Are all lives of equal value?
Here in the US we here so much of the 500+ Americans killed in Iraq, however we all know that thousands or tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. Not a big story.......
Here is my question.....Do you consider of lives of people from your own country more valuable than the lives of those from other countries? Is an innocent American (if u are American) more precious than an innocent Afghan or Iraqi or Chinese or ......?
Here is my question.....Do you consider of lives of people from your own country more valuable than the lives of those from other countries? Is an innocent American (if u are American) more precious than an innocent Afghan or Iraqi or Chinese or ......?
Comments
My value system is not based upon extrinsic factors.
The week Princess Di died, thousands died in a boating accident in the Indian Ocean, IIRC, but were not deemed important enough to have a televised funeral or endless questions about the incident.
More people die in the USA from guns, smoking or drunk drivers in a year, every year, than did in the World Trade Towers. Shows there are also varying degrees of victims too - even with American citizens.
The minute you begin to think you can assign various values to different forms of life is the minute you lose respect for all forms of life.
Originally posted by Ganondorf
So what exactly is so great about respect for all forms of life?
remember that the next time you have a hamburger.
any who, the value of life is a relative thing. i certainly place a higher value on the lives of those close to me or that i've come to know over the years versus some guy in a far off corner of the world that i know next to nothing about.
Anyone else can die and I wouldn't care.
Originally posted by soulcrusher
The only lives with value are the ones of people I know.
Anyone else can die and I wouldn't care.
That of course is a flawed argument.
Would the lives of those whom you know be still of value if it turned out that they were perpetrators of violent crimes etc.
Aqua
"Worth in usefulness or importance"
If you take the latter of that definition, then value is not implicitly positive. He may just be saying that the only lives of importance to him are those of people he knows. Therefore, even if they turned out to be robbers or murderers, or just plain ass holes, they would still have a negative value assigned to them.
Originally posted by Aquafire
That of course is a flawed argument.
Would the lives of those whom you know be still of value if it turned out that they were perpetrators of violent crimes etc.
Aqua
Yes. I would be less affected by the death of some random man than that of a murderer with whom I related previously.
Acknowledging someone's existence is what gives value to the life of that person.
Originally posted by soulcrusher
The only lives with value are the ones of people I know.
Anyone else can die and I wouldn't care.
And therein lies the problem. This is the attitue the vast majority of human beings take. How much better a world would it be if the opposite were true? Not saying you have to cry over or lament the untimely death of someone you don't know, but on a basic level you should genuinely care.
Do you have no feeling for the families of the 50-some Iraqis that died in today's car bombing? Do you have no sense of even recognizing the suffering they are experiencing? At a minimum, I think we all owe it to those who die needlessly at the hands of others, to pause for a bit as we read the stories and consider just how badly it is affecting *someone* one there at that very moment.... because you could be next.
Any one of us could. And if you've ever had an untimely death in your immediate family, you know what it means just to have people who know of you (not even friends necessarily) acknowledge your suffering and offer some small token of sympathy. I cannot imagine how much more awful my brother's death would have been, had no one in his community or ours come forward to just express their sympathies and nothing more. That's all "caring" is really. It's letting the survivors know that someone is paying attention and has genuine concern for what happened to them. A very simple thing, really. Doesn't require much effort.
So if you don't care, maybe you should reevaluate that stance. But of course that's just me, I could be mistaken.
But we tend to make a hierarchy based upon on our own feelings.
For example we value more the life of a child than an adult. We value more the life of an heroe, than a simple guy, we don't value much the life of a criminal ...
Originally posted by Powerdoc
All lives are of equal value in a human right point of vue.
But we tend to make a hierarchy based upon on our own feelings.
For example we value more the life of a child than an adult. We value more the life of an heroe, than a simple guy, we don't value much the life of a criminal ...
That's not necessarily a contradiction.
Human rights is "the basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled, often held to include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law."
In other words, it's a set of assumptions on what all humans should be entitled to on a minimum level.
To assign additional value to certain individual's lives is not a denial of human rights. The human rights view does not assume that all people's lives are of equal value, only that they should all be entitled to certain fundamental rights, or that they all have a minimal value.
As for a criminal, I would direct you to the philosophy which says that a person's rights ends where they begin to infringe on the rights of another. A criminal has forfeited his own rights to some degree by overstepping this boundary. (Of course, we have judicial rights, to ensure that you are dealt with fairly until you can be proven to be a criminal.) This illustrates that human rights is not some invisible constant in the universe, but a matter of policy of certain agencies and governments.
And the reason we assign human rights, is of course, because we ourselves want to enjoy the rights outlined in such a philosophy, not because there is some self-evident fact or almighty god that dictates all humans should enjoy certain rights (I'll probably take some heat for that, and yes I have always disagreed with the "self-evident" argument in the U.S. Constitution.). Which is why I feel that the premise of this discussion should be fleshed out a little more. I think that people assume a lot when they talk about the "value of life" or "human rights" or other things like that.
We probably all grieve the deaths of those close to us more than we grieve the deaths of someone we have never met . This is natural. It bothers me, however, to see people from other countries be considered expendable. If your local police were hunting a criminal and they killed a dozen of his innocent neighbors (whom u do not know) in the process, would it matter to you more than if the US army killed a dozen Afghans by mistake? That is my question. I think that most people would say yes and this bothers me. Perhaps I lack nationalistic spirit.
Another way to look at it: if you and I and everyone on this board feels extremely distraught over the loss of some artist, but feel nothing on a personal level for the "starving artist" down the street that also died (even though we know of it)... that doesn't mean one of their lives had "more value".
IOW the value of a person's life is not dependant upon how many people "feel sad" when they die. You can't take the logical leap that because 1 million people feel sad at the death of person A, their life was more valuable than person B, because only 100 people "felt sad" when they died.
You might be able to make an argument that a person's life was more valuable than others, should you use quantifiable accomplishments as a measuring stick. That is, Sir Isaac Newton's life might've been more valuable than the guy who went to school with Newton but flunked out and became a drunk (affecting no one's life in a positive way, least of all his own). But, that is sort of a callous way to look at things, as no one can control how much intellectual capacity they're born with, or how much money their family has, etc. All kinds of factors might've lead to Newton being "the guy", instead of Joe down the street -- who may have been even more clever that Newton himself on an innate level, but couldn't attend school because he had to care for his sick mother.
And therein lies another way to measure. Is the person who greatly increases one other person's quality of life, less "valuable" than the person who peripherally increases the quality of a million lives? Is the guy who invented Kleenex more valuable than the child who cared for an ill parent for many years, brining them laughter and a purpose for going on?
I don't know, but I suspect not.
Sorry,thisPcdoesnotseemtoknowwhatspacesare.....