Seasons

See, you're actually agreeing with me. Killing can be murder, it can be manslaughter, it can be accidental, it can be for food, it can be a nuisance insect. It's still killing. This isn't to say that these actions are equivalent, just that they have a commonality.

Are you distinguishing killing humans from killing animals? It's ending a life either way. The way the life is ended and the kind of life determines the value judgment we place upon the action.

I still can not agree. The old defense of "it is no different than...".

Not to pick on you, Prob, but I think you are missing the point Psimagus made about pity and compassion not equaling acceptance. I don't think anyone is suggesting it is a defense to evil that there are common human elements in both "good" and "evil" and they exist on a continuum. Black and white is rare. Most things are various shades of gray.

Furthermore, just because good acts and evil acts can be done by the same person doesn't mean we should excuse the evil acts. It just means that we should recognize the common elements and try to understand the big picture of human nature. If we don't try to understand how these act happen and why, we will never stop them. People don't stop doing evil because they see others punished and are afraid. People stop doing neutral or minimally "bad" acts out of fear (maybe). For example, if I get caught speeding I may start to pay attention to the limit. Do you think that mother who abused and killed her child wake up and said, "Hey, no one has ever gotten into trouble by beating a child to death. It must be OK. I think I'll kill the 5 year old."? Do you think punishing that woman will stop all child abuse? I am not saying let her get away with it and not to put her in an institution for the rest of her life. I am saying look closer and see what else is going on so we can try to prevent other people from doing things like that.

If you write it all off as "evil" and separate the good guys from the bad, it becomes a matter of hunting down and killing the bad guys instead of trying to change the bigger factors that contribute and allow the bad acts to continue. It's not us against them. It's us against us. It's also us for us.

That is not to say do nothing. It is to say, be honest and see what is really there, and deal with it instead of pretending there are good guys and bad guys and if we just killed the devil all would be well in the world. That kind of thinking leads to witch hunts, wars and terrorism. You can't kill evil without killing everyone. You have to fight evil by accepting it's part of us all, and seeing how we should deal with it. The battle is internal as well as external, and without love and compassion we have already lost.

There is also redemption, even for in one who repeatedly commits great evil. The thing is it requires sincere repentance and exceptional commitment to change (and perhaps an elusive element we call "grace"). Redemption does not mean there are not consequences for past evil. It means trying to change future behavior and trying to make amends, where possible. Redemption is internal, a transformation and acceptance that can take place while one is in prison, or as one dies. It is not just saying "I'm sorry" and getting a "get out of jail free" card.

There is also great power in forgiveness. That does not mean allowing people to keep hurting you. It does not mean you do not seek a balance or justice (not vengeance, justice). It does not mean you do not hold others accountable. It means you let go inside yourself and transform beyond the pain. It means you can see the other as human and not simply evil. It means you let go of anger and pain and look the other in the eye and say "You have done wrong. You may still do wrong. I hope you never do it again. I cannot excuse what you did. But I forgive you." and let justice (or God since you believe that way) take care of it.

Redemption and forgiveness are not for whimps. Acceptance and integration of the shadow is not giving in and just being evil. It's not about avoidance and excuses. Seeing that there is potential for great good and great evil in everyone and seeing that there are not "good guys" and "bad guys" (though undoubtedly there is great evil done) is a brutal honesty that puts responsibility on you to seethe truth about yourself and others and says "This is so. This is human. This is you, not as you want to be but as you are. Now what are you going to do about it?"

Whether I want to accept the truth of my body, my mind, my habits or my potentials, it would do no good to accept only the good side. That simply isn't the whole truth. And some of these things are labels. And sometimes we make tough choices you can't weasel out of by denying the hypothetical, choices that effect others, choices that may help some and hurt others.

This one is for anyone (Ms. Problem hates hypotheticals ).

Say you are standing on the street and a car is speeding out of control. You see that it will hit 5 children in the road if you don't stop it. Next to you is a heavy man. You are not heavy enough to stop the car for sure by jumping in front of it, but the big guy is enough to slow the car down and save the kids. If you push the man in front of the car you can save the chilcren. Do you do it?

Please do not evaluate whether or not this is realistic. That's not the point. The point is if you had the choice to make, 1 life or 5, can you do it? Does it matter if it's pushing a button to reroute a train or pushing someone next to you? What if you just stand there and watch someone else make the choice? Does choosing to do nothing mean you had no choice?

All I can say is insects are bugs, a spider is a bug..but it is not an insect.

!.I would sacrifice myself by pushing as many kids as I could out of the way. It is all I could do morally
2. It would probably do no good to kill baby Hitler, he did not do all that himself. The society, conditions etc allowed him to rise to power. If not him maybe Hess. or someone else would have been there to rise to the evil occasion.
3. The lack of pity. Doesn't mean I am out to kill or maim
4. Yes, everyone is capable of great evil. I think that is why we can not have tolerance for it.
5 If all actions are neither good nor bad. Where does humanity draw the line?
6. Understanding and reason can come without pity. You can help someone without having pity for them.

Are you distinguishing killing humans from killing animals? It's ending a life either way YES I am distinguishing killing humans from killing animals..YES beyond a shadow of a doubt!

So...it's not killing if you kill an animal? It's only killing if you kill a human?

2. It would probably do no good to kill baby Hitler, he did not do all that himself. The society, conditions etc allowed him to rise to power. If not him maybe Hess. or someone else would have been there to rise to the evil occasion.

Funny you should say that - I just watched the movie Butterfly Effect 2 the other day, and the basic premise (like the original,) is a man who can go back and change things that have gone wrong in his past (girlfriend dying in a car wreck, business deals going bad, etc.)
The outcome predictably is an escalating nightmare as every change he makes just makes the resulting situation even worse.
I hope I'd have the courage to refuse to change anything, if I had the opportunity. But little Adolph in his cradle's a tempting target for a little clandestine infanticide nonetheless.

I must just keep telling myself that it's not my place to change the past, present or future if the means involved are (or might be) bad in themselves. No good end ever justifies evil means. Even if more people end up dying that way, it is not my place to make the decision. Maybe that's a cop out, but I am a fallible and partial human being, and as such at least as able to be corrupted by the exercise of such responsibility as anyone else.

Going back to Bev's point-switching analogy - I ought to leave the points in whichever position I found them, even if that killed the 5. In fact I fear I probably wouldn't be able to resist the urge to switch them to position B if they were set to position A, and only kill the 1. But I regard that as a weakness in me. What if that one turned out to be a pioneering doctor who would have invented a cure for AIDS and saved millions of lives had he survived? Or if one of the 5 turned into another Hitler and killed millions? Whatever choice I made, I'm not sure I'd be able to live with myself afterwards, so I hope it remains a purely hypothetical situation.

It's not my place to evaluate the relative worth of other people's lives, and I do my best to refuse to participate in any process that demands I should do so, whether that's in Baghdad, Darfur, or closer to home.

All I can say is insects are bugs, a spider is a bug..but it is not an insect.

It seems like you are trying to avoid the fallacy of the undistributed middle there. It is true that the following syllogism would be a fallacy:

All insects are bugs
all spiders are bugs
Therefore all spiders are insects.

I love the logic lesson, but (and please don't think I am being rude) how does that relate to the moral dilemma? I am not asking whether or not killing one to save many is the same as killing one for no reason. I am not saying that All who kill humans are murders, and soldiers kill humans so soldiers are murderers. I am asking if there are times we should kill one to save many, and if making the choice not to kill one in those circumstances is not the same as choosing to kill many.

You keep wanting to change the problem. The point of the moral dilemma is you must choose. You are too far away to save any children. All you can do is push the big guy, killing him, or let the children die. The car is moving too fast, and you cannot move fast enough to stop it. You are not big enough to stop it. If you don't push the big guy, you are killing the children by not acting.

Let me make one even harder to wriggle out of. You are shopping and an armed maniac comes in and takes everyone hostage. For some reason he takes a shine to you but in his twisted way wants to torment you. He lines up 5 other shoppers and tells you, "I will either shoot all five of them or one. If you pick one to die, I kill that one and let the other 4 go. If you won't pick, I'll kill all 5." What do you do?

Going back to Bev's point-switching analogy - I ought to leave the points in whichever position I found them, even if that killed the 5. In fact I fear I probably wouldn't be able to resist the urge to switch them to position B if they were set to position A, and only kill the 1. But I regard that as a weakness in me. What if that one turned out to be a pioneering doctor who would have invented a cure for AIDS and saved millions of lives had he survived? Or if one of the 5 turned into another Hitler and killed millions? Whatever choice I made, I'm not sure I'd be able to live with myself afterwards, so I hope it remains a purely hypothetical situation.

Your position seems similar to Prob's. Doesn't such logic, applied to our present time as opposed to messing with the past, promote a sort of apathy bordering on negligence? If all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing, isn't doing nothing the same as letting evil win? We may never know whether the acts we do will have the results we hope, but aren't we morally bound to fight the good fight (so to speak)?

Your position seems similar to Prob's. Doesn't such logic, applied to our present time as opposed to messing with the past, promote a sort of apathy bordering on negligence?

Probably. I don't claim to be able to rationalize it. A lose-lose situation always ends in a loss. And without perfect knowledge, we can't accurately evaluate the lesser of two evils.
In the long term we can no more predict the effect on the future, or make any quantative assessment of Net happiness or pain that results from either choice, if one person dies or a million people die. And without that perfect knowledge, I am not competent to make the call. In the hostage situation, I'd offer myself, but I wouldn't choose other victims.
Perhaps if I took death to be a bit more of a big deal, I would feel differently, but I have a fairly unshakable faith that death is not the end. Certainly the prospect doesn't bother me (I'm rather looking forward to it actually - I hope it's not too quick to savour the experience. I'll be so pissed off if I die in my sleep and miss it!)

If all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing, isn't doing nothing the same as letting evil win? We may never know whether the acts we do will have the results we hope, but aren't we morally bound to fight the good fight (so to speak)?

Yes, we must take a stand against evil - doing nothing is not an option. But I will never take anything other than an entirely non-violent stand nonetheless. Fortunately we don't have time travel, or bumping off a few infant dictators might just prove too tempting for me, and we have no perfect foresight to know what the future will bring.
It's not an entirely rational thing, and I wouldn't necessarily judge anyone else who chooses to admit the notion that violence is sometimes necessary in extremis. But I don't.

You are too far away to save any children. I could only call to the big guy, jump in front of the car, hope he would take the cue and follow me in a suicide attempt.
apathy bordering on negligence. Sorry, I try not to be apathetic. I do still think that human life is precious. I don't kill animals for sport or fun. In fact I would die for my dog, and I am having to put down a couple of cats, and that is almost killing me. BUT human kind is still my kind. I have every moral obligation to do the best I can toward them. I don't know that I could switch the train without derailing it..killing even more.

So...it's not killing if you kill an animal? It's only killing if you kill a human? It is only MURDER, if you kill a human.


All insects are bugs
all spiders are bugs
Therefore all spiders are insects.
I meant that for the murder vs killing, not the jumping in front of a car. And yes that would kill me, but that is my option.

Ah, but murder is more than killing. It implies prior planning TO kill. So you've placed a condition on the killing, other than just the victim being human. Again, you're confusing the action (killing) with the context (an innocent human).

Would it be murder if I decided to kill and eat my neighbor's beloved cat? The children who loved the cat would think so, even if the law did not.