posted
I wonder why anyone would call killing wrong. I assume that every piece of meat on my plate represents a kill. Killing people is wrong? Well no, murder is wrong, there are many good reasons to kill someone.
I ask because it was stated by someone that killing a person in war is 'always wrong' while I would say it is almost always the right thing to do.
Elsewhere it was remarked "How much bonus would you need to kill someone." or some such noise. Well I got no bonus at all, I went in fat and desperate and came out lean and mean, bonus enough for me.
Every one of us kills to live, vegans or virgins or whatever included, the whole of our society functions on meat and slaughter, are all the processors at the to-fu factory vegans? How bought the guy who drove it to the store?
We make war and stand ready to make war for the survival of our nation. I remember the quote because it was drummed into me, but for the life of me I cannot remember who said it "You have your lives because rough men stand ready to do violence on your behalf."
Your lives! All the love and joy, all the cats and dogs, your car and your wife, every good thing you possess is paid for in blood. There is a time when you realize this and shoulder the knowledge....then you are a grown-up.
Posts: 117 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
There are no absolute moral standards. At least according to me. As such, nothing is wrong per se.
Posts: 3060 | Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
I would say the killing of a human being always represents a moral failing. If you kill in self defense, you may have committed no moral wrong, but the person who you killed did.
I'd be surprised if someone could come up with an instance where someone actively kills someone that doesn't involve a moral wrong somewhere in the situation.
posted
No, you are grown up when you learn to distinguish between empty rationalizations fed to you by someone who needs you to do what they say and the reality that no one person in that type of world would be strong enough to live any sort of meaningful life alone.
Violence is not always wrong, but it isn't usually the right answer....and condemning random violence is what allows us to have our lives as we know it.
If you were right, then there wouldn't be a life worth living at all.
posted
If two people were starving to death in a cabin cut off from supply in the winter, one killing the other to eat him would seem to be a ethically neutral.
A struggle to determine the fittest and then survival. Either one dies or both die.
posted
Violence is what holds the wolves at bay, Imagine a totally passive population, tomorrow we put some do-gooder well meaning drug into the water and we all go down and 'don't study war no more!'
If you are an attractive woman you would be the sexual slave of a brutal man in a matter of months. If you are a man you would be a laborer, a 'drawer of water and hewer of wood.' If you could not work you would die, and you would probably be castrated, unless you had some trait that was desired to breed true. Blond hair and Blue eyes might get scarce if efforts were not made to keep some bloodlines.
This is simple truth...the bones of this civilization are made of the resolute willingness to kill to protect it.
Posts: 117 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I think that JH is saying Vegan's could not practice their particular diet without the support of a bunch of meat eating red necks, so they are on the same moral level anyway. Anyone who eats meat is on the same moral level of the butcher as I believe Twain once said.
quote:If two people were starving to death in a cabin cut off from supply in the winter, one killing the other to eat him would seem to be a ethically neutral.
A struggle to determine the fittest and then survival. Either one dies or both die.
Nope. The one killing is putting his need before the other. Even if both agree to draw straws, the winner is putting his need before the other.
quote:If you are an attractive woman you would be the sexual slave of a brutal man in a matter of months. If you are a man you would be a laborer, a 'drawer of water and hewer of wood.' If you could not work you would die, and you would probably be castrated, unless you had some trait that was desired to breed true. Blond hair and Blue eyes might get scarce if efforts were not made to keep some bloodlines.
This is simple truth...the bones of this civilization are made of the resolute willingness to kill to protect it.
And each of those would come about because of someone else's willingness to commit immoral acts.
posted
If one died and the other ate him that would be ethically neutral. If one killed the other, it is most assuredly not.
Society is based upon cooperation, not violence. Violence is always an option, but it is counterproductive in most modern situations.
I was mugged when I was in the Army, and I fought back. My using violence wasn't wrong, but the violence done to me was wrong. I had done nothing wrong or offensive, they were just preying on a lone soldier. Unfortunately for them I was more capable than most of defending myself.
Very few things are all good or all bad. Without the means to fight back I would be dead now, but if I take that to the extreme that same capacity for violence within myself could be extremely destructive....to myself and to society at large.
posted
Also, do you actually read entire posts before responding? My premise is that the intentional killing of a human being is a strong (I'd say definite) indication that a moral wrong has been committed. I gave explicit examples where the person doing the killing is NOT the one who committed the moral wrong, and the person being killed was.
Seriously, learn take a minute to examine the posts you're responding to in order to be sure you're making some sense.
posted
Every killing is unique, there are no blanket statements like, wrong on general principle, everybody is going to die, each death deserves its own dignity and uniqueness, do not trivialize them with generalities.
Even these poor heathens we are killing over there. They have their structure of privaliges and rewards and duty and obligation and I am sure a whole mass of stuff that they are trying to protect. They are suicidaly eager to do us in to save their way of life. Why do they lose?
Its like what was said above, our society is better at cooperation, realizing person potential, we have them because we have air, sea and logistical power, intel and support. They are not less dedicated, the society they are trying to protect cannot help them as much as ours can help our violent men. So they die and die, 50 to 1 or more and our way of life will become their way of life, and then we will not have to fight about whose way of life is better, there will just be the one.
"Can't we all just get along?"
NO they decided that they could not contenece our way of life to be, so they die and die and so does the tribal brutality they represent.
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posted
Killing a person is always (in any normal human circumstances) wrong, even in the name of trying to protect yourself or someone else.
This is because the moral cost of taking a life is so high that only in the rarest and most unusual circumstances would the benefits gained from it be so direct and so great that it would warrant such a cost. What's more, people lack the judgement necessary to see the future and know whether any given case is one of those rare exceptions where the benefits of killing outweigh the moral costs. Thus, because those exceptions are so rare and you can't know when you are in one of those exceptions, it is always the wrong decision to kill.
For instance, if someone breaks into a house and attacks the child there with a knife, it is possible he will kill the child - and thus by killing him first you save the child. But it is also possible he would not kill the child - and thus killing him would be unneccesary. You don't know which case it is, and it is not right to destroy a life on the gamble that he was going to kill, unless you can be certain, which you cannot. The correct solution is to aim for a compromise in which you might save both lives - in all but a few extreme cases, those compromises can be found, whether they are shooting a leg, giving in to demands, etc.
Now, if we were omniscient, then we could know when killing would be for the greater good, and then it would be okay to do it. But since we don't, we must follow the rule that killing is wrong - we must respect the right to life.
As for animals, I'm not really convinced they are people. Nor plants. So, I don't think killing them is nearly as wrong.
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
Edit: This was a response to Jar Head's last post.
I think you're trying to have an argument no one else is actually participating in. I don't think anyone has said violence isn't sometimes necessary. What they are saying is that it represents a failing, which you seem to acknowledge in your last post.
quote: For instance, if someone breaks into a house and attacks the child there with a knife, it is possible he will kill the child - and thus by killing him first you save the child. But it is also possible he would not kill the child - and thus killing him would be unneccesary. You don't know which case it is, and it is not right to destroy a life on the gamble that he was going to kill, unless you can be certain, which you cannot. The correct solution is to aim for a compromise in which you might save both lives - in all but a few extreme cases, those compromises can be found, whether they are shooting a leg, giving in to demands, etc.
I would kill him for breaking into my house, that is enough chance to take on any stranger.
Oh, is all that rattling on about Bean Counter again? I guess I won the argument and can go to bed now.
God that boy pushes your buttons... what is it about what he says that makes such hostility, So he has the arrogance of a new buck, so you have to fling mud at him? Thats all it is and you should be ashamed of the need to tear a man down for standing tall. Posts: 117 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Again, no one is really arguing with you, although people may disagree about specifics.
And BC is not standing tall. He's mischaracterizing what people are saying and refusing to deal with any substantive responses in anything but a glib manner.
And he called me liberal. It's not that I'm insulted, it's just proof he's not that bright.
quote: I would say the killing of a human being always represents a moral failing. If you kill in self defense, you may have committed no moral wrong, but the person who you killed did.
Nifty idea Dagonee. I like it (the logic and reasoning, not the killing. )
I would say that the killing of a human being is never right. It can be justified but cannot be right (or morally desirable).
Posts: 4393 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
Actually I disagree with Xap (big suprise there, huh?) in that I would shoot him if I could. He broke into MY house and threatened MY child? I place far more value on my childs life than on his, regardless of who he is or what he may or may not do.
No problem with violence there, although it would make me sick afterwards. I would error on the side of caution towards my child rather than an intruder.
But it wouldn't be my first choice, and I wouldn't shoot him outside my house for running through my yard on the CHANCE he might someday do violence to me or mine.
It would be a failure of the system to ever get to that point, so the chances aren't good for it to happen.
What it wouldn't be is easy, or guilt-free; but it probably would be necessary given that type of event.
The fact that it is the exception rather than the rule proves that in most cases society ISN"T based on violence, except as a last resource.
posted
In Ender's game, everyone saw it fit for Ender to kill off the Hive Queen and all of her kind. But later on, they realized that she wasn't a threat and labeled Ender as the Xenocide.
Maybe killing is necessary in certain situations, but if you understand the reasons and cirumstances surrounding the situation, a non-violent solution can always be found.
Posts: 2756 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:Actually I disagree with Xap (big suprise there, huh?) in that I would shoot him if I could. He broke into MY house and threatened MY child? I place far more value on my childs life than on his, regardless of who he is or what he may or may not do.
I think most people place more value on the life of family members, their own life, and the life of innocents. However, I think this is based on emotion and attachments more than on what is actually fair or objectively right. I think God, the only truly fair being I can imagine, would weigh the two lives equally.
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quote:Maybe killing is necessary in certain situations, but if you understand the reasons and cirumstances surrounding the situation, a non-violent solution can always be found.
I don't agree, depending on how you're defining "circumstances surrounding the situation." If someone is coming at you with a knife, and you're half his size holding a gun, you better shoot him in the chest if you want to live. You're choices are basically die or kill.
posted
I'd think there was something biological about the drive to protect those who are related to you.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
I have no position to defend, when I answer glibly, you have been answered and refuted. It is not my way to waste words, when the balloon is popped why keep poking it?
You are not a liberal we all get it, sheesh I made the classic blunder
'All those who are liberals are wrong, but not all those who are wrong are liberals, I see now!'
I know what you mean about reverencing death JH, the practices of the native Americans concerning the hunt come to mind. Deciding each death is wrong is just a way of avoiding the fact of each individual death and feeling like you have faced it.
quote: Your death is you greatest adviser, when you need guidance turn to it and ask, and it will say I am not going to take you yet ... or you will have your final gesture with death
quote:'All those who are liberals are wrong, but not all those who are wrong are liberals, I see now!'
And yet you fail to realize that the whole point here is I wasn't wrong, even by your standards - at least the standards you used in your response to me. Sheesh.
posted
I am not asking what God would do...even though there are plenty of quotes I could use to prove you wrong... ....
I am saying that the lives of people safe in bed, not harming anyone, mean more to me than the life of an armed intruder.
If you want to play with the lives of your family, go ahead and do it.
I will shoot him, and spend the rest of my days regretting it...but I would regret the possible alternatives more. I am not willing to entrust the safety of my family to a man who is armed, and has already demonstrated his willingness to harm others by his very presence in my house.
As I said, I would rather see him outside and call the police.....that is why violence isn't the end-all be-all here in the US....at least not yet.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
It's not your style being imitated so much as a seeming inability to understand the posts of others, or at least to reply in a manner reflecting such understanding.
quote:If two people were starving to death in a cabin cut off from supply in the winter, one killing the other to eat him would seem to be a ethically neutral.
There is actually a case about this. HerePosts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
First case I read in Criminal Law. I'm not averse to a legal defense of justification either excusing or mitigating the criminal liability in such a situation, but I wouldn't consider such an act moral.
quote: I don't agree, depending on how you're defining "circumstances surrounding the situation." If someone is coming at you with a knife, and you're half his size holding a gun, you better shoot him in the chest if you want to live. You're choices are basically die or kill.
By circumstances, I mean the motives for coming at someone with a knife. I'm sure that the two people in this situation could come up with some compromise that doesn't involve killing.
I guess I'm trying to say that deep down inside, no one kills just for the pleasure of it - everyone has some motive that they feel justifies it.
Of course I may be blatantly wrong.
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