Killing is morally wrong universally, for most people adhering to a moral system, right?
What about killing an aggressor that tries to kills hundreds of people in your community?
Suddenly that killing to save the life of many innocents does not seem so repellent for most people, don't you agree? What if the killing of an aggressor is the only solution to save the life of a member of your family? Even many religious people would consider such defensive killing the right thing to do if there is no other solution.
Killing for saving the life of your family
For most of us, the intuitive moral compass would demand us to shelter our family, even by killing the aggressor. Sometimes we would not have the power to do a "self-defense" killing ourselves. However, we would morally applaud the intervention of some force authority that killed the aggressor and saved the innocents. Most religious would not find this action morally wrong, even if they would not directly endorse it.
Killing for defending your country
Most people would consider justified to kill for defending one's country, especially when that killing is done by someone else - the military force of the country. Sometimes organized religions would give moral support for the military forces that should defend the country, even if defending the country often means to kill the enemy.
A country invasion would not always result in killing people. Often, the oppressor is mainly interested to plunder the wealth of that country, tolerating the lives of the inhabitants of the conquered country. Therefore, often the killing is considered justified even when there is no life to save, but just some material wealth and the independence of a community.
Interestingly enough, while
many religions would not apply too much moral weight to the material
welfare, it is even more unexpected that many such religions would
morally support the country's defense system.
Killing for crimes other than murder
Many people would consider it justified to give capital punishment to someone that created huge sufferings, like raping children, especially when repeated. Some societies would mandate capital punishments even for offending their most sacred beliefs, like mocking a certain religious figure.
Even the laws of many modern countries would allow killing of known criminals that cannot be captured otherwise - like drug dealers. Even trespassing can result in "legally accepted" killing, when the trespasser would not stop.
Defending some property can result in "justified" killing, even if most laws would require to warn the offender first. This could be justified by preventing a probable risk on someone's life. However, even when the risk is not realistic, often such killing of a warned criminal that would not stop is often considered morally and legally justified.
Religion vs Religion
Historically, many religions that condemn killing would have had historically tolerate killing of other people considered to be part of heretic religions, or that threatened the existence of their own religion (think religious crusades). Even today, some religious groups would mandate the killing of "heretics" or for other moral sins, like adultery.
It is also possible that very peaceful religions were cannibalized by other, more warrior religions. Even if we can wash out the ancient approaches by various religions, it remains problematic to claim a certain "tradition" as the absolute moral truth, even about killing.
Morality in regards to killing
We are forced to admit that killing is not considered universally wrong. There are a lot of "except that or that or that". Many people that would condemn abortion to be a killing, would applaud or at least tolerate the killing for protecting his/her country, even when the danger on country's citizens is not immediate but rather potential. I don't say this is good or wrong, I just say that people have different levels of tolerance to killing and claiming the absolute value of each life is often inconsistent with other moral decisions.
Some religious people would not morally accept to deliberately kill one to save 5 as the trolley problem goes. One argument would be that the value of life is infinite - like the number of natural numbers - and 5 infinities are not more valuable than 1 infinite. Still, I believe that most of them would morally accept the act of the policemen that kills a criminal to prevent the killing of his/her family.
As
the number of involved people increase, even very anti-killing
people would accept the practical utilitarian approach "kill one to save one hundred", especially when "one" would be the potential killer.
The gregarious moral
Most basic religious beliefs (including "thou shalt not kill") seems to work in concentric circles of morality, that value more the life of family above others, and the lives of your fellow citizens more than the lives in other countries.
This is probably tributary to an innate morality sense adapted to tribes, that helps to protect one's tribe to achieve welfare through collaboration. In the same time, the tribe member was required to be ready to fight with another competing tribe. In practice, there is nothing really universal in the way we apply the anti-killing moral precept.
What we have, also innate, is a certain compassion for other human beings that prevents us to kill them - except when they are perceived as great dangers. This constitutes an emotions support for a morality to avoid killing. However, this compassion seems to rapidly decrease with distance - think guns, missiles. Sometimes we extend this compassion for other living beings, especially the ones with human-like faces (like dogs).
Still, we have another innate predisposition, also from tribal times. We are predisposed to obey the moral rules that are generally accepted in our community. If our community is mandating us to killing the disbelievers, we humans can easily consider them "a rival tribe" and start killing them. The compassion and thinking can sometimes moderate the community rules, however there are always enough people that would just follow the rules enforced by zealous leaders, like political or religious leaders, even gang leaders.
Revisiting morality
The morality regarding killing is not very consistently applied even inside a religious community, and sometimes even inside a single individual. While killing one human to save couple of people is not always morally appealing, most people would agree to a utilitarian approach when we compare many lives with one. Ideally, we should actively work to prevent such hard moral dilemmas to even appear. However, there are many unfortunate situations when someone must make a choice who to save - for example in medical triage after a huge accident. Still, it seems morally dubious to require a healthy individual to sacrifice their life for others - unless they want it.
All moral, including anti-killing interdiction seems to aim to achieve flourish of a certain group of humans. Gradually, we extended out circle of compassion to bigger tribes, countries and even cross-country. The direction is to extend the compassion to the whole world. We will never put the same value for unknown people as we do to our family, however someday we might stop seeing other groups as rival tribes.
If we accept that human flourishing is the purpose of morality, we might start revisiting some ancient moral rules that were designed for the tribe's flourishing and not to optimize the welfare of humanity. When there is no other rival tribe to kill to take the resources, we might find that over-population is as dangerous to human flourishing as a big decrease in birth rate. While any artificial decrease of population is clearly morally wrong to the common sense, birth control might be the only reasonable solution.
If we tune the morality to a long time optimum of human flourishing, we should aim to provide children with real chance to develop and contribute to society and benefit from society. A life condemned to misery is less likely to be helpful for long-term human flourishing.
We should beware of harsh moral judgements. Diversity of many kinds can be an asset in the long-term human thriving. On one hand, genetic diversity can be an advantage in the face of diseases. On the other hand, diversity in mind and personality can foster creativity - as long as our society gives to all enough chances to develop and contribute. The first step is equal real chance to education.
Final considerations
The above is an invitation to revisit out moral believes with new eyes. In practice, even a largely shared moral belief like "thou shalt not kill" contains nuances that are often unwritten. It looks like the meaning of most religious beliefs was to assure the flourish of a human group. However, the moral group has grown through time and the means for humans to flourish has changed. This should make us more open to update some of our moral beliefs. Morality should be applied for the good of Humanity and not for the sake of a certain book or tradition.
This essay was inspired and is a kind of reply to the essay Reassessing Morality by Bill Meacham.
Dear reader, please leave a message if you exist! ;) Also, please share this article if you find it interesting. Thank you.
Comments