Hi Rasheed:
Your wrote:
> I do not want to get into the argument between you and Horse, but i do want
> to ask you something regarding one of your statements:
>
> For example, if a person resorts to his
> biological nature and invades my home, threatening to murder, rape, or
> torture me or my family I will, at the risk of my own life, gladly blow his
> head off , serene in the knowledge that the morality of the MOQ fully
> justifies my act.
>
>
> "Gladly blow his head off" took me by surprise, and I'm wondering if you
> truly meant
> that. Would it be better to incapacitate him (shoot him in the leg,
> perhaps?) and let the police deal with him?
>
> If you are willing to do whatever is justifiably moral, I would like to give
> you a scenario proposed by the Dostoyevskian character Ivan Karamazov. It is
> a true story which made me cry. In Russia some time ago there lived a
> husband and wife with a five year old daughter. Her body had become bruised
> from being kicked and beaten with sticks by the parents, who were sadists.
> Late one night, she needed to use the outhouse, so she went. When her mother
> found out, she became irate because the girl did not ask permission. So, as
> punishment for this, the mother locked her in the outhouse for the entire
> freezing cold night and smeared her face with feces, even making her eat it
> as well. She beat her chest with her tiny fist and prayed to 'deat God' the
> remainder of the night. When at long last this couple was brought to court,
> the defense attorney argued that it is the right of the parents to discipline
> the child and the fact that this case even came to court is proof of the
> warped values of society. The couple was found not guilty. Ivan goes on to
> ask his brother, "Imagine that you yourself are in charge of building the
> edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the
> finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must
> inevitably and unavoidably torture one tiny creature, that same child who was
> beating her little fist, and raise your edifice on the foundation of her
> unrequitted tears- would you agree to be the architect on such conditions?"
>
> It would no doubt be justifiably moral, Platt: saving humanity for the price
> of one little girl's tears. But we are not so powerful as to be in that
> position all the time. Our moralities do not make us gods with the ability
> to divine which life is holy and which life deserves to be ended.
The Karamazov story seems to me to illustrate the horror of
Communism where in the name of peace, security and happiness, 40
million people were killed in Soviet Russia. The proposition that
anyone or any system can "save humanity" is where the immorality
rests because to bring about such a utopian state would require
sacrificing some for the sake of the others. As you point out, who would
we willingly give such power to? When the Germans gave it to Hitler,
the Japanese to Tojo, the Italians to Mussolini, the Russians to Stalin,
the Afghanistans to bin Laden, the results were not pretty to say the
least.
But, to kill in self-defense (kill or be killed) is universally accepted as
moral. Even the UN, not known as a paragon of virtue, says so. But, for
my example I was relying on the following passage in LILA:
"A primitive isolated village threatened by brigands has a moral right
and obligation to kill them in self-defense since a village is a higher
form of evolution." (13)
Substitute family for village and home invader for brigand and you have
what I consider moral justification for "blowing his head off." Of course,
my little scenario is allegorical. What I would do if faced with such a
situation in real life is unpredictable. I would hope I would have the
courage of the three men who rushed the hijackers in the airplane over
Pennsylvania and saved possibly thousands of lives--the courage to
say to myself as a prelude to taking action, "over my dead body."
If I killed the invader just because I considered him an infidel, that
would be immoral. Do you agree?
Platt
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