Can genocide be good?

[Nofriends]

Not exactly a philosophical question, but take for example penurious African countries like Zimbabwe or Uganda... Would it ever be moral to bomb these nations? We have these health agencies which go to these areas and help save/nurture vulnerable populations, giving life to children who would have otherwise died...
But what we have to ask ourselves is, will this child's life be worth living?

Personally, I cannot imagine many people wanting to be saved by one of these agencies, in the event they were born in one of these third-world nations... likely where murder, rape, and substance abuse is prevalent...

Furthermore, by preserving human life, aren't you just giving rise to more human suffering? Unless there is an achievable goal which is actively being worked towards, in which individuals are granted a somewhat peaceful existence, why would such agencies endeavour to spare a human life? I would rather end things as a preborn or newborn, not living through my adolescence and adulthood hating life.

Another way to put it is, if a friendly soldier was in the process of being captured by ISIS, would the moral thing be to shoot him, or bail him out? Pretty obvious, you shoot - bailing them out means they have more weaponry and equipment, not bailing him out means he is slowly tortured to death, or they break his psyche before murdering him.

 

[Seteleechete]

Depends on which morals.

 

[Jennywocky]

you can pretty much make a case that any culture is a net loss. Human life is full of misspent time, untold suffering, individual and collective confusion, inexplicable chaos... and in the end we all die regardless. What was the point? Better we had died young and saved ourselves the trauma.

And better yet, that someone else had realized this and had bombed us collectively out of existence.

If at any point someone feels that life is not worth living (from their end), they know how to end it. I'm not sure why we would be responsible for bombing their culture to kill all of them at once. It's their responsibility to confront their own personal misery, not ours.

 

[Nofriends]

you can pretty much make a case that any culture is a net loss. Human life is full of misspent time, untold suffering, individual and collective confusion, inexplicable chaos... and in the end we all die regardless. What was the point? Better we had died young and saved ourselves the trauma.

And better yet, that someone else had realized this and had bombed us collectively out of existence.

If at any point someone feels that life is not worth living (from their end), they know how to end it. I'm not sure why we would be responsible for bombing their culture to kill all of them at once. It's their responsibility to confront their own personal misery, not ours.

The problem is, there is a great deal of fear and/or pain which goes into suicide, there is less distress when you don't know it is coming, and it is done through powerful weaponry.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

The problem is, there is a great deal of fear and/or pain which goes into suicide, there is less distress when you don't know it is coming, and it is done through powerful weaponry.

Sure, and you are that benevolent as to think that someone else is in a position to decide that it's time to relieve them of their misery for the net benefit of all those who remain.

Yeah, I've heard some misanthropes say that.

 

[Teax]

you can pretty much make a case that any culture is a net loss. Human life is full of misspent time, untold suffering, individual and collective confusion, inexplicable chaos... and in the end we all die regardless.

So to value human life is to value suffering.

The implication being, that if you advocate to prevent/end suffering, you'd advocate preventing/ending human life.

 

[kora]

Totally a philosophical question.

Your axiology seems to be that all suffering must be prevented as the ultimate value. Negative utiltarianism. If you kill every conscious thing (quickly and painlessly), there is no suffering. Therefore, to prevent all suffering it is best that you destroy all life, and accomplish the highest moral good. See a flaw anywhere in your moral system after this kind of thought experiment?

Also on another note I'm pretty sure many of those people are very glad to be rescued.

Also would you like to be my friend?

 

[Ex-User (11125)]

Never

 

[Rook]

Not exactly a philosophical question, but take for example penurious African countries like Zimbabwe or Uganda... Would it ever be moral to bomb these nations? We have these health agencies which go to these areas and help save/nurture vulnerable populations, giving life to children who would have otherwise died...
But what we have to ask ourselves is, will this child's life be worth living?

I stoned with a few Shona Zimbabweans on their couch a few years back and they were some of the most humorous and forthright chaps I have ever met. I quite miss them.
Their lives are worth living, they are as whimsically complex as humans tend to be.

I grew up with people who traveled back and forth from Zim(most illegally), working here and bringing back money to their kin. I visited the ruins in Zim and traveled the roads as a wee little child. My father and his siblings were born there. It is a beautiful country, economics and Zanu PF put aside, so your words of 'bomb these nations' has had something of an emotional effect on me.

Simply killing people or proposing their deaths on the basis that they live a more primal life than you in a politically unstable country is erroneous and frankly disgusting.



That rant put aside, genocide will not be moral or 'good' in terms of most contemporary ideologies, but it will be functional to curb the rape of our planet. Then, assuming it's inherent functionality, one must turn to the populations who maintain a greater consumption and wastage of resources, which are mostly the countries who are capable of conducting the more severe genocides(larger military etc.).

This is solely an ecologically utilitarian standpoint, for from a perspective of inherent morality(which I teeteringly cling to) genocide is a horrid beast.

 

[QuickTwist]

I have an opinion that hasn't been shared yet *shock*.

Its not just about the immediate suffering that you have to consider. What happens when humans evolve into something that no longer feels this suffering? What if we evolve into something peaceful? Killing off every human on the planet will prevent this from ever even being a possibility. What if suffering now brings peace later? I can think that this might actually be a possibility actually. If the trauma we endure as a species were to give rise to us wanting to make the world a better place, then it would be a terrible mistake to kill anyone who is going through trauma. What if that is our destiny? (I don't believe in destiny, but figured it made a good ending to my idea.)

 

[Nofriends]

I have an opinion that hasn't been shared yet *shock*.

Its not just about the immediate suffering that you have to consider. What happens when humans evolve into something that no longer feels this suffering? What if we evolve into something peaceful? Killing off every human on the planet will prevent this from ever even being a possibility. What if suffering now brings peace later? I can think that this might actually be a possibility actually. If the trauma we endure as a species were to give rise to us wanting to make the world a better place, then it would be a terrible mistake to kill anyone who is going through trauma. What if that is our destiny? (I don't believe in destiny, but figured it made a good ending to my idea.)

I do not think destiny is real, unfortunately... unless a higher entity had the intention of giving someone a miserable existence... but I guess you could interpret it as the stupidity of man, maybe the children dying every day in this world had a great purpose, but their fathers were dumb enough to bring them into this world, until circumstances improved and chances of survival increased.

 

[Nofriends]

I stoned with a few Shona Zimbabweans on their couch a few years back and they were some of the most humorous and forthright chaps I have ever met. I quite miss them.
Their lives are worth living, they are as whimsically complex as humans tend to be.

I grew up with people who traveled back and forth from Zim(most illegally), working here and bringing back money to their kin. I visited the ruins in Zim and traveled the roads as a wee little child. My father and his siblings were born there. It is a beautiful country, economics and Zanu PF put aside, so your words of 'bomb these nations' has had something of an emotional effect on me.

Simply killing people or proposing their deaths on the basis that they live a more primal life than you in a politically unstable country is erroneous and frankly disgusting.



That rant put aside, genocide will not be moral or 'good' in terms of most contemporary ideologies, but it will be functional to curb the rape of our planet. Then, assuming it's inherent functionality, one must turn to the populations who maintain a greater consumption and wastage of resources, which are mostly the countries who are capable of conducting the more severe genocides(larger military etc.).

This is solely an ecologically utilitarian standpoint, for from a perspective of inherent morality(which I teeteringly cling to) genocide is a horrid beast.

Sorry about that, I suppose I had a distorted perception of these places - I sort of envisioned it as a dystopia, in which suffering was endless...
I agree with you in that, bombing places where there is civilization, and happiness which is somewhat ongoing, such an act would be immoral.

However, when there is a large pit of people living in complete squalor, who are highly traumatized, and rarely experience happiness, would it not then be ok? As stated earlier, unless these people are actively working towards a good/better future which is achievable, their existence will be too miserable to bear?

 

[Nofriends]

Totally a philosophical question.

Your axiology seems to be that all suffering must be prevented as the ultimate value. Negative utiltarianism. If you kill every conscious thing (quickly and painlessly), there is no suffering. Therefore, to prevent all suffering it is best that you destroy all life, and accomplish the highest moral good. See a flaw anywhere in your moral system after this kind of thought experiment?

Also on another note I'm pretty sure many of those people are very glad to be rescued.

Also would you like to be my friend?

No I do not believe in the eradication of the human race, suffering is fine to some degree, a life which is 90%-100% suffering is not worth living, imo... unless there is an achievable goal which is actively being worked towards... conversely is it fair to make billions of people wait 30-100 years of endless suffering, to finally be granted a life somewhat worth living?

 

[Haim]

"good" "bad" is just other political correct word for "for my interest" "against my interest".
It needs to be a really extreme case for someone interest to be killing an entire sub race(like huge suffering of post-WW1 in Germany, making people over emotional)
And when we try to find rational interest, that needs to be a super edge case of lost cause like super deadly virus, people at Africa are far from it, they are not doing other people significant damage.
You do not care for their suffering, you care for your suffering of thinking they suffer, "well lets remove this worry of mine", not really a well interest to kill them.

 

[QuickTwist]

Genocide is like kinda like sorta valuing one people group over another type of thing. Its like really hard to like gauge what people group is more important that another.

 

[Hadoblado]

So to value human life is to value suffering.

The implication being, that if you advocate to prevent/end suffering, you'd advocate preventing/ending human life.

Not sure if I'm being uncharitable or you are. But she also said this in the same post:

If at any point someone feels that life is not worth living (from their end), they know how to end it. I'm not sure why we would be responsible for bombing their culture to kill all of them at once. It's their responsibility to confront their own personal misery, not ours.

Implying only advocation of the right of an individual to choose to end their own life. So yes, utilitarianism.

 

[Jennywocky]

Aside from my playing devil's advocate, implicit in my statement is that if we feel justified in bombing/killing large groups of people to put an end to their misery/shortcomings, we shouldn't be surprised if someone feels morally motivated to bomb/kill us because they view us as deficient or miserable in some way.

Life becomes far more tenuous for everyone.

This doesn't necessarily address "why genocide could be 'good'" but it does point out how quickly stability and security crumbles for everyone when one group feels justified in purging another.

 

[Sinny91]

Undertones of the Old Testament all throughout this thread.

 

[Nofriends]

Aside from my playing devil's advocate, implicit in my statement is that if we feel justified in bombing/killing large groups of people to put an end to their misery/shortcomings, we shouldn't be surprised if someone feels morally motivated to bomb/kill us because they view us as deficient or miserable in some way.

Life becomes far more tenuous for everyone.

This doesn't necessarily address "why genocide could be 'good'" but it does point out how quickly stability and security crumbles for everyone when one group feels justified in purging another.

Well said.
I am worried how our Asian overlords would react.

 

[NewInternet]

Human cultures are in a delicate balance. Everyone is connected in some way and thus is affected by each others survival. For example, the European economy tanked when pandemics wiped out waaaay more native Americans than the colonists intended. They planned on using the native Americans as slaves, not Africans. The original plan did not involve Africa (yet...) but they needed to make up for the massive loses in the new world. It's like losing an adult tooth; all those other teeth are going to starting filling in that gap and fuck up the whole system.