Real life question of morality.
- Thread starter Oniw17
- Start date
If you are an american get out your gun and shoot him a few times.
Oniw17 said:
Run away and go crying to mommy!
The thing I think is interesting here is; "...is it alright to..." What does "alright" mean exactly? Legal according to the law? Or just okay if you want to? Or ...what?
What exactly are you asking? Morality?
Baron Max
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
We all have the right to defend ourselves. But in order to maintain a community in which violence is perceived only as a last resort in exceptional circumstances, we also have an obiligation to defend ourselves in the least violent way that accomplished the task effectively.
If the attacker is a strapping young thug with an attitude and a knife, then you're justified in shooting him if you have a gun handy. If he's just an unarmed drunk with the musculature of a construction worker but the heart of a family man and you have some decent training in martial arts or even self defense for female office workers, you can probably accomplish the job without doing any major physical harm.
If it's a relative... Well we have to grant families the right to establish their own codes of behavior. If a husband and wife are reasonably well matched--perhaps by the occasional judicious use of a frying pan--and find some release in physical combat, I disagree strongly with the State of Virginia's neoliberal P.C. police doctrine, "One of you has to go to jail tonight."
If a crazy person is going around attacking people, we have two things to worry about. One is that he'll hurt us. We have to defend against the attack. If he lands the first blow we can't go back and prevent it, so it's likely that simply being more on guard will prevent falling for a sucker punch a second time. If he's really strong and wily, perhaps an experienced fighter from his days as a drunken hard hat, then maybe we have to engage in fisticuffs or jiujitsu for self defense.
The second concern is that he'll get himself in big trouble. If this happens often enough that we can clearly remember the last time, it's statistically highly likely that he'll eventually hurt somebody really bad, like a child or a pet. If he's crazy enough he may go outside and hurt someone who's not a family member and will have no compunctions about calling the police. At that point he'll probably end up in the care of the state for his own good and everybody else's. And your family assets may be drained off in restitution by the lawyers who run this country.
The issue isn't "hitting back." The issue is how to care for a family member who has gone around the bend. As I've mentioned many times, we are a pack-social species and that means we have a biologically programmed responsibility to take care of our pack mates as they lose their ability to take care of themselves.
If the attacker is a strapping young thug with an attitude and a knife, then you're justified in shooting him if you have a gun handy. If he's just an unarmed drunk with the musculature of a construction worker but the heart of a family man and you have some decent training in martial arts or even self defense for female office workers, you can probably accomplish the job without doing any major physical harm.
If it's a relative... Well we have to grant families the right to establish their own codes of behavior. If a husband and wife are reasonably well matched--perhaps by the occasional judicious use of a frying pan--and find some release in physical combat, I disagree strongly with the State of Virginia's neoliberal P.C. police doctrine, "One of you has to go to jail tonight."
If a crazy person is going around attacking people, we have two things to worry about. One is that he'll hurt us. We have to defend against the attack. If he lands the first blow we can't go back and prevent it, so it's likely that simply being more on guard will prevent falling for a sucker punch a second time. If he's really strong and wily, perhaps an experienced fighter from his days as a drunken hard hat, then maybe we have to engage in fisticuffs or jiujitsu for self defense.
The second concern is that he'll get himself in big trouble. If this happens often enough that we can clearly remember the last time, it's statistically highly likely that he'll eventually hurt somebody really bad, like a child or a pet. If he's crazy enough he may go outside and hurt someone who's not a family member and will have no compunctions about calling the police. At that point he'll probably end up in the care of the state for his own good and everybody else's. And your family assets may be drained off in restitution by the lawyers who run this country.
The issue isn't "hitting back." The issue is how to care for a family member who has gone around the bend. As I've mentioned many times, we are a pack-social species and that means we have a biologically programmed responsibility to take care of our pack mates as they lose their ability to take care of themselves.
Fraggle Rocker said:
Run screaming to mommy!
Fraggle Rocker said:
Run screaming to mommy!
Fraggle Rocker said:
Use violence? Oh, my, no! Surely you're not suggesting such a thing, are you? And why won't running to mommy work? ..then you won't have to use that dirty, nasty, yukky violence-stuff.
Fraggle Rocker said:
Most pack animals leave the weak/disabled behind ...the pack is too important to waste time on a weak/disabled member that can't hold it's own in the pack structure. Yes, there are a few, but they are, by far, the exception to the rule.
The really interesting part of your post is that if we're going to be advocating violence, then there's no stopping point ...there are just too many variables, and too many different types of individuals. So if you're going to advocate non-violence, then you have to truly advocate non-violence ...you can't just say things like "Well, don't hurt him a lot, just hurt him a little bit." Once you step over the line, you're lost as an advocate of non-violence!
Baron Max
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Dogs are the only other animals to have adapted their packs to civilized life, even though they didn't invent it. Having long ago left a survival-obsessed life behind, so that the impact of the aged and infirm on their food supply and their ability to outrun lions is negligible, they appear to regard their pack mates who are declining in health with affection and perhaps even gratitude. The kids snuggle up to them, the young would-be alphas exempt them from ritual combat, and the leaders let them eat in peace and retain their favorite sleeping spots. Dogs seem to validate Maslow's Hierarchy by being the second species to achieve an advanced level.Baron Max said:
I suppose we pacifists are as inscrutable to you as you shoot-first-negotiate-later types are to us. I'm not Gandhi, I'm only a rational libertarian with an admitted distaste for violence including the Three Stooges and boxing matches. We libertarians have a perfectly consistent and easily maintained doctrine about violence: No one has the right to initiate it, and everyone has the right to defend himself against it.
Of course life is full of grey areas. When someone who is known to have beaten people up for fun or the contents of their wallets is walking toward you, it's not easy to decide what to do if you're not sure he's unarmed and you don't have a black belt. But if someone of ordinary capability throws a punch at you my moral paradigm presents no dilemma. You block the next one and if he doesn't stop you try to hurt him enough to make him stop. You can also try to run; even if you can't escape he'll probably be winded enough to be less of a threat. Of course if you can run just far enough to secure the help of a group to restrain him while someone calls the authorities that would be an ideal solution. But in today's America the group probably won't help and the authorities will probably hold you for questioning and make you miss a day of work, then let him sue you for defamation of character.
Violence is a moral dilemma at the national level. If you truly believe that the Slobbovians are planning to attack you so they can rape your women, enslave your men, murder your children, defile your churches, burn your farms, and eat your dogs, can you afford to wait until they actually initiate the first act of violence before you take the moral high ground and respond with a purely defensive act?
We can disagree about that. You probably see nothing wrong with erring on the side of caution and nuking their whole country preemptively because nobody will miss the nasty buggers anyway. I would rely on negotiation, infiltration, propaganda and a really well-focused defense force that is not dissipated in somebody else's civil war in an opportunistic attempt to secure extra petroleum resources so I can drive to work in a delivery truck disguised as a station wagon for Klingons. I would also question the motives of the advisors who tell me the Slobbovians are going to attack if they seem to all be buddies with the people who sell fuel to the Klingon wannabes. I would also wonder why none of our allies have incurred the wrath of the Slobbovians even though they seem to espouse the same values we do, and perhaps discover that there are some assholes in my government who resonate with the assholes on the Slobbovian side. Or even collude with them, holding hands for photo ops while they tiptoe through the tulips together. (Why has that village idiot not been deposed for treason?)
Judging from the ratio of the length of the description of the hit-em-first strategy to the length of the pacifist strategy, the problem with pacifism seems to be that it requires a lot of thinking, investigation, and planning. You have to do the work right away.
Violence doesn't require any planning, you can just pull out your gun and start shooting. The problem with violence is the aftermath, when you've destroyed half your planet.
Pacifists are patient planners and planning is hard work. Advocates of violence are the impatient ones who put off the hard work as long as possible. It looks like the timeless conflict between the mature and the immature.
Fraggle Rocker said:
Yeah, y'all must be patient .....ol' Jesus and the Gang proposed exactly what you're suggesting some 2,000 years ago, and ain't much changed since then, has it? Oh, I mean except for the weapons of war getting more and more powerful, and the distance to the enemy getting further and further.
Fraggle, your way is simply unworkable in the real world where everyone is NOT the same as you. I.e., 10,000 pacifists' peace and harmony can be undone almost completely by ONE heavily armed, aggressive killer.
You can't win, Fraggle, unless you stoop to his level of aggression. Oh, yeah, I read your bullshit about self-defense and not hurting the enemy too much! ...LOL! But even if you defend yourselves a little bit using violence, then your ideals of pacifism and non-violence are nothing but a sham, a bunch of words with no meaning or importance. It's just talk that sounds good in the company of friends and fine wine ...as long as reality is kept in check behind closed, locked, bolted doors!
Baron Max
Violence:
"no one has the right to inititate it"
Rights are for structures and doctrines and stuff.
Ultimately, rights are granted by physics.
Physically, just about anyone can initiate violence.
It certainly may be quite disgusting, distasteful, and just flat out wrong.
Unfortunately, that doesn't matter the least bit.
A killer kills. A sociopath hurts people.
Such is the way.
"no one has the right to inititate it"
Rights are for structures and doctrines and stuff.
Ultimately, rights are granted by physics.
Physically, just about anyone can initiate violence.
It certainly may be quite disgusting, distasteful, and just flat out wrong.
Unfortunately, that doesn't matter the least bit.
A killer kills. A sociopath hurts people.
Such is the way.