if it meant that it would end world hunger?
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if it meant that it would end world hunger?
Yea, I'd take my own life. Not that world hunger would be solved for all that long.
I'm not sure. But if there was a button I could press and wipe out all of humanity I think I'd press it.
Sorry I will not kill for the world. Not myself or others, If there is a heaven I plan on going there!
The native tribes of Central and South America did this all the time. It was called a sacrifice to the Gods.
Yes. I would take the utilitarian viewpoint on this one. You know, the greater good and all that...
Claw hammer or Axe?
Without food to limit our numbers, it would be disease. Ending world hunger would only shift the deaths over to communicable diseases, and would ultimately accomplish very little.
Never.
Does the end justify the means?
No.
disease will always run rampant however - it has been for billions of years - whether or not there is hunger wont make much of a difference....and yes, that billions - not just 6,000 years as those "intelligent design" folks might try and have people believe.
I say forget the single sacrifice and world hunger and lets shoot all the people involved in keeping the free world dependent on fossil fuel. We've been developing alternative fuel and energy sources for the last 30-40 years. Why are we still paying over $3 a gallon for gas?
Disaease has killed millions as recently as the Spanish Influenza epidemic of the early 1900s. Modern antibiotics has curbed Mother Natures ability to cull the herd.
because all of the alternatives are not substitutes and poor supplements to the Publics desire for plentiful and cheap power. The only real alternative - Nuclear fusion is decades away in development as infrastructure catches up with theory.
Rant, rave, rail against Capitalism all you like. The alternatives are not efficient enough, available in all locations, or produced cheaply enough to be valid as alternatives.
absolutely not.
no person has the right to end the life of another person.
no. I could never kill anyone unless my life was threatened.
Nobody has the right to take another person's life.
Not even me....
"Innocent person"? You must be referring to babies or saints. Nope, I'd pass!
On one hand I want to say yes (I mean come on, you'd be saving BILLIONS),
BUT I also see things like starvation and cancer as a way to try to cope with human overpopulation, so no.
/shrug
I also have a theory about overpopulation and homicidal crime (violent and suicide)... cockroaches will actually kill each other, if I'm not mistaken, if there are too many in proportion to available resources, etc, but that's for another chapter.
My problem with ethical thought experiments is that it's never so simple. There is no way there could ever be a context free problem with such an easy solution.
I mean, I know it's a hypothetical problem, but life-boat semantics just bothers me because it's never like that. It seems like a convenient way to think about moral responsibility in black/ white terms, but morality is all about the grey areas.
If life were so black and white, yeah, of course I'd bite the Utilitarian bullet, Peter Singer style. I don't believe in rights-based doctrine. Rights-language isn't based on anything beyond Deontology, which has as many uncomfortable results as Utility.
IF I could save a billion people by sacrificing one person? Of course I would, but then of course I NEVER would, because that would NEVER happen.
I think in easier questions of sacrifice, like spending a little less on myself so that I may spend some more on worthy charity-- then utilitarian logic is useful. Because worse comes to worse, I've just missed out on some designer jeans. I didn't kill or hurt anyone. So for big issues, since the future is never certain...the sun might not even rise tomorrow, for all I know...I think the MEANS justify the ENDS...and for smaller issues, I'd gamble to allow THOSE ends to justify the means. Hope that's clear enough.
Also, as a follow up, and I think a better moral challenge--- how much would you sacrifice, in terms of material excess, in order to stop world hunger? It's hard. I could probably save many, many starving children instead of owning a horse. Maybe the truly moral thing to do, when so many are dying, is to do all I could to help them. Is there any difference between a starving child on TV and a drowning child in my pool if they both would die without my help (that's a Singer paraphrase, so don't flame me)? I'm not a saint, but sometimes when I think about this stuff I can't help but feel that we are all sinners.
I'd like to say yes... but I don't think that I could.
I'm not sure how killing some of our kind is going to solve world hunger.
We probably grow enough food here in the US alone to easily feed this entire planet. The reason that it doesn't get to parts of the world where starvation is rampant is because of political tensions in those parts of the world where warring factions steal whatever food is offered as aid. Ironically enough its in places like that where innocent people are well...being murdered.
Although, I was watching this program on the History Channel talking about the Little Ice Age and how it made resources like food scarce, helped exasperate the Black Death and resulted in political tension throughout the world, not unlike the sort of stuff that is going on in places like Darfur today. So hey, you never know.
One thing that ought to be pointed out here. Overpopulation is exclusively a third world phenomenon. There is NO overpopulation problem in Western developed nations. In fact, you can argue that people in such nations, particularly in Europe, have an underpopulation problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility
The Sex Kitten:
IMO, you've just illuminated the hazy intersection of moral/ethical elasticity and fatalistic pragmatism. Can one truly arrive at a paradigm that justifies the taking of an innocent life when nature has already has checks and balances in place and the issue of world hunger predates modern civilization? It doesn't seem possible...(Yeah , I said "No" )
i agree with this.... there must be checks and balances upon population spread... if it is not starvation, it will either be infectious diseases/viruses, or chronic diseases as the results of man's own madness- our pollution, our plundering of natural resources and disregard for our functioning as part of a greater ecosystem...
although man would like to think he is a higher life-form, with consciousness and logic and tool-making abilities, etc., in reality we are just another mammal, and like deer, if we don't have checks on our population overgrowth, nature must pick us off some way or other.
If man suddenly lacked starvation/hunger to check population growth, there would likely be a population explosion in the developing world (more than there already is), and we could likely see China-esque burgeoning industries... These "new industrial" nations could finally move out of third-world agriculture if their efforts didn't have to center around food anymore.... but the amount of pollution and overall impact on the environment from their economic growth would be devastating. Cancer/disease/unforseen illnesses... something else would most probably take starvation's place.
So, although I would LIKE to take LuckyOne's utilitarian view and say "the most good for the most people," i don't think it's really an option here... I agree w/ Mollyzmoon in that lifeboat ethics don't make sense because ultimately they have no basis in reality.