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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31624 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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If moral worth comes from intelligence, then there is always someone smarter than you, and so they have the right to kill you/abuse you because "you clearly have much less of all of life than I do".

This is the exact attitude I was getting at, with old assumptions that the poor were just of coarser grade than their betters, so they could more easily endure pain and disappointment because they were too stupid and too insensitive to feel suffering in the same, elevated, rarified way their superiors with their more delicate constitutions and refined senses did.

And naturally, if they are inferior in sensibility, they are inferior all round so it's okay to mistreat, exploit and abuse them since they don't feel it, you know. Not like we do:

(Madred has brought his daughter to work, and a pet in a cage. Picard is sitting slumped in the chair, wearing a loose tunic)

MADRED: I want you to be very careful with your wompat from now on, Jil Orra. Now that she's separated from her mother, she depends on you.

JIL ORRA: I will, father. Do humans have mothers and fathers?

MADRED: Yes, but human mothers and fathers don't love their children as we do. They're not the same as we are.

JIL ORRA: Will you read to me tonight?

MADRED: Yes, of course I will. I'll see you later.

(Jil leaves carrying her pet)

PICARD: Your daughter is lovely.

MADRED: Yes, I think so. And unusually bright. It's amazing, isn't it, the way they're able to sneak into your heart. I must admit, I was completely >unprepared for the power she had over me from the moment she was born.

PICARD: I'm surprised that you let her come in here.

MADRED: Why?

PICARD: To expose a child to this. To someone who is suffering. To see that it is you that inflict that suffering.

MADRED: From the time Jil Orra could crawl she's been taught about the enemies of the Cardassians, and that enemies deserve their fate.

PICARD: When children learn to devalue others, they can devalue anyone, including their parents.

If moral worth comes from intelligence, then there is always someone smarter than you, and so they have the right to kill you/abuse you because "you clearly have much less of all of life than I do".

This isn't fair at all. At best you could claim that they have the right to kill you to save their own life. Nobody has the right to cause suffering just because they're more morally valuable. Humans are worth more than cows; that doesn't mean we have the rightto torture them.

If moral worth comes from intelligence, then there is always someone smarter than you, and so they have the right to kill you/abuse you because "you clearly have much less of all of life than I do".

Yeah, if you posit 'killing is always wrong and everyone has equal moral worth', you can conclude that 'killing is always wrong and everyone has equal moral worth'. Except for cows, apparently. Seriously, how do cows, or rabbits, or fish fit into this equation? Evolution very cleanly demonstrates they're mostly the same as us, mechanically - just a lot dumber. Yet we're free to kill them, or at least let them perish painfully by the billions in the wild, because ... ? I respect EA for taking the ideas they believe seriously!

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