In a message dated 11/3/98 9:57:35 PM Pacific Standard Time, RISKYBIZ9@aol.com
writes:
<< 1) Is it moral for a small society of Amazon Indians to totally destroy a
> tropical rain forest -- an entire ecosystem and all plants and animals
within
>it -- and replace it with a plantation?
> 2) Is it moral for a free democracy to hunt down and kill terrorists in the
> Middle East?
> 3) If 1940's Japan had attacked the Lila Squad, rather than the U.S., and
> tried to wipe us out and replace our free intellectual exchanges with
Fascism,
> would it be moral for our small group to protect ourselves and drop nuclear
> weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ……..killing millions? >>
Great questions, Roger.
Dammit these questions are good. At first I thought it would be very clear,
but I'm not sure now. At first I thought it was 1 - social-biological; 2 -
intellectual-social and 3 - intellectual-social. This was because the second
and third were about differences in the subjective (intellectual and social)
and not physical (biological/inorganic) but....
In the second and third problem I think I want to take out the part about
free democracy and free intellectual exchange and that bit about fascism. I
don't want it to be "which society is more moral." I want to look at it as
what is moral for the society. If someone is out to kill you, the most moral
thing for any society is to preserve the society, regardless of the ideology.
If the society is dead, it doesn't matter what you think. As a result you
could say all the problems will become social-biology, society trying to
protect itself from death, winner takes all.
However, we are lucky that everything is not so clear cut anymore (I'm
surprised to say). The Indian problem must be addressed in that it is not an
isolated culture anymore. It would be moral if it was the only one around,
but why would it change into a plantation? Only to compete in the same way as
everyone else in the industrialized world. We know that it's bad to destroy
the rainforest because it is important to the whole world. As a result we are
all responsible to the rain forest. Does this mean we have to be responsible
for the Amazon indians? Yes, but I'm not sure how.
The second to me is pretty clear as above.
The third is again not so clear in that our world is striving to stop the
genocide and intellectual control over others to some degree of success. We
still have major problems in many countries, but at least there is serious
world discussion over solutions. Until everyone decides that all people
deserve a certain amount of freedom and that all parties will back it up with
sufficient military force, there will always be totalitarianism and it will
always be 'might makes right' in unstable regions. Someone mentioned how
easily people turn into savages a la Lord of the Flies but who says we every
left savagry behind. We never leave our inorganics, biology or society
behind.
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