I guess this could be partially political as well. I was going to write this as a Facebook status then it turned into this huge ramble so I'm posting it here with the hopes that no one takes it too personally, and that we can get a discussion going. The primary question I have is: What gives a person the right to decide one human being's life is worth more than another?


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It befuddles me how people can be so one sided in the face of murder. For instance, everyone is talking about how much of an outrage it is that some ISIS dude chopped an American guy's head off. Yeah that's truly ****ed up and sad. Regardless of who that person was or where he/she was from.

I find it interesting, how, when people talk about Iraq/Afghanistan deaths, it's almost always relative to US casualties. While those deaths are certainly tragic, where was the news report gone viral about the >500k iraqi/afghani deaths(160k+ of those civilian)? Do they not count?(1)


When or how does one life become more valuable than another? It's almost like countries are looked at like sports teams rather than groups of human beings...Yeah, America is gonna win the Super Bowl this year, **** all the other countries the can all get aids and die. If you don't like America you can get out!...Seriously? Since when does your geographical location in the world make you more important than someone else? I mean if you believe in that you're basically saying that chance decides who's life is valuable and who's isn't; since chance dictates what country you're born in.

I would assume most 2p2'ers ran incredibly hot in this area. Odds are we should have been born in India or Africa.

I just don't get the whole "The US can do no wrong, America, **** yeah!" mentality. Honestly, we're not that special. We've been a slowly declining superpower since WW2. Academically we're borderline ******ed. We have a spending problem. I think we can all agree the political system is broken. If our country was a kid on the playground, we'd be the over-confident-for-no-reason-fight-starting-douchebag who hogs the slide and pushes down any of the other kids who try to use it.

What gives us (or any person/state/country/system) the right to give one life value over another?

(1) I understand when you're in the middle of a war and need the masses to support it (or at least not protest it) you don't want them to turn on the tube and hear "Hey your country is responsible for the mass murder of millions of innocent people. Have a good night!"

As written, the OP is entirely political. Moved to appropriate forum.....

This OP sucks move it to UNCHAINED!

I kind of feel like you know the answer... you kind of touched on how it works. While ideally, all life should be equal and valuable, that's not the way it works. People are tribalistic by nature. The lives of the members of your tribe are always more valuable then the lives of another tribe. And that works at all levels - to Americans, American lives are much more valuable then those of other countries. Then there are tribes within tribes - race, religion, etc. One's own family members are more valuable to them then a random stranger.

You can make yourself sick thinking about this on a daily basis. There are countries in Africa that deal with genocide, AIDS, etc. that are largely ignored throughout the world. Suddenly, a human rights issue breaks out in another country (but on a smaller scale), and quite often to a country that is considered a valuable partner in some way, and it becomes imperative to stop the atrocity... while simultaneously ignoring larger atrocities that have been ongoing.

Not sure I have any answers beyond saying... yeah, that happens.

There is an obvious link between political, religious and ethnic borders and the value of a human life, which mainly comes from our tribal beginnings.

Religion, race, gender....and so on, can be enough as we've seen through history to label a person's worth from one another. Actions have shown to be another. Is Hitler's worth the same as anybody else? Should we show equal remorse for the death of a mass murderer to a man who can cure AIDS? Is there worth in people who create peace of mind and happiness?

I think more people would agree with you here than you think. They just don't have a voice.

Moving this was awful. As a political debate it's ****ed out and assume a premise that I don't think is even true. The only way this conversation has value is a SMP noodling.

First, the main assumption for victims here seems to be that they are innocent victims, and not the victims of their own choices.

Second, who's to say hitler's twisted doctors wouldn't have eventually figured out how to cure cancer? At a horrible price, of course.

Nsfw language

Tyler Cowen had a great quote that I can't dig up, but it was to the effect of "We like to think we're very sophisticated nowadays, but we're still basically a bunch of monkeys worried that a different group of monkeys is going to get more bananas than us." That's badly butchered (which is probably why I can't find it), but right in spirit.

And really, what give these *******s the right to assume that their life is more valuable than the lives of the plants and animals they eat to sustain themselves?

Oh God, please don't let me get dragged into this AIDS pit.....

notsureifserious

What gives a person the right to decide one human being's life is worth more than another?

When it is their own life they are giving up for another.

If every one agreed on that being the only exception then the rest of the problems are solved too.

This is clearly wrong.

Here's one of many possible examples:

You see an obviously deranged man with a gun pointing it at a child's head. The man has made it clear he is going to kill the child. You have a gun also and can kill the man before he shoots the child.

Do you feel this scenario presents a moral dilemma?

well apart from the obvious if EVERYONE thought the only life ...

What about you find out after killing the man that he was a soldier who was deranged because he saw the other kid that jumped out of the same car run into a shop full of people and blow himself and them up just before the kid you saves runs over and blows you both up...
but hey lets say a nun is praying and a deranged guy runs over with a gun to kill her you can hero kill him then find out she was just dressed as a nun and had killed his kids because she thought the devil had taken them over....

The point you failed to notice was if every one thought there was no justifiable reason for taking a life.
The fact is a very large % of the world population care about nothing but them selves which is why we live in the world we do.

I could have tweaked that example to specify that the kid was a 1-2 yo toddler who couldn't have done anything bad. But anyways...

it sounds like you'd want to see Asimov's Laws of Robotics applied to humans, which won't work, because as you noted, humans are (much) less than 100% logical and rational, as well as really selfish and greedy.

What if the 1-2 year old had a contagious disease that has no cure? said guy could be trying to save the world no?
My point was more that as humans we have no right to decide as we have no real concept of how the action of taking a life will affect the world around us long turn and most who are ready to kill justify it with ****ty reasons because they lack the ability to see beyond the end of their nose.