In the thread about the JW woman who chose death over a blood transfusion, many people are baffled by her decision. I wouldn’t even consider dying for a religious ideal myself.
Of the top of my head I can’t think of a cause or belief that I would die for that would baffle others, but I bet I’ve got a couple if I can think of them. (I have told my husband that if I’m ever a movie hostage he should try to shoot the bad guy even if the bad guy is threatening me. “Don’t put your gun down, just shoot him!” But I don’t think that counts.)
How about you? What would you say no to, or yes to that would make others wonder?
There’s not anything or anyone that I can think of that would cause me to actively risk my life but I think I would be much more equanimous about being forced to face my mortality over X than the average person. It’s a dubious advantage of apathy.
I just don’t think life would be worth living without cheese. If someone tried to take away my right or ability to eat cheese, I would not go down without a fight.
I’d like to think I’d take a bullet for one of my students if there was a school shooting, but that’s not exactly baffling either. Mostly I adhere to the dwarvish philosophy:
Example: Put me in a room with an anonymous stranger and tell me I will die unless I torture the stranger, I choose death.
And I’m not being glib. With the ongoing horrors of the daily headlines, I have thought a great deal not just about what I can tolerate being done in my name, but what I myself am willing to do in various situations. And I’ve come up with what feels like the right way to approach that hypothetical: The person giving the order knows it’s wrong, and wants to stain and entangle me with his (or her) own guilt and make me complicit in his crime, to eliminate my moral perspective as a source for objective condemnation. On that basis, I reject the “obvious” survival option in the dilemma: You want the man tortured, do it yourself. That and my murder will be on your hands. Looking at it that way, the choice is easy.
And the way things are going these days, this may be somewhat less than an abstract hypothetical before too long.
For many, I think the choice of “do I live or do I die” is answerable on those two terms alone, and my choice “I die” would be baffling. I’d be curious to know if my opinion on this is off base.
That does baffle me a bit. Why would you care that you died with honor? It won’t matter to you - you’re dead. It might matter to those who you knew, but it won’t matter how they feel because you’re dead.
I’m certainly not trying to change your beliefs. That’s just the way I look at it. There’s very few things I would give my life for.
I wouldn’t take CERTAIN death for any baffling reason, only for the usual stuff like protecting my family.
I would probably RISK death for a much longer list of stuff than others would. I will never survive a robbery, for example. You want to violate my home or my property? Fuck you, and you better have the balls to actually pull the trigger. It doesn’t even have to be my stuff, really. If i were in a store that someone tried to rob, I’d be the guy they have to beat unconscious or shoot in the head before they get the money.
It’s not about the “stuff” though. I can’t explain why the idea of robbery incites me to such anger. I don’t really care that the store is losing money, or that my TV will be gone. I don’t care about the TV. I guess that’s sort of baffling.
I’m with you, Cervaise. Your post about torture in another thread really made me think about this stuff. And I guess there is no better description than being willing to die for honor.
But you’re probably right that others would be completely baffled by this choice.
And it’s not because I believe in an afterlife, where I’d get extra kudos for standing behind my principles. I’d rather die than have to live with knowing that I had done something like torture someone, or otherwise compromised my values to that extent.
Depends on who the others are. I’d die for my country’s safety. I like to think I’d die to in defense of the principles of the consitution. I’d both die and kill for my wife, sisters, father, and one of my brothers. And I can think of some paintings I’d run into a burning building to save, though in that case I’d be thinking, “This is really, really,really, really, really stupid.”
I wouldn’t conciously choose to end my life to save a small animal, but I can totally see myself jerking the wheel and careening over a cliff so that I wouldn’t run over a squirrel in the road.
"Imagine you are creating the fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them piece and rest at last but that it was essential and inevitable to to torture to death one tiny creatur, Would you consent to be the architect under these conditions?
Tell me, and tell me the truth."
These are the words of Dostoyevsky and he was virtually saing “Would you build the happiness of humanity on the tears of a child?”
Maybe it is the converse- you are not willing to die but would you take the life of another to achieve this.
If someone tried to abduct me, I would rather die than be abducted. I think about this a lot. If someone approached me with a weapon and had any motive other than to mug me, I would risk getting shot or stabbed to get out of there. The way I look at it, if you’re sitting in a car or whatever, or approached on the street, your statistical probability of escaping is probably pretty decent. But once you’re bound and gagged in the back of a moving vehicle, you’re fucked. I refuse to be that helpless person if I can help it.
