Sunday, March 11, 2007
#7
Many suggest that what is right or wrong is the result of what “works” or produces the best results for society. First, why do we even have to agree that society is worth preserving? Isn't it survival of the fittest? Second, if everything is result-driven, what if someone like Hitler desires different results? Can we oppose him on a moral level? He was looking for results. Therefore, are we against his morale or method?
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2 comments:
Many suggest that what is right or wrong is the result of what “works” or produces the best results for society. First, why do we even have to agree that society is worth preserving?
we don't have to agree - society takes care of itself
Isn't it survival of the fittest?
you keep on answering your own questions!
Second, if everything is result-driven, what if someone like Hitler desires different results? Can we oppose him on a moral level
yes
He was looking for results. Therefore, are we against his morale or method?
A little of both. More so the method imho - if he managed to get the resuts he desired without the atrocities commited, it might have been an acceptable result. His aims call for the methods, however. So he fails morally.
Jason, why do you keep flogging the Hitler example?
Sadly, at the time apparently not many people did criticize Hitler. When the United States and other countries disgracefelly turned away the Jewish refugess on the St. Louis, that sent the message to Hitler that the rest of the world really did not give a fuck (pardon my language) about the Jews.
I would throw your Hitler example right back at you. Choices have consequences. History teaches us the consequences of not stopping people like Hitler earlier. "Oh, just let Hitler have the Sudetenland and he will be happy and not want more." But that is the problem, when you keep giving people like Hitler what they want because eventually they are going to want what is yours too. Or even worse, it sets a precedent for others to follow his example. It is famously said that Hitler was encouraged to carry out the Holocaust because the world did nothing for the Armenians who were killed by the Turks during WWI.
So you see Jason, I am perfectly within my rights to oppose Hitler on a moral level. To paraphrase the Chinese philosoper Mo Tzu, who I quoted in the post on my blog that first caught your attention, caring about the welfare of others creates a climate that helps to protect our own welfare. I believe the phrase for it is "the virtuous circle."
The thing is, one can easily speak out in opposition to a Hitler. But what does one actually do about a Hitler. If I see a teenager beating a senior citizen up in an alley, I would at once set upon the teenager and stop his attack on the senior citizen. The attack is over and justice is served. But when a dictator commits genocide against people in a territory he controls, it is a much more difficult thing to act against, because you have to mobilize the resources of a nation to confront the genocide. First, there must be a consensus to take action. Then the military has to be mobilized, strategies formulated, logistics arranged for an so on. Meanwhile, the genocide is going on unabated in the dictator's territory.
As for Hitler's Germany, it is precisely because hardly anybody opposed him when he could have been stopped at a relatively low cost that a destructive war of many years needed to be fought. You know that old saying about an ounce of prevention being better than a pound of cure. Let Hitler kill the Jews and annex chunks of Europe, and the next thing you know he declares war on you and has submarines sinking merchant ships up and down your coasts.
Thus, do I really need to be any clearer to you about why one is morally justified in opposing Hitler?
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