Violence and the Obligation to Resist
I'm not really thinking about the terrible incident at Virginia Tech just yet, but, rather, thinking about such incidents in general terms, and thinking about the sobering fact that such things will inevitably happen again.
Whenever I hear about incidents of this kind, I automatically begin flipping through possible types of action (this will happen in the back of my mind even if I don't think about it explicitly). In an actual situation of the relevant kind, there's a fairly high probability that my primary course of action would involve a lot of hiding and running away, but I at least recognize that that's probably not what I ought to do.
Since one doesn't want to have to think through such things from the ground up in the moment, it's good to think about the general issues ahead of time. I'm wondering whether we might need to think about what policies for action are ideal and admirable under such conditions, even if those policies might be difficult to enact in the face of actual danger.
I think that the actions of some of the passengers on United flight 93 probably provide us with an exemplar here. Recognizing that death was almost certain if they did not act, they elected to fight back against their attackers. It seems fairly clear that this policy is rational. Many pacifists will deny this, but that merely illustrates what most people already realize: that pacifism is an unreasonable and morally indefensible position.
Most situations are not as clear-cut as that on flight 93, however. In very many cases, a given individual's odds of survival might reasonably be thought to increase if he declines to fight back. That is, in such cases, if Smith attacks the shooter, Smith's odds of survival go down. However, if no one attacks the shooter, more people will be killed. So individuals in such cases face a difficult choice.
I think we all need to recognize that there is at least some small chance that we will be called upon to make such a choice, and I think that it is clear that each of us should at least recognize that we are under some obligation to make sacrifices under such circumstances. We have a general obligation to defend the innocent, and in some cases this obligation entails that we must risk our own lives.
It had not even occurred to me that there had been no discussion of these points until the mighty Armenius pointed this out to me. The response of our own institution has so far been of the candlelight-vigil-and-grief-counselor variety, and one worries that that's all it will ever come to. It's still early, and I think everyone acknowledges that there's a time for grieving. Eventually, however, we will have to address questions about confronting evil. What we don't want to do is to focus on grieving and sadness exclusively, with no attention to thinking about what this might teach us about what we ought to do in the future.
One of the many reasons that the Virginia Tech shooter was able to kill so many innocent people was that he caught a building full of nineteen-year-old kids flat-footed at nine o'clock on a Monday morning in a place they thought to be safe beyond question. He had every advantage, which is just the way the predatory like it, of course. They usually won't attack under less-than-ideal conditions. The rest of us will always be at a disadvantage.
There's a lot of talk around these parts about how our students are looking to us for guidance in this matter. Supposing that there's any truth in that, my guess is that one of the best things we can do for them is talk to them seriously about their moral obligation to defend themselves and other innocent people. That is, about the fact that they are sometimes obligated to do violence, and sometimes obligated to risk their lives. One of the best ways to prepare for the future is to think hard about it ahead of time, to have a plan of action. You don't want to have to think things through from the ground up in the heat of the moment. Making these points to people, helping them to steel themselves for defensive action, is better than holding vigils for them after their death, however important the latter might be.
posted by Winston Smith at
10:01 AM
36 Comments:
This is part of why I think Liviu Librescu was able to resist so effectively, and make sure that his students got to safety.
As a holocaust survivor, I'm betting he'd already leaned that there's no such thing as 'a place that's safe beyond question.'
So while you or I would be inclined to sit tight, alert the authorities, go through channels, etc., he knew that, NO, when Shit Goes Down, you have to act.
However, if no one attacks the shooter, more people will be killed.
Indeed.
"But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs..."---Gandhi
Now this would be the way of true pacifism, of non-violence.
But we might be able to say that in the VT case, and many others, running away isn't pacifism, but something far less respectworthy.
I think it's still too early for this conversation, but it is important.
I've had the same thoughts that WS expressed. Events are making it clear, in my mind, that we need to change our responses to violent people from "don't piss them off even more" to "RESIST!".
But I also imagine myself as the professor in one of those classrooms. I have a little experience in that position. If a sketchy looking student-age kid poked his head in my classroom once, I’d probably stop my lecture and glare at him. If he did it twice, I’d probably issue a meek, passive-aggressive challenge like “can I help you?” {glare} and move to close the door. In the VT scenario, then I’d be shot. Repeatedly.
Once the shooting starts and the uncertainty is removed, I do think we can change the paradigm to protect innocent life and/or resist the attacker. Humans have used group attacks against dangerous predators for as long as there have been humans. But we must always remember what we are asking people to do. No one should have to face a homicidal maniac with two handguns with high-capacity clips.
My apologies if there is a duplicate post of this. The first time didn't seem to take.
I agree you must resist and plan to resist. But let's not allow ourselves to entertain the idea (a la idiot Derbyshire) that many if not most of those killed didn't resist. I assume many did, just being unarmed in the face of handguns meant death for all of them.
News reports say that basically all the victims had 3 or more bullet wounds. And...although this has not been brought up here, you can empty a semi-auto pistol in an incredibly short amount of time. If you have more clips...the rounds per minute rate is staggering, as changing clips, even for the least experience shooter takes seconds at the most. The fact that all this happened at close range makes the carnage all the more easier to imagine.
So, I agree with the sentiment of this post, but I am concerned that people think that unarmed college kids rushing a person with TWO handguns (at least one of which was always loaded, assumedly) and make a difference is really unlikely. You got no gun, you gonna die.
And no, I don't think that the college kids should have been or be allowed to have guns on campus, but that is a side issue.
One clarification about the two guns issue. I assume (but do not know) that the 9mm was the primary weapon, and the .22 was the "backup" weapon that could be used on anyone who confronted this sicko while he was re-loading the 9mm. Both were semi-autos, and again, the amount of rounds you can get off in a few seconds with either weapon is really high (and each weapon had at least 14, probably 15 rounds in them based on reports of a Glock 9mm and a Walther .22LR semi-auto pistol). Also, again, reloading an automatic is almost instantaneous (at empty, gun stays cocked, press lever, empty clip drops, put in new clip, press button, round is already chambered...fire). That is the way it goes with modern handguns.
My main point is that resistance against this type of firepower (and it is just as safe to assume resistance as non-resistance) means death for the unarmed.
I also want to make clear that WS has not said or even implied that the students did not resist. It is the moronic Derbyshire and others of his ilk that say stuff like that, and compare it to Flight 93 (which, by the way, is different in many ways, as the passengers KNEW that 3 other attacks had already happened when they engaged in their heroic efforts, and were on plane 35,000 feet above the earth, and that escape, as a consequence, was not possible).
Sorry to rant. Main point, in certain situations, if you resist, you will die. If you don't, you will die. And that is just a sad but true fact.
Oh, I think it gets more complicated than that, Mr. Funk. Life isn't just a matter of technique.
No matter what you would have done, you would die. Perhaps we might stipulate that.
But, coincidentally, or not, one of my blogbrothers (actually my blogsister) mused today that the Catholic tradition also echoed WS' central point, that we must think through such things before they happen so that our moral decision is already made, and not at the mercy of our fight-or-flee instinct. (Flee! what, are you crazy?)
And, I would add, the rabbinic tradition is one of presenting the young with moral puzzles, not theology. That the one hero we know of, a Jew, a Holocaust survivor, and an Israeli, is not a matter of coincidence. His entire life led to that moment.
We (and me too) remain children. But perhaps our curiosity about this isn't just morbid curiosity, but our search for meaning in this meaningless, nihilistic act. This isn't like watching the Anna Nicole trainwreck. That was easy to sit back, go tut-tut, and assume some stance of moral superiority.
We're trying to find ourselves somewhere in here.
His name was Liviu Librescu. We should all learn it, and remember it for the rest of our lives. This was a man.
TVD, I think we agree, the heroism of that man is admirable. And your point of thinking about things right now (as opposed to the awful moment) is also well-taken.
I simply wanted to point out that the choices, ideas, and actions of all victims involved will never be known. As such, I have no inclination to judge those victims or substitute my own ideas of heroism for their own.
To be clear, I don't think we disagree on this. A terrible, tragic, pointless thing happened. That is the reality. I hope , as you wrote, that we can find ourselve somewhere in here.
This comment has been removed by the author.
So, he was a 23 year old senior at Tech, and he left a note that denounced "rich kids", "debauchery", and "deceitful charlatans" amongst other things. This sounds to me exactly like what I would expect. I remember being exactly in his position, just minus the firearm. I used to be so intensely angry that it was just as scary as his. The more I watch school shootings happen and the discussions in the fallout, the more I realize that I apparently have some insight that no one else has. If you have any questions - if you want to understand his actions further, I guarantee you I could answer those for you. I'm just lucky enough to have been miraculously rescued by a wonderful philosophy and religion department at my university who never knew they may have done something so grand as to prevent another one of these.
We won't stop seeing school shootings until we actually start teaching kids more than just math and science in middle and high school. By the time they are done watching all of the horrible things kids do (presuming they aren't one of the popular kids perpetrating the actions), they're college students fuming with rage. They've never been taught any philosophy - no ethics, no logic, nothing to take solace in, and this is what they do. I remember the intense anger.
You can't help but feel it when you are as ignorant as the rest of them and you stand by helplessly watching while kids go to bars with the sole intent of getting the women drunk enough to sleep with them. It's horrible to watch, especially when you adhere to some sort of moral standard, yourself, only to be shunned by the women that you see getting wasted and waking up in the bed of yet another undeserving asshole.
That's the mentality here. That's what they're thinking. I know because I remember thinking it too. They NEED to be taught the fallacies in their thought. They need to be taught that there's no universal history being recorded that keeps "evil actions" in some sort of scorechart. You can't afford to hold grudges and you can't afford to claim that certain people are just bad people. While bad things are done, you must simply show compassion and try your best to educate. To desire that those who do bad things be punished for their actions is to falsely attribute "evil" or those bad actions and their legacies to some person who does not exist. The truth is, some people have committed horrible acts in their pasts, but those people are no longer the people who committed those acts. To attack them now is to attack the innocent. There is no such thing as guilt. The only solution is compassion.
Until we can convince people of this, they will resort to guns to eradicate the evil that their minds have fabricated and projected onto those around them. Hell, it's the modus operandi of our president. He claims everyone's an evil-doer and talks about evil constantly.
Imagine you are a child with some sort of moral sense of your own. Now imagine watching TV and constantly hearing movie characters, TV characters, people in real life, and then even our president, talking about "evil" and the "evil-doers". Then, imagine that you live in a society where you constantly watch others do terrible things that you would never imagine doing - watch them do it to you and make your life hell. Now realize that you have access to guns.
Why do we think our children wouldn't adopt this position and do exactly what Cho did?
Until we realize we must change the way our society behaves and believes, we will suffer this again and again. Compassion is our only skillful means by which we can make this change.
You can either tell kids about their moral responsibilities to fight when the situation arises, which may be true, or you can work on stopping the situation from arising at all. I think that both our response to the danger and preventing the danger is important, but the latter is probably in more need of attention right now since NO one seems to understand it whereas some obviously understand the former.
It's also important to note - humans are ingenious creatures and will find a way to do what they want to do. No prohibition in history has ever worked - the prohibition on alcohol was a miserable failure, the prohibition on drugs is currently a miserable failure, and any attempt at banning guns and calling the problem solved would also be a miserable failure (not that it wouldn't help, just that that alone is not the solution). We have to remove the desire if we want to ever hope to remove the problem. I know no one said this yet, but just to cover that base.
We must teach them philosophy, logic, and ethics in middle school, high school, and college. If we don't, it's akin to giving them a car and a license and never teaching them how to drive, then being shocked when they wreck.
How can we not expect this? He never knew how to live.
I agree pretty much whole-heartedly with pretty much everything above, FWIW.
Few points:
1. As a-funk notes, I didn't mean to suggest that no Tech students resisted.
2. I want to make it clear that I have no illusions about the odds of success an unarmed person has against a person with e.g. a Glock 19. (Though, incidentally, within about three feet your odds aren't as bad as you might think if you've had some training.)
3.I agree with the mystic that somethng could be done in public schools to make things better, and that maybe philosophy might be part of the answer--at least its worth a try. There are lots of problems with that idea, but that doesn't mean it isn't worthy of consideration, and there's no need to jump to criticism immediately.
4. Richard's point is a very good one: most of the victims were probably dead before they even had time to figure out what was going on.
5. Mostly, though, I agree with Tom, in particular about Liviu Librescu.
You may also find this useful to the discussion:
http://www.virginia.edu/deanofstudents/StudentExperienceMentalHealth.pdf
Ah, Mr. Mystic. The Problem of Evil. Not a popular line of inquiry these days, but the elephant in the room.
And WS, thanks for the inspiration for what became a full-blown post over at my groupblog. It was interesting that they were asking the same question as you.
Liviu Librescu gave us what we might take as the Jewish answer. Jesus might have followed Gandhi's recommended line of true pacifism (and did, we think, in the events leading to His crucifixion).
Which leaves only...What Would CSP Do?
While we're all (including me) imagining ourselves as heroes, it's worth each of us posing a few questions.
Have I ever witnessed a crime in progress?
Did I know any of the other people?
Did I intervene personally?
If you've seen a clear crime in progress and done nothing, you're probably not a likely hero in a case like Va. Tech. I would hope however that we would all pass the Kitty Genovese test. Still, there's strong evidence that dispersed responsibility still hobbles decisive action.
In any case, we should not from the comfortable safety of our armchairs be imputing cowardice to the victims at Va. Tech.
I don't think anyone was doing that. For all we know, each and every one of the people who died did so while attempting to intervene.
It just doesn't work out most of the time.
I did see a guy assault another guy once and chased him down and tackled him but I was actually forced to let him go by a group of about 10 students who saw me do it and, upon hearing my explanation of why I was in the process of dragging him back to the scene, they still demanded that I let him go and started threatening me if I didn't. It was pretty ridiculous. He didn't even object to my description of what happened, the students just thought that his assault wasn't deserving of what was happening to him at the moment. Someone actually told me "yeah, well shit happens" as an explanation of why I should let him go.
It was pretty bad.
But barely relevant - just thought I'd throw it in there.
Back to the relevant stuff - I think everyone here agrees that, while it may or may not be morally obligatory to intervene in such a situation, it's unlikely to succeed. The point that seems to be being made, though, is that you're either going to die not doing anything or likely die trying to do something, and you may as well choose the latter.
I'm with the Mystic on this one, LL.
Nobody has even suggested anything bad about the students at VA Tech, nor has anyone suggested they'd be a hero.
And, incidentally, yes I have intervened to stop more than one violent crime...Which, however, in no way means that I'd do the right thing in the face of gunfire. I've had a gun pointed at me in anger once, and I can't say I liked it much.
But we might be able to say that in the VT case, and many others, running away isn't pacifism, but something far less respectworthy.
If that's not negative, then I mistake its intent. You might also want to check out Sadly, No!
I'm not saying it's bad to imagine ourselves as heroes. It's important preparation. If you don't imagine yourself as capable of heroism or at least decisive action, odds are you won't stumble into it.
But it's also important not to pretend our imaginations ("hypothetical bravery", as Ana Marie Cox terms it) are reality, hence my questions about actual past experience as an indicator of future results. For one thing, in the adrenaline of the moment, it's hard to judge a situation in a second that we in hindsight get to mull over for days.
I've intervened in a couple of street crimes when no weapons were visible, and I've walked the other way when a revolver spilled on the ground in front of me; it was intended to resolve a businees dispute to which I was not a party, and it did without gunfire. I've also lived a floor away from a perennial domestic situation, trying to decide when to call the cops and lose my lease. So, not Superman, but not Caspar Milquetoast either.
We're in agreement in the main, I think, but I stand corrected about the passage you cite.
I think you're exactly right about imagining oneself a hero...there ways of doing that that make actual heroism more likely, and there are ways of doing it that are just fanciful and self-deceptive.
For the record, I was speaking of true pacifism, which is entirely worthy of respect.
"But we might be able to say that in the VT case, and many others, running away isn't pacifism, but something far less respectworthy."
Didn't see that one. Sounds like you're saying anyone who ran away at VT is not deserving of respect.
I don't think we can belittle anyone who ran away when a man, insane with rage, runs into a classroom and starts firing a pistol at everyone. When there's nothing you can do but leap out a window or die in a hail of bullets and you choose to leap, I don't think that's "far less respectworthy".
I'm starting to wonder if we should even be so bold as to assign moral superiority and inferiority to certain individuals in this attack. You'd think that, if the person could effectively stop the attacker, he would. Else, he will run. That's how instinctual reactions to this sort of thing usually go. You don't run if you have the chance to stop him, because then you risk being shot more than if you took the chance to stop him. I don't know to what degree we can start assigning moral judgment here. Maybe we can, maybe we can't, but I don't know that we necessarily can in situations like these. People's reactions are often not entirely under their conscious control.
We can clearly assign moral admirability to Liviu Lebrescu and to the two people who stood with him. Of the others who left them behind, we cannot.
I can't say I'd have been as brave, noble, or whatever you want to call it, at that moment of truth. Perhaps I would have run.
What I can say is that I think I'd regret it to my dying day. It seems you're into what the Buddhists would call the "non-duality" of good, which is to say you can't bring yourself to call anything evil. That's a separate discussion, but what we cannot do in any case is obliterate completely the concepts of good, brave and noble.
We need not say that bowing to inevitability and jumping out of the way is "bad" to say that abandoning Librescu and his fellow heroes is an absence of the good. At some point we have to cut through the non-judgmental mush and say concretely that something is brave, and noble, and good. We are losing our ability to say simply that courage is a virtue, for fear of offending or judging those who lack it.
This is the crisis of our age, Mr. Mystic, and we don't even know it.
All I was saying is that I'm under the impression that "ought" implies "can" and that I'm not fully convinced that in moments of crisis those who are not deemed heroic could have done anything other than they did. A lot of crisis-response actions seem a little subconscious to me. Like immediately ducking a flying object, or immediately running from a gunman, or immediately barring a door that he's trying to push into, etc. Lots of professionals who have training in crisis-response (martial artists, for example) do not consciously choose to subdue an opponent when he strikes at them, it just happens as it's been imprinted in their minds.
Those who fought back - I doubt where consciously thinking "must fight back and save the innocent!" I think they just did what their lives had conditioned them to do in situations like that. I don't know that it was a conscious choice, and therefore, I'm unsure as to whether or not moral inferiority or superiority can necessarily be assigned to them.
That was all I was saying. Could be wrong, but this is my experience:
1) Someone swung at my head once and I do not recall what happened next, but people told me that I dodged his swing and threw him onto a bed. I can't say that I get moral applause for subduing the situation without violence because I didn't consciously make the choice, it doesn't seem. It was simply a reaction provided to me by my martial arts training. Perhaps I get some sort of moral applause for undergoing that training, but not for doing something I didn't consciously do because there was no way I could've done anything else even if I wanted to.
2) A friend of mine got insanely drunk once and threatened to kill himself, then turned the gun on me. I disarmed him, but I'm not sure that my actions were consciously thought out - he was just 3 feet away from me and the gun was within reach. Once again, it was mostly a reaction that had been trained into me.
So, I don't think that being a hero is necessarily a conscious act whereby the actor specifically chose to be a hero. If that's the case, then it seems like - if the choice is not his (and same for those who instinctively fled) - how do we assign morality here?
Now, on the other hand, those who have time to choose how to react to a situation - perhaps those who hear shots and then move to bar the door and tell others to run (like Librescu, potentially) - that's probably a bit different. But I still think that the majority of the people - especially those in the first room who simply made snap-reactions - probably can't have morality assigned to them.
As a side note, you're correct about my opinion of good vs. evil - I think it's probably just a construct of humanity.
Now, that's not to say that there are constructive and destructive actions and that, as a whole, human society can come together and reason that we want to maintain a more constructive approach to life because that leads to more enjoyment than destruction. If that's the case, that's fine, but no, I don't think there's some law written into the essence of the universe that says it's bad to kill people. I do think it's not conducive to leading a happy life, and for that reason I tend to think it's reasonable to say we ought to avoid it, but I don't think that it's "evil".
But like you said - another discussion. I still think my previous point is worth thinking about at least a little.
If it's not, just let me know, and we can move on. Maybe there's an obvious answer here I'm just not seeing.
I forgot my main point of the second post -
"It seems you're into what the Buddhists would call the "non-duality" of good, which is to say you can't bring yourself to call anything evil."
That's a pretty poor characterization of the Buddhist thought that leads to the determination of the non-duality of good and evil. I just wanted to point that out because I felt like it didn't really do justice to that line of thought and kinda misrepresents Buddhism.
Ok, now I'm done posting. Seriously.
"Inferiority" and "superiority" are your words, not mine. I'm just asking the first and eternal philosophical question, what is good?
In your very first response, you wrote some very basic and true things. Your testimony was that in your own case, philosophy conquered psychology.
Actually, you wrote that compassion conquered resentment.
Worthy, man. We're both on the road, the Tao, but not at our final destination, as Liviu Lebrescu and the two guys who put themselves at his side found themselves.
No, you're not done posting. You're just getting started. ;-)
lol
I have no idea what, if any, kind of response you wanted to that one.
I'm not sure if philosophy conquered psychology - more that philosophy conquered lack of philosophy.
Compassion does conquer resentment, but only if you can get rid of the ignorance that breeds resentment - which isn't easy.
What is the good? I'm not sure that I agree with the premise implicit in that question. Good, bad, who cares? Why don't we just try to decide what we want and how to best attain it? I think that's all we can really be expected to do, and as members of the same species with many, many similarities, I'm inclined to believe we all want the same thing (happiness) and that there's a reasonable way to work towards getting it (logic seems to be best so far).
Therefore, teach logic and be happy. At the moment, we're neither teaching logic, nor suifficiently generating happiness for our children.
And I'm inclined to believe, obviously, through personal experience, that teaching logic, philosophy, and religion is a big step towards generating happiness and removing the desire to resort to violent means to end one's suffering.
P.S. I can never tell if you're being sarcastic with me or if you're being serious.. It kinda adds a jovial nature to these threads that I think they need on occasion.
but something far less respectworthy
Of the others who left them behind, we cannot.
I seem to perceive an implied contradiction here.
Norman, please explain.
As for good and evil in Buddhism:
Born in the village of Kya, Ngatsa in Tibet to a prosperous family he was named Mila Thöpaga (Thos-pa-dga'), which means "A joy to hear". But when his father died Milarepa's uncle and aunt took all the family's wealth. At his mother's request Milarepa left home and studied sorcery. While his aunt and uncle were having a party to celebrate the impending marriage of their son, he took his revenge by summoning a giant scorpion to demolish their house, killing 35 people, although the uncle and aunt are supposed to have survived. The villagers were angry and set off to look for Milarepa, but his mother got word to him, and he sent a hailstorm to destroy their crops.
Link
I found this interesting:
The Lensmen series was a series of 6 books one more was written by the "Doc" and more by others after his death) featuring the ultimate battle between good & evil ... two incredibly ancient races using very similar methods but standing for diametrically opposed ideals. One race, the Arisians, were "good" by which I mean they were relatively kind, represented the higher ideals of our society (freedom, advancement, intellectual, telepathic & psychological development). The other, the Eddorians, were "evil" by which I mean they were ruthless and represented the worst aspects of human nature, believed in total domination, each individual seeking only absolute power.
Now I use the terms "good" and "evil" to some degree inappropriately as the Arisians, brain-like creatures of humanoid stock (or rather all of the life in the our universe was seeded by them i.e. of their stock) were entirely capable of violence and attempted to "shepherd" the younger races along much like a shepherd might do so with his flock and, like that shepherd, occasional smacks & weeding (with all that implies) was necessary to produce the final finished product ... a race that would ultimately exceed & displace them in their role as guardians of our universe. Very much the thinking race with individuals concentrating on their visualisations of the entire universe down to its finest details past, present & future the Arisians might be considered a kind of race of Buddhist's ... with fangs! The Eddorians, on the other hand, by no means mentally inept (no single Arisian could destroy an Eddorian in single, mind-to-mind combat) were philosophically opposed to pure mental development (except as a means to an end) and favoured a much more mechanistic approach to achieve their goals.
Link
First Lensman also has the Arisian Mentor state that the Arisians don't believe in absolute good/absolute evil, even though their opponents come pretty close to the latter.
LOL?
"I'm not sure that I agree with the premise implicit in that question. Good, bad, who cares?"
LOL yourself, Grasshopper.
What were you trying to show with that one, Dark Avenger?
Also, I don't get it, Tom. I just don't see any point in bickering over good and evil when there's a perfectly pragmatic response right there regarding happiness and the best way to attain it. Why bother going any further than we have to?
And the lol wasn't supposed to be derogatory, as you've apparently taken it to be.
I have no idea what's going on in this string of commentary anymore.
I really think it would be better right now to focus on future possible incidents insofar as we are asking about what ought to be done in such cases. Otherwise it might seem that there's implicit (or explicit) criticism, and--though, as you know, I'm not one to shy away from criticism--that doesn't seem to me to be appropriate.
One does worry that we live in a weird culture that seems willing to praise but not blame--or, more specifically, to conclude that people who do good things are responsible for what they do, while no one who does bad things is ever responsible (it's chemistry, it's psychology, it's society, it's...it's...). That probably won't work. So, given that we should recognize the goodness of Professor Librescu's acts, we have to be willing to admit that others might deserve blame. I just don't see that it's important to push that point right here and now.
Gotta disagree with Tom when he expresses admiration for pacifism (in any form). It's an irrational and morally reprehensible doctrine, *especially* in its purest forms.
There are less-well-known aspects of pacifism that are reasonable, but not really much different than what sensible people believe already.
And as for good and evil being somehow made up by us...well, that could mean a couple of different things, but, FWIW, I'm not buying any of them.
I think it's pretty reasonable to see that humans naturally prefer their own existence over perishing, but I really don't see how you could say that the universe has some sort of essential morality like good and evil ingrained into it.
WS, the way I rationalize TVD's expression of respect (note: not agreement) for pacifism is pacifism's requirement of moral courage (note: not the same thing as courage that is moral).
Well, I'm willing to discuss moral nihilism and/or moral relativism at some point, Mystic. But the discussion at hand is pointless unless it's predicated on the assumption that some things are actually right and some actually wrong.
I'm not sure what it means to say that something is "ingrained in" the universe. But if you're thinking that rightness and wrongness would have to be like, say, gravity to be real, then we're starting from radically different places.
As for preferences: well, again, for our discussion here to make any sense, we probably have to be discussing something more profound than mere preferences.
Again: I have no problem discussing e.g. moral nihilism, but to do so explicitly at this point in this thread would be strongly OT.
You seem to be coming from some kind of Buddhist background or other, and I'm fairly disinclined toward religion, so we'd probably have to spend a good bit of time to even figure out some relatively neutral ground from which to start. So the hope of doing that and also getting to a point from which we could say something meaningful about the cases at hand seems fairly unlikely.
Still: other topics, other times.
You're probably right - but I'm not disagreeing that there are reasonable things to consider "right" and "wrong" if we're coming together as a society and choosing how to live together.
I'm with you on prohibiting violent acts like this, but mostly because I think we agree as a society that it's not something we want happening.
Either way, it doesn't matter. We can discuss it later or not, but I'm with you on trying to find a way to prevent this from happening again and trying to find a way to react if it does happen. So don't count me out of that process just because I'm not convinced there's an objective edict against this sort of thing by the universe.
I think that if we spoke about it later, we'd find that I'm just not being accurate enough in describing how I feel about the situation because it wouldn't be inaccurate to say that I feel that there are reasonable conclusions regarding morality that one can derive from applying logic to the universe.
I think I just get a little miffed by the usage of "evil" because it has so many christian connotations with it (which allows legitimately bad things to be grouped with christianity-defined bad things like being gay). Further, it seems to imply some sort of a sense of an unchanging quality the way it is used by much of the public. People who do bad things are labeled as "evil" and that kind of lets people view them as less than human and allows them to feel fine about killing them so that they quit spreading their "evil". This, combined with the ideal of fighting against evil permits people who incorrectly characterize whatever they see as bad as being "evil" and that moves them quickly from seeing something they don't like to hating something they've now defined as evil to destroying it. That seems to me to be what generates shootings like those at VT. The kid started with the ideas of good and evil, mislabeled society as evil (that is, saw a lot of people doing bad things and decided that they were evil and incapable of change), and instead of trying to help them change (since evil people don't change), slaughtered them. I'm not just wildly speculating here, since I remember being in that mindset. I may be wrong about his mindset, but it does appear to me that his behavior adds up to support that conclusion.
I wouldn't say I'm a moral nihilist, nor would I classify Buddhism as being such. I think that we can logically see that some things you should not do and some things should be done. Most forms of Buddhism see this too (Tibetan Buddhism does get a bit nihilistic). I may have just gone overboard because I so hate the term "evil" due to the permanence that I think it implies.
Oh, the Christian view isn't as lunkheaded as all that. Love the sinner, hate the sin. Men can do evil, but they are not evil.
Neither was my reference to the non-duality of good in the Buddhist view meant pejoratively---I find it very interesting. This essay is pretty good, except for its churlish attempt to drag George Bush into it.
Indeed it begins with a quote from Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, himself a Christian:
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Cheers.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home