RE: We can dare to dream of the stars again, if only we can achieve this small thing.
May 17, 2012 at 4:24 pm
(This post was last modified: May 17, 2012 at 5:59 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(May 17, 2012 at 4:11 pm)Hovik Wrote:(May 17, 2012 at 3:32 pm)Chuck Wrote: If humanity's survival really depends on a few people making major sacraifices, It would be utterly insane to tolerate the arguement "we have no right to force them to sacrafice if they don't choose to sacrifice of their own free will". At this point, all other ethical quibbles is overridden by the ethics of "the good of many outweigh the good of the the few".
I don't agree with this. The view that the good of the many outweigh the few does not supersede an individual's right to self-determination and choice.
There is no such thing as individual right's right. There is only courtesies granted by the society based on a heuristic that says "greater good to the society generally come from respecting certain pre-define freedoms of action by the individuals within it".
If it appears this heuristic is overwhelmingly unlikely to be true in the most important case it could possibly be applied to, that greater good could not come from respecting individual rights wherethe specie's survival is at stake, it is sheer lunacy, and menifestly suicidal to the society, to even give the concept of individual rights a second glance.
A ethics that, in the final analysis, allows the survival of many to be held hostage mere to keep up courtesy to a few, is the ethics of ultimate barbarism and nullistic self destruction, fully as barbarous any ethics that allows one to kill for Allah or Jesus.
