[pf] 2; russel's opinions- ethics of people not finding out for themselv

{earlier, at 08:25 14/10/2001 -0500, Jill was checking Topica's running.}

At 10:34 15/10/2001 +1300 I sent this to PF; nothing's appeared, 4 hr later.

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· Don't get put off by the first main paragraph. The main part of this is
about how to apply ethical arguments.
  The theme is: "those who have ample opportunity to establish the facts of
the matter"; and the consequent degree of guilt (because they have made an
informed choice - perhaps to do nothing).

· But there's a digression: the "utilitarian point of view: will the
bombing of the world trade centre mean that the US state kills more or less
people in the foreseeable future?
  if, for example, the answer was that the US state would kill 200,000
people _fewer_ over the next 2 years because, in their fear of arousing
arab nationalism they lift the sanctions on Iraq, then the answer would be
that it is ethically justifiable to do so. it means that 5000 mostly
americans are dead but that 200 000 mostly iraqis are alive.
  however if the answer was that the US state would go even more ballistic
than usual and kill extra people, then it is not justifiable."

{N.B. · The argument you're used to is at the bottom: "people have certain
fundamental human rights, like the right not to be killed, and hence
neither the ethical compromise argument nor the utilitarian argument apply.
all death of humans is evil ..."}   D.

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At 08:25 AM 2001-10-13 +1300, Jeremy wrote:
>Hands up those who think Matt McCarten looks uncannily like Mohammed Atta?
>

At 00:32 14/10/2001 +1300, russel wrote:

mmmmmmmmmm Jeremy, Matt may have his negative points but he did walk out on
the fourth Labour govt when they did things like privatise Air NZ, in the
process losing his job in the union movement, lots of "friends" and a
comfortable career. 

Not that Mohammed Atta is necessarily a bad person (i assume he must be one
of the wtc bombers). To give one's life for the cause of middle eastern
nationalism resisting american imperialism is possibly a noble thing. Given
the past history of the USA killing people, anything that slows them down
may be ethically justifiable. the problem is predicting the future. i guess
the key question from a utilitarian point of view is: will the bombing of
the world trade centre mean that the US state kills more or less people in
the foreseeable future? if, for example, the answer was that the US state
would kill 200 000 people fewer over the next 2 years because, in their
fear of arousing arab nationalism, they lift the sanctions on Iraq, then
the answer would be that it is ethically justifiable to do so. it means
that 5000 mostly americans are dead but that 200 000 mostly iraqis are
alive. however if the answer was that the US state would go even more
ballistic than usual and kill extra people, then it is not justifiable.

what if we were to take the people out of it altogether. let's say that the
bombers hijacked empty planes and attacked in the middle of the night when
no-one was there. the towers were downed as before but, hypothetically, the
only people killed were the hijackers themselves. it then becomes an act of
resistance against a symbol of american imperial dominance. hard to
question the ethics of that. 

but that isn't what happened. of course the hijackers probably didn't give
a shit because they saw thousands of arabs dying while americans didn't
care one little bit so they problably found it hard to treat them as
particularly worthy of ethical consideration. which raises the question of
how guilty are americans for the actions of their govt and to what degree
does this guilt undermine their ethical standing? i guess there must be
degrees of guilt. the top 1% of americans benefit enormously from the
actions of the US state and have ample opportunity to establish the facts
of the matter and hence oppose the state policy. the top 1% are probably as
guilty as if they were murdering people themselves. the bottom 10% probably
benefit little and have less opportunity to find out the facts. 

so where does it leave people in the upper middle - the world trade centre
appears to have been populated by many upper middle americans.
tertiary-educated people generally earn good wages and have plenty of
opportunity to find out the truth. so if someone does nothing about an evil
situation (eg US policy in the middle east) and indeed continues to benefit
from the gains (cheap oil, high wages) made from such a situation, while
having reasonable opportunity to establish the facts of the matter,
then.... clearly the bulk of american educated people are guilty of
standing by and benefitting from a policy that is ethically unacceptable.
so how ought we treat their ethical status? are people who treat others as
worthless, and who do nothing about the fact that others die so that they
may have a cruisy life, worthy of being treated with as great an ethical
respect as those who don't do such things?

let me approach it from the edge. was the attempt to assassinate Hitler in
1944 ethically acceptable? the answer in my view is yes, because: 
1. from a utilitarian point of view it was a reasonable assumption that the
taking of Hitler's life would allow the war to be shortened dramatically
and millions of lives saved and 
2. Hitler's ethical status was compromised by the evil nature of his actions.

So if such an argument can be applied in one case why not another -
universality is, after all, the key feature of ethics. many, though not
all, people killed in the trade centre had their ethical status compromised
by their passive acceptance of, and benefit from, the callous killing of
many hundreds of thousands of arabs. secondly, their death may result in
the US state performing in a less belligerent way in the future than it has
in the past (though this is far from certain) and hence the death of
thousands of ethically compromised people may save the lives of the
hundreds of thousands of less ethically compromised people.

but what if we were to assume that the vast bulk of americans are ignorant.
that they have no reasonable chance to find the truth and hence are not
guilty of doing nothing to stop an evil while benefitting from it. then
there is only the utilitarian argument.

of course one could make a rights based argument. people have certain
fundamental human rights, like the right not to be killed, and hence
neither the ethical compromise argument nor the utilitarian argument apply.
all death is evil and it can't be weighed up. the death of one can't be
justified by the non-death of many. problem then is that you can't deal
with the hitler-type problem as hitler types have rights too.

just a thought. blame jeremy for getting me started!

of course these are not especially popular arguments to have at the moment
as the security services go mad in a desperate attempt to cover the fact
that they completely and abysmally failed to predict or prevent the attack
and hence should have their funding cut not increased. only justice can
bring peace.

russel

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sent-on to Positive Futures by David.
David MacClement [davd @ ihug.co.nz] (remove spaces)
http://davd.tripod.com/GrRR-011005_titles.html#top
http://www.geocities.com/davd.geo/index.html#top
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