a feeling they wouldn't survive?
Maybe my definition of responsibility is different than many people's. I feel that my duty as a moral being is to make choices that result in the least harm and the most good that I can manage. If anything bad happens that I could have prevented by being smarter, kinder, stronger, more willing to accept, more diligent, more proactive, or better in any way, then I feel I failed in that regard. Isn't that what most people think?
I'm stuck, though. It must be possible to be a moral person and a leader both. But how?
Posts: 5509 | Registered: May 1999
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How many are born in families that will pretty much automatically lead to a life of crime and violence, immoral behavior and unbelief?
This is the hard fact, the one that even God can't get around: A leader can only choose for the optimum outcome. There is no way to save everyone.
Posts: 3495 | Registered: Feb 2000
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Gandalph sent Frodo and Sam on a mostly suicidal journey away from their nice comfortable home.
He forced Bilbo out of the shire onto a journey that gave him a year of pain and suffering, and changed his life for ever.
He freed Theoden, but sent him to die along with thousands of others on the Pelenor Fields.
He fought the evil of his world, but he used many others to do so.
Radagast, another Maia, did nothing but lone Gandalph some animals.
Immorality is not about the choices one has, but the choices one makes, and the moral courage to make the tough choices, and not let the devil make them for you.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Sorry I'm posting again, but there was a thought left unsaid and I had to go with my kids. And it impacts on the weight of how moral God is, under the LDS faith.
We all have free will, and we all believe that we existed before birth. Not in the way of Saturday's Warrior, I think that is silly Utah culture, but I believe we knew each other and we are placed in families with individuals who we were more comfortable with in the preexistance. So I believe that our own placement is an act of our free will, of who we are.
But the decision on 'who to save, who to lose' still impacts on the morality of God. And you know what the consequences of "Everyone would be saved" would have been: no free will. Being saved, we would still be innocent. There would have been no evil taint on us. And yet, we would still have been babes in that state: able to live with God but unable to learn.
We chose. God didn't choose. We chose.
And now we are here, the consequences of our choice being that evil happens in this world, and that there is no way to deal with evil without loss. This is, after all, a fallen state.
Morality is balancing and finding the best outcome for people, not because you want power over them, but because you love them.
Posts: 3495 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:Is it possible to be president of a large country and still be a moral human being?
It is only impossible if you believe choosing the better of two bad options makes you immoral. I don't believe this.
Also, there is nothing about this argument that only applies to leaders. We live in a democracy. That means we are ALL responsible for the decisions our nations makes. When we invaded Iraq and killed those innocents, it was not just a black mark on Bush, but also a black mark on every American citizen who consents to being a part of this nation. So, if it's impossible for our leader to be moral, it's equally impossible for ANY of us to be moral.
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
For similar choices on a smaller level, consider the surgeon.
Could you choose to remove a person's leg if in so doing you could save their life? How about a procedure you weren't sure about, or that only might help?
Inaction is also a choice. If you could have made a difference and helped more people but you didn't for fear of the ones who would be hurt anyway, you have still made a moral choice.
Something I liked from Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame series: there's a flashback to a class karl took where the teacher poses one of thos ethical questions. An old, good man and a young punk are stuck in a train track, train is coming, who do you save? The class argued back and forth. The teacher asked Karl and he said it didn't matter. The teacher, shocked, asked him to explain. Karl said what mattered is that you tried to save one of them. Either one. Whichever one could be saved. What mattered was that you tried.
That's what I think of when these kinds of questions come up.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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