RE: My Five Wills/Code of Ethics
June 23, 2013 at 5:22 am
(This post was last modified: June 23, 2013 at 5:38 am by deactivated01089.)
(June 23, 2013 at 3:09 am)missluckie26 Wrote: Why is your life worth more than anyone else's?
Because I valuate it (i.e., my life) as such.
I think, generally, human lives carry different values. Life in general does. The life of a murdering rapist, for instance, is worth much less than the life of the common man, and even less than the common dog. But among men, I more highly value my own life not because of my race, or my sex, or my nation, or what beliefs I hold, but simply because it is my life and I wish to live it more than I wish to die so that another might live theirs. Does that mean I wouldn't try to save someone who was dying, if there was a reasonable chance I'd live? Not necessarily. But I would not put a noose around my neck knowing there was elsewhere an option to live.
(June 23, 2013 at 4:47 am)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: I think there are multiple possible reasons people give their lives up for another, outside of religious influences.
1. There's a possibility that you have a strong innate sense of justice (or think you do), and you truly believe that if you could prevent someone dying at the risk of your own death, that sense of justice doesn't allow you to not do it.
Justice is doing the right thing. But who's to say what that is? Someone else might say dying is the right thing, if another might live. But there's no real way to prove that idea. If anything, one life lost for another life gained is morally neutral, unless one life is particularly good or another life particularly evil. I prefer to see justice as simply repayment. If someone sows goodness, they reap goodness. If someone sows evil, they reap evil. So for me, justice doesn't come into the question of giving my life for another. It becomes a matter of value.
(June 23, 2013 at 4:47 am)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: 2. Giving up your life for a loved one is easier. You'd rather die than live knowing you let them die. If you play out a scene in your head where you choose your own life and allow someone you love (enough) to die, it's easy to come to the conclusion that you'll very much regret that decision.
This, I understand. The person for whom I would give my life in order that he may live is the one being whom I love more than anything. While I do love others, I do not love them more than my own life. I would feel no regret in preserving my own life rather than theirs.
(June 23, 2013 at 4:47 am)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: As for why do people choose not to die for others, it's because our brains allow us to consciously resist our instincts, or because self-preservation wins over.
Couldn't it accurately be said that self-preservation is the primal instinct from which most other instincts tend to arise? Thus, to act in accordance with self-preservation is not conscious resistance to instinct, but conscious acceptance of it. The only time I can imagine it being instinctual to die so that another may live is in the cast of #2.
(June 23, 2013 at 4:47 am)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: I think either choices are personal, and i don't think you can call either one moral/immoral. I don't really believe they're actual "choices" either. I think if you "choose" an option, it's because you find the alternative impossible to do.
I agree. It doesn't make me immoral to save my own life anymore than it makes someone else moral to throw theirs away. These come down to our personal valuations and, depending on how the word is defined, our ethics. That is subjective to each individual.
