The title pretty much says it all. I made this assertion in this thread and then Scumpup said that if I want to “play it that way”, whatever the hell that means, I should take it to the Pit.
So here it is, in the Pit! I really don’t have much else to contribute beyond the sentiment expressed in the title, as I feel it pretty much says it all. If you would strangle a school full of children, or nuke the entire population of Australia or whatever, in order to save one of your own children, you are fucked up. Or possibly trolling. Maybe both.
I feel like people don’t watch The Twilight Zone enough these days, and are thus missing important life lessons. Because at the end of the story, after you have saved your young daugther by killing another innocent child, your little girl is happily skipping rope in a park.
We zoom back … and see a mysterious stranger standing with an obviously distressed adult. The mysterious stranger points to your daughter and calmly says “See? All you have to do is kill that little girl skipping rope in the park, and your child will live!”
Here’s a question for all those that would kill innocent others to protect your child.
Would you forgive someone who would kill your child to protect theirs?
I agree that all that chest-thumping about the nobility of strangling a whole elementary school full of children to save one’s own is pretty darn strange. If somebody I knew said that, I don’t think I’d hang out with that guy anymore. I know some crazy and violent people, and none of them ever said anything half that insane to me.
Backing up a step, the whole exercise is a waste of time. I don’t know of such a situation ever happening.
Well those who would do it must be some pretty bad ass mother fuckers. I have felt extreme guilt (and still do) having beaten the shit out of quite a few people. To kill some one with my own hands is something I’m not prepared to do. Let alone an entire nation. Before I strike out in anger I think of all the people who would be hurt or destroyed by having a loved one taken from them.
I hope Scumpup’s kid never needs a heart transplant or something, because by his logic, it’d be acceptable to go around shooting strangers in the head until a match turned up at the morgue.
If I didn’t suspect a lot of the attitude is the product of Internet braggadocio, I’d worry about Antisocial personality disorder. A person with such a callous disregard for the rights of others probably shouldn’t be allowed to have kids in the first place.
Life sucks. Life isn’t fair. And sometimes, all of the available choices are wrong, and you still have to make a decision.
According to the Golden Rule, hurting a strange child to help your own is utterly indefensable; problem is, the Golden Rule isn’t the only factor involved.
No, the only factor is: Are you an extremely fucked up individual? If yes, then you will nuke the entire population of Australia or strangle the life out of hundreds of school children in order to save one person who is related to you. If no, then not.
And anyway, I agree with those who have pointed out that this kind of thought experiment is ridiculous and has just about zero correlation to anything that would ever happen in the real world. Lucky for Australia and the schoolchildren of the world, apparently. (And why are we singling out Australia here, anyway?)
As we speak, my government is currently carrying out an extensive bombing campaign against the Gaza Strip, killing dozens of people - some of them children - in order to preven rocket attacks against people on my side of the border, which up until now have killed significantly fewer people than we have killed today. I support these actions. If it were my turn to be a slodier, I would take part without objection. That’s because I consider the people living in Sderot and the southern Negev to be “my” children, and the people in Gaza, strangers. So to answer your question… yes.
We may think we’ll be able to live our entire life only doing the right thing, without making any hard choices. I pray we have that luxury.
Let me elaborate: I’d certainly understand his actions. However, we, as a scoiety, cannot allow such actions to take place, and we have to set a precident to prevent them from being repeated. Otherwise we’d have chaos.
Besides, he has an obligation towards his child, and I have an obligation towards mine.
Yeah, me too. But if it’s Australia vs. my kid, then Australia wins. Not actually a hard choice. A heartbreaking choice, a devastating choice: yes. But not a particularly hard one.
Finally a Pit thread about this. We seem to have IMHO threads that come in waves. One month it’s the “ask the _______” threads, then it’s the “have you ever seen _____” threads. February tested the waters on killing kids and self sacrifice, it was all getting out of hand.
How many people on death row would you kill to save your dying kitten?
What the hell? You folks who would kill an entire nation to save your child are straight up sociopaths. I’m serious.
Tell me. Why shouldn’t I kill you prophylactically in order to save me and mine? I mean, if you would kill me on such meager premise, what makes your life so special?
Why can’t I have it both ways? Are you claiming life is fair?
I have an obligation to my child; society has an obligation to itself to punish killers. Now, I also have an obligation to society, myself, which is one reason for me *not * to hurt another child. It’s a tough question.
Which is what I’m trying to say in this thread: it’s a tough question. There’s no right or wrong answer here. Any action you do or do not do will be both wrong and necessary.