Based on the series of threads on guns, breaking and entering, and protection of one’s own castle, it’s seems (in a lot of cases) to come down to the value that both "sides’ place on human life.
Some folks seem to hold that anyone with human DNA, who’s vertical and sucking oxygen, has sacred value just because they happen to exist.
Others feel that some people, once they go past a certain tipping point on the Evil Scale, forfeit their rights to be considered a human and are thought of more as wastes of oxygen. (I’m in the second camp btw). While I certainly would do my best to NOT have to take a life unless forced to it that tendency is due to my own wants and needs to not kill, and NOT because I feel that any human, no matter how bad, is valuable life.
I do believe that human soul is valuable, but that’s a whole 'nother subject.
What do the rest of you dopers think? And why, and all that.
I don’t believe in the human soul, so no value there.
I do think everyone is equally valuable, though.
Strangely I think it comes down to the fact that I do not believe in free will. I feel bad for people who have a particular tendency to do things like murder, rape, etc. I am lucky that I do not want to do those things and also lucky that I feel empathy for my fellow man.
So yeah, when I hear about Jeffrey Dahmer or someone like that, I don’t hate them or think they are wastes of space. Instead, I think that it’s unfortunate that they are ‘built’ that way. If there’s a way to rehabilitate such a person, I think they should be given a second chance. If not, then they should be kept in jail, but not as punishment. I believe in prison only to protect the innocent.
(Of course, I feel worse for the victims and their families, but that’s not in the scope of this thread.)
Does that make sense? I admit it’s not that clear of a view and I’m still working on it.
I guess an undergrad minor in bus/econ and further educational corruption tends to make me look at things from a more economic perspective. It is genuinely sad and tragic that there are so many damaged adults who got that way at least in part because of bad if not sadistic “nuture” rather their nature. But the fact of the matter is, that even if we assume, and this a very big assumption, that a significant fraction of such people can be rehabilitated/cured/etc, one still has to question to what extent and at what cost. Further, how does that balance against the good that might otherwise be done with the same resources.
So I prefer to avoid the question as unproductive. For someone with strong religious beliefs that probably puts me a rung below slime mold which is a few rungs below atheists I would imagine/hope. But I’m not, so it is what it is.
I used to believe this. And I still do, but only regarding small children.
After many years of observing human nature, I’ve come to believe this. I believe that, after a certain age, people are responsible for the “variable” content of their minds . . . the content that they have chosen (yes, I believe in Free Will). And some people have made such horrible choices that I have trouble thinking of them as “human.” I have a very strong response to the highest pinnacles of human virtue, that I can’t think of the deepest valleys of evil as being the same species.
I sorta think humans are all of equal value in that they have the POTENTIAL to be worth a damn. Or - at the very least - to not overly detract from other peoples’ stumble through life.
Of course, the next question is - should someone choose to be a dick - or simply a waste of space - who gets to decide what should be done about it? The government? Private citizens or organizations? I’m not a fan of capital punishment - mainly because of the expense and inequal application. But I have no problem with locking certain folk up and tossing the key - rehabilitation be damned.
And I’ve got no problem imposing at least SOME requirement that folk make SOME kind of effort when they put their hands out for public assistance. But if someone wants to just waste their lives and slowly (or quickly) kill themselves while not overly imposing on other folk, well, have at it!
Everyone’s life is equally valuable to themselves. Some lives are more valuable to the people around them.
In cases involving potential death, I tend to think that the effect on the person possibly dying outweighs the effect on pretty much anybody else to the extent that, yes, we can say the lives of two people are objectively of equal value. Nobody else’s opinion gets a look in, because no-one else has nearly the same investment in the situation.
Of course, if you’re choosing between two different people to live or die, and they both can’t survive, then secondary effects come into play.
(This is why I find things like victim impact statements from the families of murdered people a bit bizarre. The murdered person’s kids/spouse/parents are not the victim! The murdered person is the victim! And they can’t give a statement…)
If you talk on the cell phone while driving, you are worthless to me and should be dead.
If you are ahead of me paying for your 3 grocery items by check, you are worthless to me and should be dead.
If you are standing in front of me at the security line in the airport, you are worthless to me and should be dead.
Every one of you in every car ahead of me in rush hour traffic - Worthless/dead.
Asking for a special button on your screen because you can’t be arsed to learn to use the same UI as everyone else - worthless/dead.
Dinged my car with your door - worthless/dead.
You’ve excluded quite the middle there, and the middle is the only place that it’s really interesting.
Most people, except the most ardent of pacifists, are 100% ok with using deadly force to protect life or limb. Most people, except the most bloodthirsty authoritarians, think that the death penalty is a completely inappropriate punishment for petty theft or breaking-and-entering.
So when a homeowner is allowed (under castle doctrine) to use deadly force against a home invader who has displayed no immediate threat (other than being in the home), it’s not that the state has decided that the intruder has moved so far down the “evil scale” that he’s given up the right to live. Rather, the state is making a concession to the homeowner that risk assessment is very difficult in that situation, and they’re preemptively saying that in all cases they’re going to side with the homeowner.
I can’t really defend Texas’ law authorizing deadly force to protect property if the crime takes place at night. That’s just moronic no matter how you look at it.
Why’d you have to drag “soul” and “sacred” into it?
I value human life because I’m human and empathetic and would like to live in a world where everyone else was the same. If I can’t live the life I would have everyone else live, then I’d be a poor advocate for change. So I embrace complete pacifism. Not because I think other human lives are more valuable than mine, but because I value a potential peaceful future as much as I do any present situation.
I wouldn’t take another human’s life if my own depended on it.
The loved ones of a murdered person have certainly been victimized. The love and support from their murdered loved one has been stolen from them. You tell the 10 year old child of a murdered parent that he hasnt been victimized. And Im guessing that you have never been in any serious loving relationship.
I’m against the death penalty in practice because if even one innocent person is put to death because of a flawed justice system, it’s not worth it.
I’m against using lethal force unless someone’s life or health is on the line. I don’t agree with being able to use lethal force to recover stolen property, even if it’s the only way to reasonably get it back, but I also am not too upset with it being illegal. If someone breaks into my house at night and is on the way out the window with my XBOX or something, I’m gonna let him go and probably just stay hidden. But I honestly don’t have a huge problem with someone else telling that person to freeze, that they will shoot if they don’t stop and such.
I think prison exists to keep dangerous, unfixable people out of society. I hope someday we will have a perfect understanding of the brain, and be able to completely reprogram broken individuals who murder, rape, etc. Until that day comes, we lock 'em up and do our best to rehabilitate those who can, and keep the others locked up.
I think most of us work under the Evil Scale premise, it’s just that we calibrate the scale and the tipping point differently. I don’t think simple theft is so far down the scale as to be past the tipping point. There are lots of things I consider more evil than theft that nobody advocates letting you summarily execute someone over. People who mistreat children or animals, those fuckers who try to terrorize women going into a clinic that does abortions, the Westboro Baptist folks…all of them are way, way more evil than some guy trying to steal my tv. And even they are not past the tipping point into “less than human.” (Okay, probably the WB nutwads.)
If someone is actively trying to harm me or a member of my family, their inherent worth as a human being is completely fucking irrelevant. But the guy climbing out the window with my stereo isn’t physically harming anyone, is he?
This may be true, but I am totally unqualified to judge who has reached this point.
If, at some point in the future, they recognize the enormity of what they have done, and sincerely repent, and turn over a new leaf, they’re still human and valuable. I don’t know who will, or could, do so.
I think we all have to agree to treat human life as valuable, because we want ourselves to be valued. Once we start splitting hairs, it’s a slippery slope, and we might find ourselves in the “waste” category.
That said, I wouldn’t hesitate to (for example) shoot someone to prevent an imminent rape or other act of extreme violence. I don’t think the government should be in the business of killing people as punishment, but I don’t sympathize with the death row inmates (assuming they’re guilty as charged).