Are some people more worthy of living than others?

[Foreigner]

I ask this question because - and maybe it's my imagination - but it seems like within my lifetime, loss of human life is increasingly trivial. There's this notion that we have 7 billion people on this planet, so who cares if some people die? It has played out recently during covid19. It's a novel virus that is killing people in unpredictable ways, and yet the economy is gradually being given precedent. I don't really want to argue the politics of covid, but it's an example where money is put above human life.

Another way human life is trivialized is through climate change and population numbers themselves. There are too many people, so it's a good thing if our numbers are scaled back some way.

So... are all humans really equal? Or are some "more equal" than others? Is every life precious or not?

 

[atara]

I think the problem is the temptation to frame this in a utilitarian way.

We work harder to prevent one death than another death, then we look back on it and say "was the one life more valuable than the other"? But it's not only the life, it's also the death that determines our reaction to it.

If you have unlimited power, then sure, you can do whatever causes the most "valuable" results. But when you have limited power, you aren't only focused on the results, but on keeping your own house in order. The utilitarian perspective is attractive to people who linger within counterfactuals, because you can do whatever you want inside of your own imagination.

Humans in the real world act from a perspective of extremely limited power. We each have only the tiniest bit of influence. We often stamp our feet and exaggerate because we know that our words won't be taken seriously.

Another way human life is trivialized is through climate change and population numbers themselves. There are too many people, so it's a good think if our numbers are scaled back some way.

And people who post this disgusting ecofascist crap are of course only killing people within their own heads, which is why the worst consequence they'll face is some anonymous internet stranger calling them disgusting ecofascists.

 

[sdxyln]

The question is utilitarian.

 

[sdxyln]

Would one save a Gandhi over five concentration camp commandants?

 

[Asante]

There are some people whom I personally would prefer to live more so than certain others, but ultimately the worthiness of people to live is decided by the factual expiration date of their stay on earth, by the Universe.

My desire for people to live and die is wholely inferior to the Universe's wisdom, which works in infathomable ways. Humans have a directive hardwired into our brains, which is an instinct not to kill one another and to preserve life when possible, though these default settings are easily overridden by the programming of life. The initial revulsion to have others come to harm exists though, as a primary directive. Those who override it, no matter how justified they feel in doing this, become killers and not seldom their whole psychological lives are messed up because of having killed - no matter how justified it all seemed at the time, further underlining this imperative.

If you have 2 people, a CEO of a pharmaceutical company who makes shady deals and then gratuitously raises the price of insulin twentyfold so that patients whos life depends on the substance are screwed out of their money deep into debt and many ration their insulin and DIE.. or you have the INVENTOR of manufactured insulin who tried his best so that as many as possible could have their life giving medicine, his life's work, virtually at cost, then its obvious who I'd prefer to live on. I would not cut the other's life short out of my own volition though.

If however God Himself materialized a tranquilizer gun loaded with a twentyfold OD of insulin into my hand and me in a room with the greedy CEO with the request "this will traumatize you for life but will save countless lives, would you be so kind as to be my poetic executioner?" the greedy CEO is about to have a low blood sugar day - because through this sincere and undeniable miracle I'd have absolute confirmation that a higher power wants this. I'd dart his ass, pray for his soul as he died, get arrested and do a bunch of years in prison having PTSD flashbacks in the knowledge I saved thousands of lives and spared hundreds of thousands of families bankruptcy with my personal sacrifice.

If any of the CEO's involved in the insulin price hike read this: fucking lower the price back to ethical levels you greedy hogs.

 

[Xorkoth]

I don't think that the triviality of human life in the regard of others is actually increasing at all. In fact, I would say that, if anything, in modern times individual human lives have been widely considered to be of increasingly greater value. Your average person, I think, is more aware than ever before of the value of every human life, vs only valuing the lives of those in one's own group. Violent crime, in western cultures at least, has actually decreased, even since the 80s and 90s. Look at the dark ages, when the population of the Earth was a small fraction of what it is now... it brought us the Inquisition, the Crusades, etc. The European imperialism period brought us wanton culture annihilation in the name of morality. Until very recently, it was commonplace to consider people of different cultures to be subhuman and unworthy of respect or equal consideration. I think the lack of considered value among those seeking to control the population has always been very low, but among the average person, there is more value placed on random individual lives than there has been in perhaps nearly any other point in history, although it does seem this is decreasing again very recently, compared to the recent past. On the other hand, for many people, there is an explosion of awareness of the need to consider those different from oneself in an egalitarian way.

I think that, in an abstract view, the burden of overpopulation is probably creating an abstract sense of less detriment to the death of individuals unrelated to oneself, but I think that, when presented with random other people who are different, your average person is taking more apt to treat those people in a way that respects their inherent worth as a fellow human (even if behind anonymity, they might be expressing bigotry or callousness).

I could be wrong, but those are my initial thoughts on the subject.

 

[Zopiclone bandit]

I don't think really any human has the right to take another life, I'm all for idiots doing stupid things that MAY kill them off due to their own stupid actions but to just remove people Zkylon B-esque is wrong.

Nature has ways to remove folks, it always has & it always will. In my heart & soul I know most of humanity is stupid, greedy, don't care for anyone but their own needs etc so I say let things play out as they should. We don't have long anyway folks what with the way the Climate is changing, all the nasty stuff in the sea, the amount of Nuclear weapons all over the planet etc.

These are end days without the help of other people removing others.

 

[Foreigner]

I agree it's a utilitarian question, but it's borne of another kind of utilitarianism, which is biopower. (The word comes from Michael Foucault.) To sum it up, every time someone is harmed, we make a new rule that preserves life so that others aren't harmed in the same way. This causes population numbers to increase. Then the reverse starts happening, where life becomes devalued because there are so many people. Some may even think that a mass culling could be a good idea.

I'm wondering where this comes from. Is it because most of the world lives in big cities now, and big cities are prone to so many social problems that stir hate between humans? Is it because we are more aware of the limits of natural resources, and if we had far more resources and open space, humans would be less indifferent to death? Just some ideas.

 

[Gormur]

I think we focus too much on lifestyle rather than on living for the sake of it; at least in media, maybe not individually. People who hold important positions in the world might be considered to be more valuable (net worth etc) by a government, but that means nothing to me. Everybody's indispensable to a government once they're done with you. A holy person is valuable to a country, maybe forever. That's one exception. Everybody else is forgotten once they reach a certain age

 

[ovenbakedskittles]

I ask this question because - and maybe it's my imagination - but it seems like within my lifetime, loss of human life is increasingly trivial. There's this notion that we have 7 billion people on this planet, so who cares if some people die? It has played out recently during covid19. It's a novel virus that is killing people in unpredictable ways, and yet the economy is gradually being given precedent. I don't really want to argue the politics of covid, but it's an example where money is put above human life.

Another way human life is trivialized is through climate change and population numbers themselves. There are too many people, so it's a good thing if our numbers are scaled back some way.

So... are all humans really equal? Or are some "more equal" than others? Is every life precious or not?

Every life is precious given that every life has the potential to grow and to learn and to make things better for themselves and other people and every person and can make a difference no matter what they have done or how many people are on earth.

It’s just the selfish people who govern the society who have to indulge in survival of the fittest behaviors and competitive mindsets to even get in the high position that they are in and becomes such a habit to them that they just see people as ants to step on whenever they feel like the pressure is too high or whenever they feel like moving the crowd in whatever direction that they want them to go for their own commercialized purposes. They are hypnotized by the spoiled rich lifestyle and elitist way of thinking.

However, the ordinary person like you and I are humble enough to see the potential in people and actually have a heart so that we can have enough empathy and compassion to care at least a little bit more than they do even if you’re still contemplating how you should see it. It depends on your perspective I guess.

There aren’t really that much people on earth as much as there could be it’s just a lot compared to anything we have experienced as a civilization but it is not necessary to crowd people up in cities and towns and have one focused central point of large populations. That in and of itself is commercially motivated and it gives off the illusion that we are over populated to give you the idea that it is a good thing for people to die so they can slowly morph you into a cynical robot.