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 Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 11:15 am
There are times when it's right to kill people. For instance, when a bomb may blow up but the man left behind defusing it saves everyone else, or lessens the impact. The question is, when does benefit the greater good outweigh the sacrifice of the individual? Also when is the reverse true? When does the saving of the individual outweigh (Or benefit the greater good)? Should the greater good always be thought of? Also, are individuals more valuable or is it the whole? Some interesting questions to think about.
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Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 11:23 am
Of, course, it depends on the person, but generally, I think the greater good should be considered. Unless the person represents the greater good(like the president is supposed to), which is a whole other matter. Of course, if there is no 'greater good' involved then the individual takes precedence. It's very hard for human being to do that sort of thing, and there may be other, less dramatic examples which don't require death but that came foremost to my mind.
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Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 9:25 pm
Here is my take. We are all going to die, no matter what. And what if the deaths that the people die later are worse or more frightening to them. What if it's better? Therefore, it might not be the greater good. You could sentence them to a worse death or send them off to a better one.
Your question is a chiken or egg question. there is no right answer. All you will ever have are opinions, nothing more.
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Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 12:08 am
It would depend on your own view of what is considered "the greater good." Tyrants and despot rulers across history placed themselves above their subordinates, so it was for the greater good for them to sacrifice the underlings (or even their entire nation) in favor of their own survival. Conversely, there have been many individuals (especially in recent times) who sacrifice themselves for what they consider the greater good (suicide bombings come to mind). Lastly, there are even those who consider any premature death (be it suicide, homicide, or otherwise) to never be a proper course of action, in which case neither case is towards the greater good.
All in all, Aurelia has the right idea (with the exception of the chicken and the egg reference, which has to do with causality) in that this is a heavily opinion-based issue.
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Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 2:39 am
I will avoid the question of exactly what the greater good is, and focus more on your example in the first post: One person or more being sacrificed to save a larger amount of people.
I personally think it depends on the amount, and circumstances. When facing a choice between having one group of people, say 23 of them, die; or another, of 24 people, I think it normal to assume most people would choose the 23, because they are less numerous.
But what if the 23 is mainly composed of women and children? Then what would you do? Or what if one of the groups has a lot of elderly people? A popular choice would then be to sacrifice the elderly to save the younger, because the younger have more time and potential ahead of them. But, though I personally can't think of anything, I'm sure there are arguments against that as well.
Which again brings up the question of what should be given priority, and how much. Are children "worth" more than elderly? Are women "worth" more than men (in a particular situation; I'm not trying to be discriminative, don't worry), or the other way around?
As for whether the individual is more important than the mass, you could answer that simply and say that the individual might be an individual, but the mass is a mass of individuals.
But what if the individual we're talking about is someone with the potential to one day do something great, like end a war of invent a cure for a lethal disease? Of course, you can't really know such a thing, but...
For every answer, more questions arise. But I guess that is normal, so this post was kind of useless. Oh well, typing it shaved away some of my boredom.
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Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:22 am
On the contary, I wish we had more posts like that one. The point of these threads isn't to find answers (which we'll never find anyhow) but to generate discussion. We're here to learn about each other and the world, not set down what is "right" and "wrong."
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Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 6:16 pm
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Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2007 1:07 pm
I agree with the origonal opinion. In general the more people saved the better, that gives more people more time to live. But what if it's a bunch of hobos vs. Bill Gates, well it's kinda obvious they better take it for the greater good, which is Gates' survival.
As for what if you ended up dooming them to a worse death, at least it would have been later
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