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It's bad karma.
You start dividing humanity into 'upstanding citizens worthy of life' and 'sub-humans whose life and well-being is not worth any efforts', sooner or later someone will put you into the second category.
Isn't this just triage? I don't think anyone has suggested rounding up people who have promiscuous dangerous sex or use intravenous drugs to send them to death camps. It's rather just letting nature take its course while devoting scarce lifesaving resources elsewhere, which I think is a pretty standard thing to do in medicine.
They may not be suggesting it now, but if you normalise regarding certain people's lives as a less sacred value than property....
A principle which, if carried to its ultimate conclusion, leads to 40-50% of babies dying before their fifth birthday.
Given those grim statistics, I hardly think that Nature is a good guide to right and wrong.
There is a difference between "We're at 200% capacity right now, and getting more resources will take longer than our patients have" versus "We will be over capacity some time in the future, we can get enough resources to save everyone by the time they will be needed, but we don't feel like doing so"; there is also a difference between "prioritising Alice over Bob because Alice has a 90% chance of survival while Bob has a 2% chance" versus "prioritising Alice over Bob because Bob is a member of a group we don't like".
We already do this, for criminals, regularly. That I don’t see any moral difference between active homosexuals and hard drug users on the one hand and criminals on the other is just a difference in what we see as very bad.
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I don't understand why you just put in this complete non-sequitur, especially given that it's also a blatant strawman. What "principle" is being pushed in the quoted part above? It wasn't saying that there was anything particularly desirable about letting nature take its course; the reasoning for taking nature take its course has nothing to do with the naturalistic fallacy, which you seem to be implying was part of my statement. The reason to let nature take its course here is, again, triaging; we have scarce resources that we have to distribute to a limited number of people, and letting nature take its course is the default that's left over.
This, too, is a complete strawman. The comments were pretty specific about the people in question, and describing them as "member of a group we don't like" is simply a lie. They were, to quote, "people [who] will continue to have promiscuous dangerous sex and to use intravenous drugs." The reasoning wasn't spelled out, but based on the previous comment, my inference was that it has to do with the fact that people who continue doing those things both tend to catch and spread diseases regardless of the medical care thrown at them, and so the resources of that care could be spent better elsewhere, ie triage. There's plenty of area for discussion on just what the percentages are and where the threshold should be, but characterizing that as anywhere in the same stratosphere as disliked groups isn't even the Worst Argument in the World, it's, again, just a lie.
I must admit, this reply of yours has me questioning if you're commenting in good faith, or if I'm just being trolled.
The notion that that someone's life matters less if nature wants them dead.
The argument "We don't have enough resources to save everyone" falls flat when made by someone who had the opportunity to get enough resources and chose not to.
The specific group isn't relevant to my argument, because when that lack of compassion is applied, it has a tendency to spread. That was the point Niemöller was trying to make.
Actually, there are anti-retrovirals which will make someone carrying HIV not spread it. However, even if that were not the case, saving a life is good.
Explain to me how my statement implied this. Is the contention here that triage by its very nature, of prioritizing the saving of lives that are more likely to be saved, pushes the principle that someone's life matters less if nature wants them dead? Are you against the very concept of triage?
This, again, just makes me think you're trolling, and I'm wasting my time.
It would. Is the example we're talking about one such case? There's plenty of discussion that could be had about that.
If that's the point, then it's either a vapid one or an awful one. Society has routinely applied lack of compassion to groups without having it spread. Today, we show a lack of compassion to convicted 1st degree murderers with respect to their desire to live outside of a prison (we show them greater than zero compassion, of course, but, also of course, literally zero compassion was never in discussion - again, rounding up those who have promiscuous dangerous sex or use intravenous drugs into death camps was never in discussion), and I disagree with the contention that this means that there's a danger that it would spread. Of course, with a loose enough definition of "spread," you can argue that it would and does, but with such a loose definition, that "spread" is utterly meaningless and not worth considering.
That's a fantastic point you could make for why we should give aid to the people in discussion. That point has literally nothing to do with the argument you made in the above comment relying on the slippery slope argument.
So, again, is your contention that triage just shouldn't be a thing? Literally everyone agrees that saving a life is good. We lack enough resources to save every life all the time, and the discussion here is about prioritization.
I'll also note here that not a single comment I made implies, in any way, that I would be for leaving these people to die. Personally, though I see where hydroacetylene is coming from, I find the notion of just letting these people die to be ethically... questionable at best, monstrous at worst, given the resources I believe we have at hand. But I find your objection to it to be even more detestable than hydroacetylene's comment.
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If you show up with a mob and try to burn my house down, I'll kill you, and I will almost certainly not be prosecuted for doing so. Is this an example of "regarding certain peoples' lives as a less sacred value than property"?
Drivers have an elevated chance of dying or being crippled in car crashes. Wingsuit enthusiasts run a much higher chance of dying or being crippled in wingsuit crashes. We maintain an insurance system for drivers, but do not maintain one for wingsuit enthusiasts. Is this an examples of "regarding certain peoples' lives as a less sacred value than property"?
Do you believe that choices made shouldn't influence apportionment of consequences of those choices?
Handy that we are not restricted to ultimate conclusions, then, and are entirely capable of balancing competing interests.
One of Nature's more useful qualities is that it IS. It provides a default. We can diverge from that default if doing so seems preferable, but that does not give you or anyone else grounds to demand a divergence. You do not get to claim that Nature is unjust in any meaningful sense.
Just so, though I get the impression that we differ on who Alice and Bob are, and to what degree they are culpable for the percentages in the first place.
That would be a case of self-defence; the individual persons in the mob are actively attempting to harm you. However, if your town has 1,000 $FOO, and you know that 990 of them are planning to attack you, but not which ones, you are not justified in declaring $FOO as a group to be guilty, killing all 1,000 of them, and claiming self-defence.
If no $FOO has tried to harm you, letting them die to save a tiny fraction of a percent on your tax bill is also not justifiable.
It's more a matter of seeking an ethical framework less amenable to gerrymandering for the benefit of one's ingroup/harm to one's outgroup.
The interest of "AIDS patients continuing to get the medication they need to live" > the interest of "your tax bill being slightly smaller".
And that default leaves behind piles of skulls. Many of those skulls are alarmingly tiny.
Someone getting medication that keeps them from dying of AIDS is preferable to them dying of AIDS.
And yet I am claiming that.
I would not want the medical system picking over every aspect of my lifestyle to decide whether I am worth saving; therefore I apply the Golden Rule, and oppose the same being done to my neighbour.
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Pretty much everyone here has had the experience:
The point of that poem is that when anyone, left or right, starts narrowing the category of 'human beings who deserve to live', they don't stop, and they are likely to end up narrowing it to exclude you. I personally believe that it is morally wrong to have a category of 'human lives that don't matter' (if any exception exists, it is only those who are currently, wilfully harming others and refuse to stop), but even if you do not share this belief, the existence of such a category is not in your self-interest.
The Germans were not going to start genociding Germans. Someone has to leben in all that raum, after all.
Except for gay Germans, Communist Germans, Social-Democratic Germans, disabled Germans, Germans whose grandparents were Jewish, Germans who were Jehovah's Witnesses or Christian Scientists,....
Gay Germans do not constitute a gens. Communism isn't a gens, either, though I might grant you disability, depending. Religion is also closer to a gens, depending on the religion, but that's not your argument.
In all of those cases, however, there are other Germans to continue being German. You have very helpfully specified that they, in fact, are part of the same gens as the one doing the killing!
Genocide is a word with roots that has a meaning. Nobody misunderstands the - cide suffix. I will insist upon the geno- prefix holding equal meaning. You need to use a different word, like cull, but that wouldn't bypass critical thinking through association with the Holocaust.
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Fed the flower of Germany into the meatgrinder, though.
I do wonder, sometimes, what Hitler would have done if he'd known how his war would go. Would he have gone for death or glory? Tried something else? Allied with Europe against the Soviets, rather than the reverse? It seems clear he didn't know, from the Mannerheim recording:
Hitler: Absolutely, This is - they had the most immense armaments that, uh, people could imagine. Well - if somebody had told me that a country - with...(Hitler is interrupted by the sound of a door opening and closing.) If somebody had told me a nation could start with 35,000 tanks, then I'd have said: "You are crazy!"
Mannerheim: Thirty-five?
Hitler: Thirty-five thousand tanks.
Another Voice In Background: Thirty-five thousand! Yes!
Hitler: We have destroyed - right now - more than 34,000 tanks. If someone had told me this, I'd have said: "You!" If you are one of my generals had stated that any nation has 35,000 tanks I'd have said: "You, my good sir, you see everything twice or ten times. You are crazy; you see ghosts." This I would have deemed possible. I told you earlier we found factories, one of them at Kramatorskaja, for example, Two years ago there were just a couple hundred [tanks]. We didn't know anything. Today, there is a tank plant, where - during the first shift a little more than 30,000, and 'round the clock a little more than 60,000, workers would have labored - a single tank plant! A gigantic factory! Masses of workers who certainly, lived like animals and...
Another Voice In Background: (Interrupting) In the Donets area?
Hitler: In the Donets area. (Background noises from the rattling of cups and plates over the exchange.)
Mannerheim: Well, if you keep in mind they had almost 20 years, almost 25 years of - freedom to arm themselves...
Hitler: (Interrupting quietly) It was unbelievable.
Mannerheim: And everything - everything spent on armament.
Hitler: Only on armament.
Mannerheim: Only on armament!
Hitler: (Sighs) Only - well, it is - as I told your president [Ryte] before - I had no idea of it. If I had an idea - then I would have been even more difficult for me, but I would have taken the decision [to invade] anyhow, because - there was no other possibility. It was - certain, already in the winter of '39/ '40, that the war had to begin. I had only this nightmare - but there is even more! Because a war on two fronts - would have been impossible - that would have broken us. Today, we see more clearly - than we saw at that time - it would have broken us. And my whole - I originally wanted to - already in the fall of '39 I wanted to conduct the campaign in the west - on the continuously bad weather we experienced hindered us.
Our whole armament - you know, was - is a pure good weather armament. It is very capable, very good, but it is unfortunately just a good-weather armament. We have seen this in the war. Our weapons naturally were made for the west, and we all thought, and this was true 'till that time, uh, it was the opinion from the earliest times: you cannot wage war in winter. And we too, have, the German tanks, they weren't tested, for example, to prepare them for winter war. Instead we conducted trials to prove it was impossible to wage war in winter. That is a different starting point [than the Soviet's]. In the fall of 1939 we always faced the question. I desperately wanted to attack, and I firmly believed we could finish France in six weeks.
However, we faced the question of whether we could move at all - it was raining continuously. And I know the French area myself very well and I too could not ignore the opinions, of many of my generals that, we - probably - would not have had the élan, that our tank arm would not have been, effective, that our air force could not been effective from our airfields because of the rain.
...
Already in the fall of 1940 we continuously faced the question, uh: shall we, consider a break up [in relations with the USSR]? At that time, I advised the Finnish government, to - negotiate and, to gain time and, to act dilatory in this matter - because I always feared - that Russia suddenly would attack Romania in the late fall - and occupy the petroleum wells, and we would have not been ready in the late fall of 1940. If Russia indeed had taken Romanian petroleum wells, than Germany would have been lost. It would have required - just 60 Russian divisions to handle that matter.
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I just knew that either you or the other guy would bring it up that the "point" of that vomit was that nobody should come for anyone. While you're in that world, I would like a pet unicorn, his coat should be lavender. For the time being, residing in the kill or be killed world, I vastly prefer the left side of the equation.
And if someone does, it behooves everyone else to stop them now, before they become entrenched, even if they're starting with people you don't like.
And you are justified in defending yourself against individuals who are trying to harm you. What is not justified is going after people who share some characteristic with them but haven't done anything to harm anyone. Again, this applies to both left and right; the principle that states that the right having grievances against some people who happen to be gay does not justify them treating all gay people as disposable also states that the left having grievances against some people who happen to be white does not justify them treating all white people as disposable.
Friend, I was one of those who tried.
But yeah I have had the experience Steve mentioned (well, steps 1 and 2). Because IDK how "the left," which I was raised was "our side," managed to end up totally abandoning that principle, but my experience is that it really seems like it has.
For a while there I was able to say, "Hey! 'We on the left do not blacklist,' remember?" Then I started having to remind people what that was about (McCarthyism). Then they started in with "McCarthyism did it to us so we should do it to them now."
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Working to establish such a principle is unilateral disarmament, it's suicidal, it's insane. It's insane to such an extent that any attempt to convince me to adopt this course of action, like that revolting "poem" counts as an attack by a hostile interest.
I do see your point (see my other comment) but I want to point out that that's not originally a "poem," it's originally Pastor Niemoller's description of his actual experiences with the Nazis. It's valuable information from another time.
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No, it's telling both sides not to pull the triggers if they aren't being fired upon.
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The point is false though. Lots of groups have stopped. Pretty much every group has stopped short of omnicide, including the Nazis.
The point of SteveAgain's response is that sometime it's us or them. And sometimes it's us or them for no apparent reason. There's no apparent reason why the situation seems to be that either the "gay communists" get oppressed or the straight cis white men do, but it does seem to be the case.
They didn't stop, they were stopped, at great cost. If they had been stopped sooner, the cost would have been less; if they had not been stopped in 1945, they would have kept going.
Or, we agree to resist oppression by anyone, gay or straight, black or white, red or blue, man or woman, against anyone else, while maintaining the distinction between the individual perpetrators and those who happen to share characteristics with them.
It's a nice thought, but I've spent too long watching oppression against straight whites defined as "anti-oppression" and resistance defined as "oppression". Human biology and psychology just doesn't work like that, and neither does it deal well with serious moral / status / resource conflicts. There is no way to make a system where everyone gets what they want AND nobody is oppressed.
For example, my existence as a misgenderer oppresses trans people, and their attempts to force me to use their preferred pronouns oppresses me. You, the all-powerful tyrant king, can of course swoop down and force us to play nice, but then you're oppressing both of us. Likewise economics, if you want to switch away from the culture war.
Yes, oppressors tend to lie about what they are doing.
Which is why degrowth is a very bad idea.
Only because some people want to oppress others.
Misgendering isn't something you are, it's something you do, to other people.
A policy of "Thou shalt use the exact pronouns specified; using they/them for a nonbinary person who prefers ze/zir is a banworthy/firable offence"? I would agree with you. "They/them for everybody", or "he/him for male-presenting/identified, she/her for female-presenting/identified, they/them for androgynous/non-binary" ought to be considered an acceptable compromise.
A policy of "If Alice and Barbara are equally female-presenting, both identify as female, and both have stated a preference for she/her, you do not refer to Alice as he/him, or as they/them while referring to Barbara as she/her, merely because Alice happened to be born with a dangly bit" is not oppression, because it is not oppression for Alice's genitals to be none of your business.
Says you. If I disagree about how female-presenting Alice is, or if actually I think that the biological sex of the person is relevant, we're going to have to have a fight about it. This is what I'm getting at. In practice, everyone wants to force their values on (oppress) other people some of the time. You can say it shouldn't be like that, but it is like that.
Bumping that up a layer of abstraction to force your system of conflict resolution on everyone doesn't actually help, it just obscures, because in practice it means some win and some lose on the concrete level but now you aren't allow to fight on the concrete level any more.
Also, I would like to point out that my deep cynicism on this subject stems, like @HonoriaWinchester, @SteveAgain and I suspect many others, from having done my best to live up to that poem and then having people I'd stuck up for turn on me the moment they had the chance. I am not inclined to try it again.
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Your collapsing of all distinctions into "deserve to live" is notable, but it doesn't seem to me that it changes much, so let's go with it.
We observe that the category of "human beings who deserve to live" can both expand and contract. Your position, then, is that it should only expand? If it expands to include a category of people previously excluded, and then things get significantly worse, we just have to live with it because no takesie-backsies?
My position is that "human beings who deserve to live" should be coterminous with "human beings", as otherwise it tends to contract precipitously.
...the alternative, a society with mechanisms for declaring whole groups of people to be unworthy of life, sets a precedent which is very likely to end up biting you in the arse.
I disagree. Human beings who try to kill me no longer "deserve to live". Human beings who commit murder no longer "deserve to live". Human beings on the other side of a war no longer "deserve to live", even if they aren't trying to kill me at this moment and haven't killed anyone yet. Likewise, I no longer "deserve to live" for the same reasons; if one of them shoots me through the skull, they have done no wrong.
Nor does it end there. Honorable, sane men observe the Birkenhead Drill: "women and children first", and do not recognize claims that those called to perform it are excused because they "deserve to live". In war, we expect men to obey orders, even if those orders would result in their deaths, and again no excuse that they "deserve to live" is allowed.
But this conversation started not over killing people, but over whether it is acceptable to let people die of their own bad choices. And the answer is that yes, this is entirely acceptable. It is preferable to dissuade them from destroying themselves through bad choices, but some people will not be dissuaded, and it is deeply just for people to receive the consequences of the decisions they've made. To do so is to treat them not as sub-human, but as fully human. And this goes doubly so for "well-being". Humans do not "deserve" well-being in any meaningful sense; if a man does not work, he shall not eat, as even the Communists were able to recognize. Those who engage in selfish, destructive behavior to the detriment of those around them certainly do not "deserve well-being". Even those who engage in foolish behavior can find themselves no longer "deserving to live"; if I smoke a pack a day for twenty years, that is no great sin, but it would be foolish to grant me a lung transplant, and especially foolish to do so on the understanding that I will continue to smoke a pack a day in the future.
All the above ignores Mercy, and that is because Mercy is not deserved, nor can it be mandated, only freely chosen. Attempts to implement it through anything other than individual choice are profoundly destructive to any sort of human society.
It also tends to contract precipitously when stretched so far that people forget that the consequences of our actions are inescapable. People often make choices that intentionally inject pain and misery into the world. When they do this, they often suffer or die as a consequence; this is often an entirely acceptable outcome, and sometimes a straightforwardly preferable one. Pretending otherwise, and sacrificing value to give them an endless series of Nth chances is rarely a good idea.
You do a disservice to the author to use this as an argument for unlimited mandatory mercy. He is right that many are too eager to deal out death in judgement, but that does not mean that all men deserve to live, only that determining who does not requires humility, wisdom, deliberation, and a leavening of mercy.
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No pendulum stops in the middle.
Any damped pendulum stops in the middle. But I don't see any damping.
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Homosexuals already put me in the latter category in their scramble to not suffer such a fate themselves. Why should I care if others want to toss them in the abyss with me?
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Homosexuals, immigrants, and disabled are very fond of straight white men and fiercely protect them when they're persecuted or murdered.
I dunno, I think my gay friends would stand up for me.
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I suppose if you're so straight and white that you can't imagine ever being on the same side of history as homosexuals, immigrants and disabled, you have nothing to worry about and can continue to sneer at the lower castes. Although, as I suspect you know, there's always such a thing as not white enough.
Nothing in the linked article about not being white enough, only not being German / Aryan enough or being too Slavic.
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What a bingo card answer. I'm saying that to expect them to "speak for me" is naive to the point of retardation, at best they will cheer when it's my turn, at worst they will be the ones who are coming for me.
Do you have no friends among "Them"? If you do, do you expect all of them to drop you at some point? If you don't, why would you expect anyone to speak for you any more than you speak for them?
No such friends; and I have no expectation of my enemies speaking for me, especially after their words and actions have demonstrated the reverse. It's the author of that shitty manipulative "poem" who says that we should have such an expectation for some reason.
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You have no idea what it's been like for us the past 8 years, do you?
I have some. I've read themotte, as you can guess. The mindset of "what skin off the back of upstanding citizens is it to just let them die" does not become less alien to me. I don't like the jingoist boomers of my country either, but I hardly dream of rounding them up behind the shed or draining their towns of resources until they drink themselves to death.
There are two classes that I can imagine an average and sane citizen to overlook and mentally discount in this manner, which is the habitual violent criminals and those who are so dysfunctional that they barely intersect with regular society or economy (homeless, heavy drug users, mentally disabled). Not those who like it up the ass.
I have understood the sentence to be more akin to "cease supporting their self a destructive lifestyle".
Those who like it up the ass seem to have a rather entitled attitude regarding the provision of drugs for largely self-inflicted diseases. I understand how there's been a lot of propaganda about how society supposedly failed them by not providing them with a cure in the past, but I think discounting them is qualitatively the same as the case of addicts.
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