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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   19596 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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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.

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?

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?

My position is that "human beings who deserve to live" should be coterminous with "human beings", as otherwise it tends to contract precipitously.

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

...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.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

My position is that "human beings who deserve to live" should be coterminous with "human beings", as otherwise it tends to contract precipitously.

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.

My position is that "human beings who deserve to live" should be coterminous with "human beings", as otherwise it tends to contract precipitously.

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.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

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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