Violence?

[papillon]

.... because that did such a great job of making her not upset!

[Wintermoon]

Murder can be justified in some cases.

Hmm. Yes, but then it tends not to be called 'murder', getting labelled instead 'self defence' or 'manslaughter' or 'war' or something similar. When I was talking about murder, above, I was really meaning specifically the set of things which would have you convicted of murder in a criminal court, which doesn't include things like acting in self-defence.

Even actual murders often have some kind of reason for them that makes them understandable, if not morally justified. Take Detective Conan. The series contains hundreds of murders, and all of them have some sort of reasons behind them. A handful of these murders I might consider morally justified, most I wouldn't, but all of them had a better reason than "it was fun" or "she was asking for it".

Or take Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. I enjoyed the anime series, despite the repeated bloody murders, because I wanted to see the reason and psychology behind the murders. If it had been rape instead of murder, I would have stopped watching after the first one. I find the psychology of murder interesting, but I don't care how a rapist justifies his actions.

There's the set of hypothetical scenarios where it's morally-justifiable to murder someone to prevent them from doing something even worse - the old "If you could go back in time and shoot Hitler dead when he was ten, would you?" thing - but frankly, you're then into the realms of academic vagary that might also come up with "it's best to rape this girl so she hates me so that later on in the series when she has to kill me so she doesn't die herself she doesn't get really sad about it afterwards"...

I don't consider this an adequate justification for rape.

[papillon]

I don't think he did either, but it's a reference to a particular anime series you may not have seen, which is why I'm not referring to it by name.

And as I implied, this did not exactly make her less upset! Very bad plan!

[Jake]

Even actual murders often have some kind of reason for them that makes them understandable, if not morally justified.

In fact, I'd suggest that nearly all crimes - murders and rapes included - have some kind of reason that makes them understandable, if not morally justified. I can appreciate the heroin junkies who break into houses and steal laptops do so not because they think stealing laptops is fun, but because they have a physical addiction and heroin costs a lot of money.

I find the psychology of murder interesting, but I don't care how a rapist justifies his actions.

This is a personal preference, I'm just suggesting that - while you're perfectly entitled to it, and I wouldn't want to press any other upon you - it's no reason to presume that the people who are interested in, say, detective stories revolving around rapes are necessarily the same kind of people who would watch three-hour rape-porn videos with no story at all.

I don't consider this an adequate justification for rape.

...and I don't consider travelling back in time and shooting Hitler when he's ten to be morally justifiable - but I was actually making a reference to the anime/manga Kannazuki no Miko, which posed just that situation, to quite some controversy.

[Blue Lemma]

It always strikes me as odd that a lot of people seem to regard rape as worse than murder. Even the legal system gives worse penalties for it sometimes. Logically speaking, I would think of rape as far less worse than murder (though both are terrible of course) because of this simple fact: Many people who were raped have gone on to lead good lives. Not a single person who was murdered has done this. So why are we so much harder on rape? I'm guessing it's the whole emotional component, even though I would bet that most people (at least in a Western society) given the choice of having to be either raped or murdered, would choose the rape. There's probably the whole protectiveness of females thing, too. A woman's sexuality is supposed to be sacred and all that. I mean, we make jokes out of butt-rape in male prisons, but would anyone make a joke about female rape? Not really. (Double standard if you ask me, but that's beside the point.)

and I don't consider travelling back in time and shooting Hitler when he's ten to be morally justifiable

Unless we're factoring in paradoxes and side effects that might be created by time travel, why not? Deciding not to do that would be like telling all the people killed in the Holocaust "sorry, sucks to be you... I could save you by killing this one guy before he starts killing millions of you, but I won't." Does that seem like a more moral alternative? If someone could kill a murderer before he or she tortured and killed you and your entire family and friends, would you not want that person to? I know it's not a clean scenario, but life is rarely clean - more often choosing the lesser of two evils.

[papillon]

Unless we're factoring in paradoxes and side effects that might be created by time travel, why not? Deciding not to do that would be like telling all the people killed in the Holocaust "sorry, sucks to be you... I could save you by killing this one guy before he starts killing millions of you, but I won't."

Well, it's really not that simple. Very rarely is ONE person the complete linchpin of a major event, there's usually a lot of other pressures at work. Killing Hitler might prevent the Holocaust or it might simply happen with a different leader, because killing one kid hasn't resolved the problems that were going on in Germany at the time.

And even if Hitler is the keystone and the holocaust won't happen without him, if you have enough power to travel through time and muck around with history, you can find a lot better options than just KILLING him as a kid... you could, for instance, cause his family to move to another country and keep him far away from Germany. Or you could bring him back to the future with you and send him to a new school and carefully train him to be a better person.

Murder and torture are easy, obvious answers. That's part of why they're bad. Once you think to yourself that it's OKAY to kill or torture someone because you're preventing much worse things from happening, it's an awful lot easier for you to take such actions again.

[monele]

Killing Hitler might prevent the Holocaust or it might simply happen with a different leader

Worse... the new leader might actually *win* the war...

Or you could bring him back to the future with you and send him to a new school and carefully train him to be a better person.

Definitely a more peaceful solution ^^. Thought it might still be a problem : Hitler still disappears and who knows what happens then.
But yes, unless you believe in inherently evil people, killing wouldn't be a human solution. Thought there's something interesting on a moral standpoint : if you came back when Hitler is the Fürher and killed him then. It probably wouldn't seem too bad. But going back to when he was a kid, and assuming he wasn't evil personified back then already (somehow, I doubt he was), then you're kinda killing an innocent child... at that point in time.
But yeah, it's the same kind of moral dilemma as in Minority Report : are you guilty only after doing something, after thinking about it, or just... at all time as long as, at some point in your life, you'll commit the crime?

[Wintermoon]

In fact, I'd suggest that nearly all crimes - murders and rapes included - have some kind of reason that makes them understandable, if not morally justified. I can appreciate the heroin junkies who break into houses and steal laptops do so not because they think stealing laptops is fun, but because they have a physical addiction and heroin costs a lot of money.

"Understandable" was probably the wrong word to use. I can sympathize with many criminals, including some murderers. I have a very hard time sympathizing with rapists (or serial killers who kill for pleasure, to use another example). I can understand why they're doing it on an intellectual level, but I also reject their reasons entirely.

This is a personal preference, I'm just suggesting that - while you're perfectly entitled to it, and I wouldn't want to press any other upon you - it's no reason to presume that the people who are interested in, say, detective stories revolving around rapes are necessarily the same kind of people who would watch three-hour rape-porn videos with no story at all.

I don't really have a problem with rape included in a story for story reasons. It would make me feel uncomfortable, but art isn't supposed to be comfortable. I do have a problem if the rape is made light of.

[DaFool]

but art isn't supposed to be comfortable.

Uh... that would make the works of Mozart non-art, because they convey the essence of pink flowers and pleasure.

Just kidding

Art is anything that moves the soul, whichever direction that will lead.
I think beautiful and comfortable things, even if "the art critics", don't call it art, is still art.

[Blue Lemma]

papillon and monele: I'm just saying if it's kill or do nothing, it would probably do the most good to kill the guy. Even though Germany had a lot of problems that killing young Hitler wouldn't solve, these problems surely didn't have to be resolved by killing millions of Jews. Also, without that, we likely wouldn't have the whole Israel conflict in the middle east right now (which who knows what will happen from that?)

In any case, those are just details... My main point is that it feels morally safe to say any sort of killing is bad, but I don't think too many people believe this in practice. Say there's a stalker after you and your family - your mother, your lover, siblings - people you really care about. And this person was about to kidnap all of you and torture and kill you. However, there's a hope: a guy that's 100 feet away with a gun! Would you say it would be wrong for the gun guy to shoot the stalker (even if he might hit a vital spot and kill the stalker?) I can't imagine very many people who would choose the impending torture and slaughter of their innocent loved ones over the life of such a psychopath. And I can't imagine too many people would blame them. Sure, non-violent solutions are great, but when push comes to shove, sometimes life gets messy.

...This is getting depressing

Happy dance everyone!

[Jake]

papillon and monele: I'm just saying if it's kill or do nothing, it would probably do the most good to kill the guy.

The example of Hitler was chosen perhaps a little cynically - while Hitler was undoubtedly a powerful orator, he was far from the single mastermind of the Nazi party, and by all accounts pretty crap at a lot of things, military matters included. If he hadn't been in the right place at the right time (or rather, the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess) it seems pretty likely they'd just have found someone else and things wouldn't have turned out much differently. IIRC there's some doubt as to just how much of a direct hand Hitler had in the Final Solution plan, for that matter. And as Monele said - Hitler's replacement may well have done a lot better; there are several things he did 'wrong' during WWII that seemed to cost the Axis badly in military terms.

Realistically, all you'd be doing was killing some innocent kid - what, exactly, can be solved by killing him that can't be solved by some other, less total approach? Take all the arguments against the death penalty and make them an order of magnitude more convincing because not only has the offender not actually offended yet, and there's no guarantee that removing the individual will prevent the greater crime in the first place.

Fundamentally, it's my belief that pre-emptive justice is the same thing as thoughtcrime, and thoughtcrime is practically the definition of 'a step too far'.


Also, if we went back in time and killed Hitler, then Hitler wouldn't be around to be a hypothetical what-if-we-went-back-in-time-and-killed target, so Command and Conquer: Red Alert wouldn't have been able to be made. :/

[PyTom]

Would you say it would be wrong for the gun guy to shoot the stalker (even if he might hit a vital spot and kill the stalker?)

There are actually quite strict rules on when it is okay to use deadly force. Generally, there are three conditions that need to be satisfied before one can use deadly force in self defense. (Going by US law here... other countries are way more restrictive. IIRC, in the UK, there's no right to self defense.):

1) You're not at fault.

This may be a bit obvious, but you can't go around punching people, and then shooting them in self defense when they fight back. A criminal has no right of self-defense against his victims. You also can't be defending a criminal against his victims. And so on.

2) Reasonable belief of danger.

You need to reasonably believe that your target will immediately cause death or great bodily harm to yourself or others. You can't use deadly force to prevent minor harm, or to protect property, or just because he threatened to cause harm.

3) Duty to retreat.

If you can get yourself out of the situation without using deadly force, you must. (Some states have an exception that this doesn't apply in the home.)


In Lemma's scenario, 1 doesn't seem to be an issue. 2 and 3 might... stalking isn't a crime that needs lethal force, so the question would be how the shooter knew that his target was about to torture and kill all of you. A second question is if the shooter could defuse the situation without killing the guy.

I'll end by pointing out that most gun uses, in self-defense, do not require a shot to be fired. Brandishing, simply showing that you have a firearm, is often enough to convince someone to change their behavior.

[papillon]

Say there's a stalker after you and your family - your mother, your lover, siblings - people you really care about. And this person was about to kidnap all of you and torture and kill you. However, there's a hope: a guy that's 100 feet away with a gun! Would you say it would be wrong for the gun guy to shoot the stalker (even if he might hit a vital spot and kill the stalker?) I can't imagine very many people who would choose the impending torture and slaughter of their innocent loved ones over the life of such a psychopath. And I can't imagine too many people would blame them. Sure, non-violent solutions are great, but when push comes to shove, sometimes life gets messy.

And that's why self-defense (or defense of others) is a valid legal defense against murder. If you ACTUALLY ARE in a situation where you don't have time to think about it and violence is the best way to save someone, very few people are going to say that you shouldn't have done it. Even if sometimes tragic mistakes are made (like, say, the guy was only kidding about kidnapping and torturing your family, but someone shoots him to protect you) no one can blame the shooter for trying to help.

But the primary basis of a defense claim is that you really didn't have a whole lot of other choice. If you see a man strangling your sister and you attack him to save her, all is well and good. If a man threatens your sister and then walks away, you can't track him down and kill him because you think he might come back and attack your sister. You can protect your sister, you can try to get the scary guy arrested for being a stalker, but you can't decide he's a bad guy and just shoot him. Sometimes that sucks, too, because it's really hard to protect someone if a crazy stalker is out to get them, but you CANNOT kill someone on the grounds of what they MIGHT do sometime in the future.

Because you don't know for certain. You never do. Even with time travel you don't know, because there's the possibility that little changes to the past caused by you being there will prevent the future you came from in the first place.

After all, I could say 'Well, drug addicts are scary and often become criminals and hurt people. Therefore, I must kill all people who are drug addicts to prevent them from hurting someone else' and I think you can see that this is nuts.

[Blue Lemma]

I was going off the assumption that we know (or are at least pretty darn sure.) Perhaps it's one of those things where we only know what we truly believe when we're in the situation.

Why I talked about the Hitler time-travel is that I figured the main idea there was that Jake was saying it would not be justifiable to kill him, even though we know for certain the outcome of him being alive. I shouldn't have gotten bogged down in all the "well, maybe someone else would have taken over instead" what-ifs because that wasn't the idea. I just meant in a scenario where it's kill this guy or have tons of innocent people be killed, there's a pretty darn strong argument for killing the guy.

I always try to remember that in life you're always doing something. If you're not choosing "X", that means you're choosing "not X", and that might not be better. Killing mini-Hitler might not feel good, but by NOT doing it, you're basically condemning countless innocent people to suffering and death. (assuming Hitler is the cause, which is a whole other debate. You could substitute in Hitler and the top Nazi officials or whatever else if you want, I guess.)

Sure it would be best to take the guy aside, try to make him see the light and change his ways so everyone is happy, but I'm saying if it's kill or nothing, it could sometimes be best to kill.

[Jake]

Why I talked about the Hitler time-travel is that I figured the main idea there was that Jake was saying it would not be justifiable to kill him, even though we know for certain the outcome of him being alive. I shouldn't have gotten bogged down in all the "well, maybe someone else would have taken over instead" what-ifs because that wasn't the idea.

Well, it kind of was - as I said, Hitler was a cynical choice, specifically because realistically, removing him probably wouldn't change much, but emotively we've been trained by history lessons and media representations and so on to think of Hitler as the arch-evil of, the propagator of WWII. So it was sneakily less a question of whether it's morally right to kill one man to prevent a million deaths and more a demonstration of why considering it morally-sound to do something permanent and irreversible like kill someone for moral reasons has to be put to far greater scrutiny than most people think of before they answer the question.

If you can guarantee that by not killing X you doom a million people to die, and by killing X that same million people live, and there are no other repercussions and no other alternatives, then sure - I would say that morally speaking it would be cowardly and/or selfish to not kill X, you would be deciding that not having blood on your hands is more important than a million lives - I believe in moral relativism, in both senses of the name, if that answers the question. But realistically, the choice is never anything like as clear-cut as that... and even then, is it X's fault? Is it more or less justifiable if X kills the million people himself on purpose, or happens to be an unwitting trigger for their deaths through no fault of his own? It's not exactly a clear-cut moral choice even if it's a clear-cut situation.

Also:

IIRC, in the UK, there's no right to self defense.

We have the right to self-defence. Killing someone in a proper self-defence situation doesn't get you charged with murder in the UK. Maybe, depending on the situation, manslaughter, but I'm pretty sure that if you were working in your kitchen chopping vegetables, some lunatic breaks in with a sword and assaults you and you manage somehow to fend him off and kill him with the knife, you'd be unlikely to get charged with anything.

Aside: The case that gets all the propaganda that usually leads to misunderstandings like that is the case of Tony Martin ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_(farmer) - forum software doesn't seem to like the brackets), the farmer who shot two burglars in his house and promptly got arrested, charged and convicted of the murder of the one he killed. What proponents of home-defence legal changes and loosening of gun control conveniently forget to mention about that case is that at no point was Martin actually physically threatened by the burglars - they didn't even know he was there until he confronted them, at which point they ran away. And he shot them in the back. With a shotgun he didn't legally own. Maybe we're stricter than the US is about what constitutes 'reasonable force', but one has to be taking a pretty liberal interpretation of the English language to call Martin's actions self-defence in the first place... and he got his sentence replaced with manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility on appeal anyway.