.......It worked for for 10 weeks in Yugoslavia 1999, why not for AQ? -- seriously, though, if starving 500,000 children to death over nonexistent WMD is okay, then inadvertently killing 13 people pales in comparison. I don't see it as breaking decades of precedence. The 'tender mercies" of 'progress' -- whether of the UN or America -- can be pretty grisly.
I'm not arguing that my example is unprecedented or even unusual.
Quite the opposite. As I say, nations indulge in tit for tat killing all the time, sometimes as all out war, sometimes as clandestine or strategic assassinations.
However, it's not clear to me what the moral logic is of requiring individuals to defer to God's larger justice while giving groups of individuals a pass (other than someone said so in the bible, but people said a lot of things in the bible that we really don't take to heart).
At what point is my mob big enough to get the group discount? If I and my neighbors suspect a child molester has moved in down the street, and we burn his house down and tar and feather him, is that "Caesar's"?
What if it's just three of us? Ten? Does it take a village? Are nation states granted unique dispensation?
Adda: it does look like you are trying to pick a fight with DMZ. I think this is a unique thread with an original question (private emotional stance to individual use of violence). Don´t make it like a zillion other threads that already exist on another subject (philosophical attitude toward collective use of violence), please. Besides this is AO, not PO
I'm not arguing that my example is unprecedented or even unusual.
Quite the opposite. As I say, nations indulge in tit for tat killing all the time, sometimes as all out war, sometimes as clandestine or strategic assassinations.
However, it's not clear to me what the moral logic is of requiring individuals to defer to God's larger justice while giving groups of individuals a pass (other than someone said so in the bible, but people said a lot of things in the bible that we really don't take to heart).
At what point is my mob big enough to get the group discount? If I and my neighbors suspect a child molester has moved in down the street, and we burn his house down and tar and feather him, is that "Caesar's"?
What if it's just three of us? Ten? Does it take a village? Are nation states granted unique dispensation?
You raise some good questions, but you seem to be ignoring a fundamental difference between a "mob" (or group of any other kind) and a governmentally enforced legal system of justice in which there are check and balances...right to defend and face accusers...trials by jury...etc., etc. This is an important difference between individual or mob vigilante action. This doesn't necessarily rise to the level of justifying capital punishment. However, let's not disingenously argue that a "mob" is just a small version of a government governed by laws and principles and checks and balances.
Adda: it does look like you are trying to pick a fight with DMZ. I think this is a unique thread with an original question (private emotional stance to individual use of violence). Don´t make it like a zillion other threads that already exist on another subject (philosophical attitude toward collective use of violence), please. Besides this is AO, not PO
I hear you, and I'll stop if you want, but I'm really not trying to pick a fight with DMZ.
The thread is presumably somewhat about the legitimacy of revenge, rationalized or otherwise, and the meaning of justice (unless we're just supposes to give our "yay' or "nay" and leave it at that).
So a bunch of questions fly off of that: killing in the heat of passion vs. calculated revenge, something less than killing but more than "justice" (like "making their life a living hell", as has been suggested), the God angle, as DMZ introduced, and the subject of my questioning, personal vs. collective action.
Like, say the killers had killed before and you knew it. You don't have the stomach to simply blow them away, but you hook up with some like minded citizens, also victims of these criminals, and together you kill them all.
Any of the people who would decline to kill in the first scenario cool with group thing?
I have had some time thinking now so me expand my first post here.
Think about a funeral. Who is crying? Not the dead body but those left behind.
If someone killed my loved ones I would not be sorry for them but for me, because I lost them. They are not aware of anything.
So I am in a room with the person or persons who killed my family. If I killed them I would not have taken away anything they would be around to miss, while I had to live on missing my loved ones and without any action to take to revenge them. The best revenge would not be killing them but having them miss something they value highly, namely their freedom. So the best revenge would be imprisonment for life, forever robbed their freedom.
But this is not nessesarily how I want the laws to function. The legal system has more important roles than private revenge.
You raise some good questions, but you seem to be ignoring a fundamental difference between a "mob" (or group of any other kind) and a governmentally enforced legal system of justice in which there are check and balances...right to defend and face accusers...trials by jury...etc., etc. This is an important difference between individual or mob vigilante action. This doesn't necessarily rise to the level of justifying capital punishment. However, let's not disingenously argue that a "mob" is just a small version of a government governed by laws and principles and checks and balances.
Right, but my question is more about where "collective action" becomes legitimate, either in the eyes of the Lord, or if you prefer, just in general.
For instance, the government you describe above would have to be something like a constitutional liberal democracy. Is that the only large scale organization that has the right to punish?
I have had some time thinking now so me expand my first post here.
Think about a funeral. Who is crying? Not the dead body but those left behind.
If someone killed my loved ones I would not be sorry for them but for me, because I lost them. They are not aware of anything.
So I am in a room with the person or persons who killed my family. If I killed them I would not have taken away anything they would be around to miss, while I had to live on missing my loved ones and without any action to take to revenge them. The best revenge would not be killing them but having them miss something they value highly, namely their freedom. So the best revenge would be imprisonment for life, forever robbed their freedom.
But this is not nessesarily how I want the laws to function. The legal system has more important roles than private revenge.
How about killing their loved ones? Not that I'm implying you'd do such a thing, Anders, but wouldn't that be the most proportionate response?
Maybe a more fundamental question needs to be answered here.
What is the difference between revenge and justice? Is there any?
Is it the reasons/motives/feelings while doing it?
The person or group executing (no pun intended) it?
It seems we ought to (for the sake of argument) remove this from the highly emotional example provided in the initial post and just deal with what is the appropriate course of action (if any) that should be taken (and by whom) when a person is "wronged" (murder, theft, assault, slander, etc.)?
( or am I derailing too much? )
P.S. And a question closely connected to the orignal one is whether someone is in anyway "out of control" due to their emotional state (and desire for "revenge"/"justice") and whether that justifies their actions.
I'm not arguing that my example is unprecedented or even unusual.
Quite the opposite. As I say, nations indulge in tit for tat killing all the time, sometimes as all out war, sometimes as clandestine or strategic assassinations.
However, it's not clear to me what the moral logic is of requiring individuals to defer to God's larger justice while giving groups of individuals a pass (other than someone said so in the bible, but people said a lot of things in the bible that we really don't take to heart).
At what point is my mob big enough to get the group discount? If I and my neighbors suspect a child molester has moved in down the street, and we burn his house down and tar and feather him, is that "Caesar's"?
What if it's just three of us? Ten? Does it take a village? Are nation states granted unique dispensation?
I don't know addabox, those hypothetical situations aren't ever likely to happen -- we all have to make moral choices, and work within, at all costs, our respective governments. And as for changing things, we've been given, historically speaking, way more sway and freedom to mold the government than ever before (except for maybe Athens -- which actually ran on slaves.)
There is a gun lashed to the table in front of you pointed at the bad guy's head. The guy has his gun to your family. If you shoot him, he dies, and your family lives. If you don't shoot him, he kills your family. (Of course, it could be argued that he might not shoot, but for argument's sake, let's assume he will.) Is it right to kill him?
This would not be revenge (pre-venge?), nor would it be what we normally consider justice, but would it be just?
There is a gun lashed to the table in front of you pointed at the bad guy's head. The guy has his gun to your family. If you shoot him, he dies, and your family lives. If you don't shoot him, he kills your family. (Of course, it could be argued that he might not shoot, but for argument's sake, let's assume he will.) Is it right to kill him?
Yes (well at least try to eliminate his ability to harm/kill the family...if killing him is the only way, then yes).
Quote:
Originally posted by Bergermeister
This would not be revenge (pre-venge?), nor would it be what we normally consider justice, but would it be just?
It is really defense (of family). Not sure it fits into either of those other definitions (whatever they may be ).
Let's just say if my dearest brother killed your wife, and you killed my brother in retaliation, I wouldn't recommend sleeping tight at night. Violence begetting violence be damned! I want my revenge!
I honestly feel like I'd beat the guy within an inch of his life and ensure that he can never eat solid food again. Killing him would be too kind. There's something very appealing about the idea of walking up to the guy as he's lying in a pool of his blood and asking, "how does it feel?"
"Your ears you'll keep, and I'll tell you why...."
No, not at all -- I have never understood how life imprisonment could be considered humane -- especially as it's carried out in the country. Gangs, homosexual gang rape, extreme violence, being deprived of family, etc., is not humane. We are effectively destroying people at a thousand times the pace capital punishment would. The American penal system is a horrifingly cheap, feel-good way for the populace at large to throw away people like they were garbage --- and then forget about them.
Fine them, kill them, or let them go.
Why isn't improve the system a response? Eliminate drug & prostitution offenses and suddenly half our prison population goes away. Way easier to deal with half.
Comments
Originally posted by dmz
.......It worked for for 10 weeks in Yugoslavia 1999, why not for AQ? -- seriously, though, if starving 500,000 children to death over nonexistent WMD is okay, then inadvertently killing 13 people pales in comparison. I don't see it as breaking decades of precedence. The 'tender mercies" of 'progress' -- whether of the UN or America -- can be pretty grisly.
I'm not arguing that my example is unprecedented or even unusual.
Quite the opposite. As I say, nations indulge in tit for tat killing all the time, sometimes as all out war, sometimes as clandestine or strategic assassinations.
However, it's not clear to me what the moral logic is of requiring individuals to defer to God's larger justice while giving groups of individuals a pass (other than someone said so in the bible, but people said a lot of things in the bible that we really don't take to heart).
At what point is my mob big enough to get the group discount? If I and my neighbors suspect a child molester has moved in down the street, and we burn his house down and tar and feather him, is that "Caesar's"?
What if it's just three of us? Ten? Does it take a village? Are nation states granted unique dispensation?
Originally posted by addabox
I'm not arguing that my example is unprecedented or even unusual.
Quite the opposite. As I say, nations indulge in tit for tat killing all the time, sometimes as all out war, sometimes as clandestine or strategic assassinations.
However, it's not clear to me what the moral logic is of requiring individuals to defer to God's larger justice while giving groups of individuals a pass (other than someone said so in the bible, but people said a lot of things in the bible that we really don't take to heart).
At what point is my mob big enough to get the group discount? If I and my neighbors suspect a child molester has moved in down the street, and we burn his house down and tar and feather him, is that "Caesar's"?
What if it's just three of us? Ten? Does it take a village? Are nation states granted unique dispensation?
You raise some good questions, but you seem to be ignoring a fundamental difference between a "mob" (or group of any other kind) and a governmentally enforced legal system of justice in which there are check and balances...right to defend and face accusers...trials by jury...etc., etc. This is an important difference between individual or mob vigilante action. This doesn't necessarily rise to the level of justifying capital punishment. However, let's not disingenously argue that a "mob" is just a small version of a government governed by laws and principles and checks and balances.
Originally posted by Anders
Adda: it does look like you are trying to pick a fight with DMZ. I think this is a unique thread with an original question (private emotional stance to individual use of violence). Don´t make it like a zillion other threads that already exist on another subject (philosophical attitude toward collective use of violence), please. Besides this is AO, not PO
I hear you, and I'll stop if you want, but I'm really not trying to pick a fight with DMZ.
The thread is presumably somewhat about the legitimacy of revenge, rationalized or otherwise, and the meaning of justice (unless we're just supposes to give our "yay' or "nay" and leave it at that).
So a bunch of questions fly off of that: killing in the heat of passion vs. calculated revenge, something less than killing but more than "justice" (like "making their life a living hell", as has been suggested), the God angle, as DMZ introduced, and the subject of my questioning, personal vs. collective action.
Like, say the killers had killed before and you knew it. You don't have the stomach to simply blow them away, but you hook up with some like minded citizens, also victims of these criminals, and together you kill them all.
Any of the people who would decline to kill in the first scenario cool with group thing?
Think about a funeral. Who is crying? Not the dead body but those left behind.
If someone killed my loved ones I would not be sorry for them but for me, because I lost them. They are not aware of anything.
So I am in a room with the person or persons who killed my family. If I killed them I would not have taken away anything they would be around to miss, while I had to live on missing my loved ones and without any action to take to revenge them. The best revenge would not be killing them but having them miss something they value highly, namely their freedom. So the best revenge would be imprisonment for life, forever robbed their freedom.
But this is not nessesarily how I want the laws to function. The legal system has more important roles than private revenge.
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
You raise some good questions, but you seem to be ignoring a fundamental difference between a "mob" (or group of any other kind) and a governmentally enforced legal system of justice in which there are check and balances...right to defend and face accusers...trials by jury...etc., etc. This is an important difference between individual or mob vigilante action. This doesn't necessarily rise to the level of justifying capital punishment. However, let's not disingenously argue that a "mob" is just a small version of a government governed by laws and principles and checks and balances.
Right, but my question is more about where "collective action" becomes legitimate, either in the eyes of the Lord, or if you prefer, just in general.
For instance, the government you describe above would have to be something like a constitutional liberal democracy. Is that the only large scale organization that has the right to punish?
Originally posted by Anders
I have had some time thinking now so me expand my first post here.
Think about a funeral. Who is crying? Not the dead body but those left behind.
If someone killed my loved ones I would not be sorry for them but for me, because I lost them. They are not aware of anything.
So I am in a room with the person or persons who killed my family. If I killed them I would not have taken away anything they would be around to miss, while I had to live on missing my loved ones and without any action to take to revenge them. The best revenge would not be killing them but having them miss something they value highly, namely their freedom. So the best revenge would be imprisonment for life, forever robbed their freedom.
But this is not nessesarily how I want the laws to function. The legal system has more important roles than private revenge.
How about killing their loved ones? Not that I'm implying you'd do such a thing, Anders, but wouldn't that be the most proportionate response?
What is the difference between revenge and justice? Is there any?
Is it the reasons/motives/feelings while doing it?
The person or group executing (no pun intended) it?
It seems we ought to (for the sake of argument) remove this from the highly emotional example provided in the initial post and just deal with what is the appropriate course of action (if any) that should be taken (and by whom) when a person is "wronged" (murder, theft, assault, slander, etc.)?
( or am I derailing too much? )
P.S. And a question closely connected to the orignal one is whether someone is in anyway "out of control" due to their emotional state (and desire for "revenge"/"justice") and whether that justifies their actions.
Okay...I'll stop editing now.
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
Maybe a more fundamental question needs to be answered here.
What is the difference between revenge and justice?
Is it the reasons/motives/feelings while doing it?
The person or group executing (no pun intended) it?
And: is it possible for an individual to dispatch "justice", or is that always just "revenge"?
Originally posted by addabox
I'm not arguing that my example is unprecedented or even unusual.
Quite the opposite. As I say, nations indulge in tit for tat killing all the time, sometimes as all out war, sometimes as clandestine or strategic assassinations.
However, it's not clear to me what the moral logic is of requiring individuals to defer to God's larger justice while giving groups of individuals a pass (other than someone said so in the bible, but people said a lot of things in the bible that we really don't take to heart).
At what point is my mob big enough to get the group discount? If I and my neighbors suspect a child molester has moved in down the street, and we burn his house down and tar and feather him, is that "Caesar's"?
What if it's just three of us? Ten? Does it take a village? Are nation states granted unique dispensation?
I don't know addabox, those hypothetical situations aren't ever likely to happen -- we all have to make moral choices, and work within, at all costs, our respective governments. And as for changing things, we've been given, historically speaking, way more sway and freedom to mold the government than ever before (except for maybe Athens -- which actually ran on slaves.)
Originally posted by addabox
And: is it possible for an individual to dispatch "justice", or is that always just "revenge"?
In defense of life and property.
(or something along those lines)
Originally posted by addabox
How about killing their loved ones? Not that I'm implying you'd do such a thing, Anders, but wouldn't that be the most proportionate response?
I did think about that. But I fight "ends justify the means" every day, so I think such an action would end up giving me too much negative karma
...oh wait.
What if we twist the quuestion a little:
There is a gun lashed to the table in front of you pointed at the bad guy's head. The guy has his gun to your family. If you shoot him, he dies, and your family lives. If you don't shoot him, he kills your family. (Of course, it could be argued that he might not shoot, but for argument's sake, let's assume he will.) Is it right to kill him?
This would not be revenge (pre-venge?), nor would it be what we normally consider justice, but would it be just?
Originally posted by Bergermeister
There is a gun lashed to the table in front of you pointed at the bad guy's head. The guy has his gun to your family. If you shoot him, he dies, and your family lives. If you don't shoot him, he kills your family. (Of course, it could be argued that he might not shoot, but for argument's sake, let's assume he will.) Is it right to kill him?
Yes (well at least try to eliminate his ability to harm/kill the family...if killing him is the only way, then yes).
Originally posted by Bergermeister
This would not be revenge (pre-venge?), nor would it be what we normally consider justice, but would it be just?
It is really defense (of family). Not sure it fits into either of those other definitions (whatever they may be
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
Yes (well at least try to eliminate his ability to harm/kill the family...if killing him is the only way, then yes).
It is really defense (of family). Not sure it fits into either of those other definitions (whatever they may be
That is definitly selfdefense and is quite legal according to U.S. law
"Your ears you'll keep, and I'll tell you why...."
Originally posted by dmz
No, not at all -- I have never understood how life imprisonment could be considered humane -- especially as it's carried out in the country. Gangs, homosexual gang rape, extreme violence, being deprived of family, etc., is not humane. We are effectively destroying people at a thousand times the pace capital punishment would. The American penal system is a horrifingly cheap, feel-good way for the populace at large to throw away people like they were garbage --- and then forget about them.
Fine them, kill them, or let them go.
Why isn't improve the system a response? Eliminate drug & prostitution offenses and suddenly half our prison population goes away. Way easier to deal with half.
Originally posted by trumptman
I wouldn't call it revenge. I would call it justice.
Would I be right? Probably not.
Would I pull the trigger? Absolutely.
Would I feel that my lack of ability to forgive is a moral failing? Probably.
Could I live with that? Yes.
Nick