I wonder how good the memories of the summit would be for someone who knows they left someone behind to die to make it. Even if the person is enough of a scumbag to be happy, I can see this conversation at a cocktail party.
Scumbag: Brags about reaching the top.
Random moral person: Isn’t that the time when a woman was left behind to die?
Scumbag: But I spent all that money. I had to summit.
RMP: No words - but punches the scumbag’s lights out.
Would that we were all Mother Theresa, and spent all our energies helping our fellow human beings. I should probably should be in Africa right now, where I am needed the most, healing the sick. ( I’m not saying this cynically; my wife and I are considering doing some work there.) The high moral ground can criticize me for sitting on my lazy butt and playing SDMB instead of using my skills to save lives right now.
But this obligation to help my fellow humans in danger is diminished in proportion to the degree to which the person whose life is in danger elected to take the risk. Where that risk-taking is 100% elective, the “obligation” to help ceases to be an obligation, and is entirely elective. If all who want to be on the playground know the rules they can choose not to play but they cannot call “foul” when they join the fray and a negative consequence falls on them.
Pfft, the sport industry in the US alone is worth around $220 billion per annum. Today well over ten thousand people will die as a direct results of unclean drinking water, out of a bit over a billion without clean water. I don’t know the figures, but I’m sure $220 billion could sort this, managed correctly.
And most of the sporting acheivements paid for by that $220 billion don’t come close to reaching the summit of Everest, which is still not exactly easy!
I never claimed they had sorted it, I said that they should be left to sort it out for themselves. We’re just sticking our noses where they don’t belong.
I disagree. I think the ethical views of the wider world are one of the things that Everest climbers can reasonably take into account when sorting out what ethical standards they will apply to rescues on Everest. So, here we are, the wider world, expressing our ethical views.
There’s a very fine line between expressing our views and judging them…
…otherwise known as Great Debates V The Pit
wrong. IME the difference tween Great Debates V the pit is that in the pit,we’re allowed to call other posters names while we’re disagreeing and descimating their point. It’s quite obvious that YMV.
Sorry, that was my attempt at a joke. It wasn’t very good of course - I blame myself.
Naive. Lack of money isn’t what is creating health issues in third world countries. Its lack of advanced government and culture that causes the problem. $220 billion wouldn’t even come close to covering 1% of the cost of invading and occupying every third world country and trying to install an efficient government and social infrastructure. Its that “managed correctly” part that’s the stickler.
Absolutely, but I wasn’t going to launch into a proper discussion of the issue, I was just illustrating that life is, well, cheap.
And doing an exceedingly poor job of it, if you’re offering examples that you know to be invalid. Global poverty is an immense problem with multiple causes and no clear solution. Deciding wether to leave someone to freeze to death on a mountain so you can make a meaningless achievment replicated by thousands of people before you is not remotely complex. I do not need to be part of the “mountain climber” society to recognize that it is an exceedingly simple moral choice, nor to criticize the other climbers for making the wrong choice. Even if the abandoned climber agreed to this, it changes nothing in the moral equation. It merely means the abandonded women is as worthy of scorn as those who abandoned her, implying, as it does, that she would have done the exact same (inexcusable) thing if positions had been reversed.
Value is determined by the market. If life is cheap, it is because people like you are willing to pawn it at such a low price.
Cryptoderk, you talk about how mountaineers should be able to set their own moral code, and how we here at the SDMB are in no place to judge that code. It baffles me why you cannot see how, by the same argument, the SDMB is free to form its own moral code and the mountaineers are in no place to judge that code.
For someone who pretends to hold to moral relativism, you sure do seem to like making universal moral claims.
Not following the “leave only footprints” ethic is also not part of their personal code, I guess.
I’m only talking about on the way up to the summit…
But isn’t anyone (IE: the ones who would choose to leave someone behind to die) ever shamed into at least trying to do the right thing? I mean, visual Voyager’s scenario or the media coverage that will follow. Is it really what they’d rather want, accomplishment (or attempted dreams and money/time spent), versus the view of being inhumane to the point of death?
And if one is judging “worth” of rescues determined on whether or not they knew the risks going in or the action is voluntarily dangerous, I feel it would be pertinent to also know if they’re personally “worth” saving in the first place. Is s/he a crack addict? Former murder? Cheats on their taxes? Kicks small puppies? I think, since we can’t know those much more important characteristics going into the decision making process of how to behave, then we might as well just chuck them all and try to help. In my world, as with many others here, a person is a person is a person. Different “rules” or communities that deal with their own or reasons for ending up in that place, don’t apply when a life is on the line.
Furthermore, I hope that any in this thread that oppose supplanting their own needs in favor of someone else’s mortality, that if your ever found in a similar situation (and Og forbid if it’s a dangerous one of any sort that you choose), it’s with those who believe oppositely. Because no matter what, that all may be completely okay with you and agreeable to your terms of dying, but I wonder how your loved ones would feel? Do they agree with the same calls you make? Especially when they’re say, six?
I saw a documentary a while back where a group of researchers were climbing Everest in order to find out what happened to Mallory & Irvine. The researchers had invested years of work, and quite a bit of money, and considered this expedition to be their one shot and finding out what happened.
This group of researchers on the final summit push encountered some climbers who were trapped and dying. If they were to rescue these people it would be one of the highest, most dangerous, and difficult rescues ever, and these scientist were giving up so much and risking so much, but they made the moral choice.
They did this knowing that the window for this climb would have passed, and they would probably not get to try again for years, if ever. They chose to attempt to save the life of the trapped climbers.
Having seen this show, and what these researchers were potentially giving up, in my opinion the current case with the woman who was abandoned is and example of ambition over morality.
(Luckily the research group got a second shot at Everest in 2004)
It took me a while to find this url, but if you want to read more here it is: IMG: 2001 Mallory & Irvine Research Expedition
It mystifies me that people think that simply because a group of people have decided to take the risk of doing something dangerous, that it’s OK if they die, being passed by people intent on the summit, never thinking that, “Hey, maybe it’s OK if I completely abdicate my humanity, and instead of trying to rescue a fellow climber, I just continue on toward my pathetic fucking sporting goal.”
It’s almost as if some of you are looking at a legal contract, and thinking, “It says RIGHT HERE that they accept the risk. I have no further responsibility.”
Fuck that. That’s just evil, whether you’re at 30,000 or 300 feet elevation.
We are indeed free to form our own moral code. I’m arguing that we shouldn’t be judging them, and others are arguing the opposite 
I like to think I would help. But then again, reaching the summit of Everest is not a serious goal of mine. If this were a situation such as, say, making it into space, which I would put a personal priority on, then were it my only chance I’m not so sure I would help others if they had known the risks of whatever they got into and they were clear in advance that I wouldn’t help them.
Who says the acheivment is meaningless?
You didn’t see Cars I guess. 
Can’t say I know enough about what ther risks would’ve been to attempt a rescue vs summit attempt to have a real opinion about this case, and my leaning may be to the “scum” side, but OTOH, it annoys me that others are often expected to risk themselves for climbers’ decisions to take inordinate risks.
It seems that the Everest motiff is the converse of the military’s “no man left behind” mantra.