Tuesday, July 26, 2005

selfish mathematics

I have listened to the glib pronouncements of people interviewed for an "opinion" on the recent hot topic "murderous security", and I have thought an unvoiced question: "would you have spoken so carelessly and selflessly of the "greater good", if the sacrifice made was your beloved"?

Frankly its easy to talk. We all talk. Like hell. And loftily, knowledgably, grimly, arrogantly.

I wonder how we would feel about the "one" being sacrificed for the many, for the "greater good" was our "one". My husband, my wife, my son or daughter. My sister or brother, my father or mother. My friend. Would it then be as simple to state loftily that "sacrifices of one" must be made for the safety of many.

I somehow have a distaste for that kind of mathematics. It's the mathematics that decrees some lives less important than others. It decrees that one life is less important than many. It disturbs me that we live now in an era where the value placed on life is determined by the maxim "the greater good for the greater number".

This is Orwellian economy - of the valuelessness of a single individual, and the necessity for the state or political group to determine which one that individual will be.
Are we not becoming the "dictatorships" we despise, where a "suspect" in the street is gunned down for the "greater good of the greater number"? Is that not the foundation of a dictatorship - that a leader or leaders decide who is worth sacrificing for the sake of the rest and whose freedom should be restricted for the sake of the rest?

I don't know...I am troubled and I am just wondering!

3 Comments:

At 2:35 AM , Blogger Paul said...

I'm troubled by the bare utilitarian "the needs of the many outway the needs of the few" philosophy, and I don't think we can say that it's OK to gun down one innocent person if that saves lives later on.

On the other hand, if you're the person with the gun, and you have an immediate choice between killing someone who is going to kill lots of people, and letting him kill them, clearly killing him is the "less wrong" thing to do.

The problem in real life is that things are never as certain and clear as we would like. There may be little time to make the decision, or some possibility of error (or even of missing the suspected killer).

I am glad I don't have to make such life and death choices in my daily life - and I'd be very cautious before rushing to condemn someone who does, but who got it wrong this time.

The facts of the shooting of the Brazilian will emerge in time. What is certain is that both the loved ones of the victim and the officer who killed him will have to cope with the aftermath. Feelings of loss and guilt are not easy.

 
At 5:17 AM , Blogger Flaming Firegeni said...

:S The facts as they have emerged are very worrying.

I wonder if what we are going to see from now on, is just the norm of a state of "war", which has ofcourse been the norm in Iraq which is overtly at war. There have been so *many* accidents like this.

In war one enters a cycle of violence and suspicion with the maxim "Let us kill you you becuase you *might* kill us". Its a case of "just in case".

I don't know the answers though. But if armed forces are going to substitute "actions" of justice and security for "reactions" of fear, panic and anger, then we are in for much anguish.

 
At 9:32 AM , Blogger Paul said...

Fortunately I don't think your nightmare scenario is likely, or that last week's tragedy is likely to be typical.

 

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