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What essentially is Good and Evil?

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
What I'm trying to get across is that you can't say that not shooting the girl and letting those thousands of people die is automatically the best option like steerpike suggests.

I didn't say it was the "best" option. There is no good option in the hypothetical. But not shooting the little girl is the least evil option (in fact, it is not evil, whereas shooting her is an evil act (and people could argue, I suppose, how evil on the scale of evilness). People may differ on whether they consider that "best" or not.
 

Queshire

Auror
Before you are responsible for your own actions, you are responsible for your own choices, as action follows choice.

EDIT: If I amend my previous post to read less evil instead of best, my argument would remain the same.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
I cannot, however, envision a situation wherein shooting an innocent girl becomes the required moral choice, primarily because you are responsible for your own actions, and not for the actions of the mad bomber's.

Yes. This is it exactly. At the end of the day, if you do not shoot, you leave all of the blood on the hands of the bomber. You are not responsible for what he does, or for the situation he has put all of the innocents into. If you do shoot, you've now inserted yourself deliberately into the situation and made the choice to be responsible for the death of that child.
 

Queshire

Auror
Oh, and I'd like to point out that what you're doing right there is clearly justifying/rationalizing/whatevering the deaths of those thousands. It is your choice that resulted in those thousands of people dying, whether or not you actually built the bomb.

EDIT: As the saying goes; All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
 
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Yes, I think that is true. It at least puts the soldiers are a certain moral footing with respect to one another. Unfortunately, it seems that war is often won by beating the will from the civilian population. Trained soldiers, mercenaries, and the like may continue to fight for some time, but if the population of a country loses any desire to support the a war, it is harder to proceed for long.

I'm sure Dresden must have been horrific. How many people were killed? Thirty thousand? The majority must have been innocent civilians.

I'm not sure of the numbers but it was horrific certainly. I can't find the interview which is a big shame, but in this one he talks about Dresden briefly at the start. Really interesting while we are on the subject of warfare.
 
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Queshire

Auror
I don't get the /10char thing, but yes, you are responsible for your choices. It's simple, you choose to shoot the girl the girl dies, those people live, you choose to not shoot the girl, she lives and those people die. That there's a mad bomber resonsible for the whole mess in the first place is circumstance that justify whichever choice you choose.
 

Ireth

Myth Weaver
@Queshire: The forum forbids people to post anything that's under ten characters long; the /10char upped Steerpike's character count from three to ten so he could post properly.
 

Queshire

Auror
ah, gotcha. Anyways, the existence of the mad bomber either doesn't matter in which case both are evil, or it justifies either case in which case they're both non-evil. As has been argued against me earlier, you can't have it affect only one side or another for your benefit.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
If you don't want to call it a false dichotomy due to a technicality that's fine, but I think it's clear that, as the hypothetical situation is specifically outlined, it's not neccesary to choose one over the other.

Queshire, what I think we're trying to get at, is that you should make a good-faith effort to respond to someone else's points, rather than dismiss them as fallacious simply because you disagree with Steerpike's conclusions. Disagree with his conclusions, discount the hypothetical as unrepresentative of the real-world situation, but at least acknowledge that his points are fairly rational, and that the hypothetical is a fairly common and perfectly sound logical tool in these discussions. You're talking about absolute concepts, and thus they should remain valid in extreme scenarios such as the one Steerpike offered.


What I'm trying to get across is that you can't say that not shooting the girl and letting those thousands of people die is automatically the best option like steerpike suggests. There is as much value acting rationally as there is acting emotionally. I personally side with rationally, that is my opinion, I am a very logically minded person, but I maintain that neither side is automatically better then the other.

As a Catholic, one of the things which I believe as a tenet of faith is that the intellect is only one of the human faculties which we have to judge and accept the truth of a situation. We also have what for right now I'll refer to as the "gut." As there is only one truth, the two should always line up for every given situation, or one of them isn't working right. They break down all the time.

I'm not going to try and prove that to you. I only want you to understand where I'm coming from. Because my gut tells me very loudly and very clearly that killing the girl is wrong in the scenario Steerpike presented, I accept it above the shallow intellectual statement of "save the most lives." Consequently, I should reconsider the validity of the statement and come to a new conclusion.

I am responsible for my own actions ahead of the "fate of mankind," something over which I have no further control. A Joker with a bomb and a threat is not my concern. My concern is my own two hands and what they do, the words I use and the thoughts I think. I haven't accepted any greater responsibility. Nobody has entrusted me with power over life and death. I don't claim the moral superiority or the political authority to make such a choice as to kill an innocent little girl. How could I take away her life? Because a madman made me? Nobody makes me do anything, there is always a choice, and I choose not to claim any right to abuse another human person, who doesn't deserve it, who wouldn't understand it. Maybe it would be different if I was a soldier, if all of society signed a contract giving me that responsibility and that power, but they haven't. The wall between me and her still stands, and I have no right to violate it.

Here's the real kicker. It wouldn't even matter if the girl was in the blast zone. I would be wrong to hurt her.
 

Queshire

Auror
I have been making a good faith effort to respond to the point he makes, namely that I disagree with it and I don't think shooting the girl is automatically worse then letting thousands of people die. After intially point out that it was a false dichotomy, I have only been defending my stance that it is a false dichotomy which you all have been attacking.

I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree on the rest. I view that all things in this world are interconnected. Our actions can cause effects long after we aren't personally involved. Surely you know those what if stories where one little choice going differently causes a huge domino effect resulting in all sorts of things changing? You can say say what you want about responsiblity, but it remains that if that one choice had gone differently trememdous things would change in the world.

EDIT: You say that as if letting those thousands of people die so she could live wouldn't hurt her. Do you have any idea of what kind of survivor's guilt that would leave on a poor little girl? To know that because you are alive all those people are dead?
 

Caged Maiden

Staff
Article Team
I watched a documentary about Amish people recently, and I think it was a stand-out example of goodness for me. A crazy guy went to an Amish schoolhouse and separated the boys from the girls at gunpoint. Then once the boys were gone, he started shooting the girls. I don't remember how many he killed, I think it was about a dozen, then he killed himself. It was obviously an evil act, one that made no sense. So the Amish people mourned for their daughters, but then went to the shooter's family who were appalled by what their 30 year old son had done, and they brought cakes and told the shooter's family that they mourned his death as well.

It's an easy thing to determine evil when it's killing people, but wrath and malice and hatred breed evil as well, and people are not so quick to curb these things. I look to that example and marvel at the goodness and quality of such morals when you can bridge the gap between like that and forgive the killer of your child enough to mourn his sad death as well.

Evil acts are as natural as good acts to humans, and most people can easily declare themselves "good" because they haven't killed or maimed or raped someone, but how about the hatreds we harbor or the hurtful things we speak, or the selfishness we display daily? Are those things not evil merely because life hasn't been lost?

I think a large percentage of people consider themselves good, but in truth, the evilness is merely waiting, biding it's time deep within until it is unleashed, and it is a rare person whose soul is truly pure. We've just never had to prove our goodness nor had a proper catalyst to show our evilness.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
You say that as if letting those thousands of people die so she could live wouldn't hurt her. Do you have any idea of what kind of survivor's guilt that would leave on a poor little girl? To know that because you are alive all those people are dead?

Again, the responsibility for all of that rests with the bomber, who is the one who has brought the whole situation about. You're not the one doing that to the girl, simply by not killing her. You seem to be forgetting the conscious acts of the bomber in the whole hypothetical.

And I suggest we just drop the 'false dichotomy' issue and proceed on the general subject without it. If you can't see the distinction we're making by now, it is not likely you are going to.
 

Queshire

Auror
you guys are the ones that keep bringing it up, I have only been defending my position.

And really, try telling yourself you're not responsible when you see the destruction caused by the bomb, the news coverage of the funerals, the names and faces of the deceased, the flat out accusastions of the grieving family members, then imagine all of that happening to a little girl.

You use emotion to vouch for letting those people die, then claim logic to excuse your responsibility for those deaths.

Were's supposed to be writers here people try imagining this in the context of a story!
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
You use emotion to vouch for letting those people die, then claim logic to excuse your responsibility for those deaths.

If I didn't have my "gut," I would be using my logic to justify being the bomber. I'm not kidding.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
You use emotion to vouch for letting those people die, then claim logic to excuse your responsibility for those deaths.

If you think anyone other than the bomber is responsible for those deaths, then you are so far removed from the reality of the situation that there's not much point in debating the matter further. The fundamental starting positions seem to be irreconcilable. Hopefully you'll never be in a position where you can exercise authority or power over other individuals, because I think you'd do so without conscience, clinging to any rationalization to justify whatever you feel like.

There are situations under which you would be the bomber. The same doesn't hold true for me.
 
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Queshire

Auror
Right back at you. I would rather support a leader that would sacrifice the few for the many then one that would let thousands of innocents die and try to rationalize it due to not being the one pulling the actual trigger.

EDIT: Ugh... look, can you at least admit that both options are horrible and that there's no one right answer, it comes down to personal prefrence? That's all I ask. If you can't do that, well...
 
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Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
EDIT: Ugh... look, can you at least admit that both options are horrible and that there's no one right answer, it comes down to personal prefrence? That's all I ask. If you can't do that, well...

I can agree that both options are clearly horrible, and that a reasonable, rational person can make either choice without deserving to be called a horrible human being. But I can't agree that it's a matter of "personal preference." Whenever you're restrained to two wildly different choices, one must almost certainly be the better choice by any given standard.

Let's try this. You agree that in most ordinary circumstances, I would have no right to harm her? Can you specify at what point, under what circumstances, in your opinion, that right is acquired?
 
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