Happy Tiananmen Square Massacre Day

[Winston]

Somebody is posting all over the place as usual, and still avoiding this thread like the plague.

[ranskaldan]

mindseye & loinburger:

All in all, I must say I agree with you now that the CCP leadership was callous and rash in ordering the massacre. Of course, we will never know if other methods would have worked [and I don't they think would] - but the point lies in that those were never tried.

There's still the point though of why dispersing the democratic movement in China was necessary in the first place - and that, if all else had failed, Tiananmen in some form (even tear gas) would still have been unavoidable. And that brings us to this:

DF & GePap:

If morals were absolute, then you could speak about "moral fabric" and similar trash. All society can try to do is maintain a certain amount of order and prosperity, but the mot important way to do so is to create laws, a way to change them without violence, and to enforce the current ones.

What kind of society is it exactly that condones sacrificing 100 lives so that one other person may live?

If the way a certain society works means that some people will be miserable (and this applies to any society, including capitalistic democracy) - are you simply going to say - No, making people miserable is immoral - and then take all of society down with it?

[GePap]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by ranskaldan
What kind of society is it exactly that condones sacrificing 100 lives so that one other person may live?
QUOTE]

Sacrifices? what a twisted moral sense. 100 peolple are sick: it is disease, it is nature deciding some pathogen got the better of them. If they die, their deaths are utterly amoral, natural, no different from the millions who die every year from other pathogens. The only moral choice that exist in your whole scenerio is whether society will give itself the ability to deny some individuals a choice, a life, simply for utalitarian purposes. You are not asking people to give up money (nearly a symbol of exchange, a toy we created), you are asking to take someones life.

The fact remains that any sane moral system would leave the choice solely to the one that has the ability to save through his sacrifice. He is not handing out death, nature is doing so. His choice is only of giving life. But you and the action you advocate, that is handing out death, and in that circumstance it is a right you do not have.

[ranskaldan]

Originally posted by GePap


Sacrifices? what a twisted moral sense. 100 peolple are sick: it is disease, it is nature deciding some pathogen got the better of them. If they die, their deaths are utterly amoral, natural, no different from the millions who die every year from other pathogens. The only moral choice that exist in your whole scenerio is whether society will give itself the ability to deny some individuals a choice, a life, simply for utalitarian purposes. You are not asking people to give up money (nearly a symbol of exchange, a toy we created), you are asking to take someones life.

Their deaths are NOT utterly natural, because you were able to prevent them. You have the full power to prevent this, and yet you allow them to die - how is that different from asking these 100 people in turn to take their own lives?

The fact remains that any sane moral system would leave the choice solely to the one that has the ability to save through his sacrifice. He is not handing out death, nature is doing so. His choice is only of giving life. But you and the action you advocate, that is handing out death, and in that circumstance it is a right you do not have.

You are handing out more life than death. That is the point of many political decisions, from fighting Nazi Germany to bombing Iraq. How is this wrong?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Winston
Somebody is posting all over the place as usual, and still avoiding this thread like the plague.

Where is he? I know for a fact that he has posted today.

[DaShi]

I think he's taking my advice. Good for him!

[GePap]

Originally posted by ranskaldan
Their deaths are NOT utterly natural, because you were able to prevent them. You have the full power to prevent this, and yet you allow them to die - how is that different from asking these 100 people in turn to take their own lives?

You are not in full power to prevent it, another person is. That is the point. And yes, their deaths are natural: natural does not mean inevitable. A athogen got the better of their systems, it happens all the time, that is what pathogens do. They had no say in the matter, there is no moral agency at all. That is the vast difference.

You are handing out more life than death. That is the point of many political decisions, from fighting Nazi Germany to bombing Iraq. How is this wrong?

The difference is that disease has no moral agency. Your example is really a choice between 100 deaths from disease vs. one death from murder. One is tragic, the other criminal. Again, the power lies within the one individual who for some reason can, by his act, save them. By you killing him, you usepr his rights, his powers, in a way you have no right to do.

[ranskaldan]

Originally posted by GePap


You are not in full power to prevent it, another person is. That is the point. And yes, their deaths are natural: natural does not mean inevitable. A athogen got the better of their systems, it happens all the time, that is what pathogens do. They had no say in the matter, there is no moral agency at all. That is the vast difference.

The difference is that disease has no moral agency. Your example is really a choice between 100 deaths from disease vs. one death from murder. One is tragic, the other criminal. Again, the power lies within the one individual who for some reason can, by his act, save them. By you killing him, you usepr his rights, his powers, in a way you have no right to do.

If you want to talk about the right to live - then yes, that one person has the right to live, and those one hundred people also have the right to live. In this case the rights of one hundred are greater than the right of one.

What is the original cause of death is irrelevant. The disease may know no morals, but you, as a bystanding human being, do. And since you also have the ability to change the situation, whatever happens in the end becomes your responsibility.

Besides, whether or not the decision to kill him is criminal is irrelevant to whether it is immoral.

[By your logic, the use of a nuke to end WW2 is therefore utterly wrong - even though it prevented the deaths of possibly millions more soldiers. ???]

[Ecthy]

Deng

[GePap]

Originally posted by ranskaldan
What is the original cause of death is irrelevant. The disease may know no morals, but you, as a bystanding human being, do. And since you also have the ability to change the situation, whatever happens in the end becomes your responsibility.

Your argument knows no bounds. In theory, if I know you want to kill someone to save 100, i can kill you pre-emptively, because I know you are about to commit a crime, and by your moral notion, I have the responsibility to stop it. And so forth till the end of time. As I said before, if you care so much, then suck it up when they try you rightfully for murder.

[By your logic, the use of a nuke to end WW2 is therefore utterly wrong - even though it prevented the deaths of possibly millions more soldiers. ???]

I do think the boming of Hiroshima was of questionable morality, specially since now one knows if an invasion of Japan would have been necessary at all. And what if a few nukes had not been enough? What if the Japanese hard liners had taken oevr and said fight to the death? How many cities would you have nuked? As many up to the point you would have killed the same number of Japanese civilians as the number of soldiers who might have died in a theoretical invasion, save one?
Given, of course, tha bombing of cities was "acceptable" in WW2, i find hiroshima only slightly more immoral than the many other mass bombing of cities by all warring parties.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by DaShi
I think he's taking my advice. Good for him!

You mean the advice to suck your ****?

[Boris Godunov]

This thread has proven astonishing, I must say...

I don't see why Fez would hate Hitler, because sure, he murdered a few million, but he did bring economic prosperity to his country (until the prosperity got bombed out of it). But its economics that count, right?

And UR... Maybe you should think about who has a greater interest in foisting propoganda--the media of pretty much the entire world, or the CCP.

[ranskaldan]

Originally posted by GePap


Your argument knows no bounds. In theory, if I know you want to kill someone to save 100, i can kill you pre-emptively, because I know you are about to commit a crime, and by your moral notion, I have the responsibility to stop it. And so forth till the end of time. As I said before, if you care so much, then suck it up when they try you rightfully for murder.

And as I said before, the criminality of an action doesn't necessarily mean it's immoral. Society enforces a lot of immorality in order to survive. And as I also have said, this act wouldn't even be criminal if it's tried before a reasonable jury.

The rights of individual should not extend to jeopardize those of others, and certainly not to the rest of society. This is why we don't allow people to own nukes. And in the same way, the right of life of 1 person does NOT extend to jeopardize the right of life of 100 people.

And as for your counter-example - killing me and preventing me from doing what I'm about to do would also be immoral, since you're causing the deaths of 101 people in order to save 1 person.

I do think the boming of Hiroshima was of questionable morality, specially since now one knows if an invasion of Japan would have been necessary at all. And what if a few nukes had not been enough? What if the Japanese hard liners had taken oevr and said fight to the death? How many cities would you have nuked? As many up to the point you would have killed the same number of Japanese civilians as the number of soldiers who might have died in a theoretical invasion, save one?
Given, of course, tha bombing of cities was "acceptable" in WW2, i find hiroshima only slightly more immoral than the many other mass bombing of cities by all warring parties.

The actual situation in WW2 was of course very complex. Personally I think that a demonstration detonation in a forested area of Japan would have worked equally well.

However, assuming if the detonation in the forest had failed to convince anyone, then the Americans should definitely have gone ahead and nuked a Japanese city. The casualties from the explosion was far less than the number that would likely have died from a long, drawn out campaign.

[You can of course argue that we can't be sure about what would have happened - but we can't be sure about anything in the future. How do you suppose we're going to make any decisions at all unless we consider the most likely outcomes of each decision?]

[Mao]

Just out of curiousity, there's been much talk about students in this thread (I haven't read the entire thread I admit), but has anyone expressed any sympathy towards the soldiers? I have sympathy for both the troops and students, but none for the PLA brass and the ringleaders of the students (some of them anyway), they's dispicible (sp?) at least to me...and I should know, living a block away from the Square and all...

[GePap]

Originally posted by ranskaldan
And as I said before, the criminality of an action doesn't necessarily mean it's immoral. Society enforces a lot of immorality in order to survive. And as I also have said, this act wouldn't even be criminal if it's tried before a reasonable jury.

The rights of individual should not extend to jeopardize those of others, and certainly not to the rest of society. This is why we don't allow people to own nukes. And in the same way, the right of life of 1 person does NOT extend to jeopardize the right of life of 100 people.

You keep talkig about jeaporising the lives of 100 people: no one is doing such a thing. Those 100 people have a disease and will die of it. Only one man had the ability to save them (the man who alone can lead to the cure), and thus, as i have been saying all along, only he can chose whether by his own sacrfice, the 100 people will die. This is the last time I will say it, but you have no moral claim to be a "savior". You are not the keeper of those 100 people. If they die, it is a tragic but natural event. If the man sacrifices himself, then he is a hero. But if you act like you claim you have the ability to, then you are a murderer. This is a point of moral agency. You have constructed a scenerio in which only one individual has the power to save, AND IT IS NOT YOU! You do not have the right to decide for the one person who does have the power what he should do. Even morally, all you can do is try to convince the one man with power, to be a supplicant and ask for his sacrifice. But you have NO MORAL AUTHORITY to kill him, PERIOD. In the excersise you have constructed, only one man has moral agency, and is thus his choice. You can show us no evidence whatsovere that the death of the 100 will be worse for society as a whole than the death of that one, becuase yo can not show us that in the end, any of those 100 will contrbute anymore to society as a whole (a huge mass of humanity millions and billiomns strong) than that one man. And since you can not show us at all, nor even correctly specualte the plus of minuses fo society of the act you advocate, you can not call upon yourself the mantle of the defendor of the common good.

So in short: in the example you have given us, only one individual has the moral agency to decide the outcme, and that indivisual is the one who through the use of his body could save them. Only that one individal can, both legally and morally, make the decision. You have no right, moral nor legal, to userp his choice.