[ExI] Morality

[Sondre Bjellås]

We should always try to save someone if we can, if you where at the scene of
the big tsunami some few years back and you had the option to either save
100 people or 10 people, they you should and would save those 100 people.
You did not cause the tsunami, and hence you are not responsible for the
death of those 10 people you couldn't save.

If you go into a store with the finger in your pants and tries to rob a
store, and the store owner takes out a gun and shoots at you, and the bullet
misses, hits the wall, fly off and kills an innocent pregnant women - who is
charged with the crime? It's the guy who tried to rob the store, EVEN if he
didn't have a gun and was just using his finger in the pants. He was the
initiating cause of the event.

In the moral scenario we are discussing, you are not responsible for the
trolley starting rolling, you can decide either that 5 will die or 1 will
die with the switch, so you hit the switch and one dies, not five.


Being the direct cause of killing anyone, is morally very wrong and very,
very bad. In a jury, that individual should be found guilty. No question
about it, there are no way I can justify the killing of an innocent human
being.

Pride is an emotion, a feeling. If anyone (many do) build their whole moral
beliefs on emotions, they are without any rational and logical framework for
basing their moral. I don't mean that in a condescending manner towards you
John... but I don't find pride as a virtue in the knowledge that anyone
killed another human being.

The society as a whole and governments can, and does, glorify certain
actions, that lays foundations for the way we feel pride (self-respect,
self-worth, etc.). I'm sure many Americans have a proud feeling about
sending their sisters and brothers to fight in the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. I see the same thing in Norway, we have troops in Afghanistan
on "peace-keeping-mission". It's clear that people need to rationalize the
act of waging war, nobody wants to know the truth. Nobody can handle the
truth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j2F4VcBmeo

- Sondre


2011/1/8 John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>

> On Jan 7, 2011, at 5:33 PM, Sondre Bjellås wrote:
>
> People dies, that's a fact of life.
>
>
> So if you can't save everybody then don't save anybody?
>
> Morality will improve our probability for survival and help us work well
> together in a society.
>
>
> Certainly not in this case! If I do what you recommend, if I do what you
> say is the moral action it will cause more death and misery than if I do the
> immoral thing. So I am immoral and proud of it.
>
> you can't morally justify the killing of a fat guy to save five other
> people
>
>
> My gut very strongly tells me that too, but my brain tells me that it is
> justified to kill one guy to save 5 other people, and if that's not moral
> then to hell with morality. In a real situation I don't know if I would have
> the strength to resist my gut instinct, but I do know that if I was on a
> jury judging somebody who had I would vote not guilty.
>
>  John K Clark
>
>
>
>
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