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Killed by inaction

siiky

2024/07/17

Trump shot § When is an answer without a question?

Peeps writing in are saying it’s not OK to kill anyone and that it shouldn’t even be a question to be asked.

I recently went to a two-days conference on ethics of war, initially thinking "war is about killing; once you've killed someone, what else is there to discuss?" I was pleasantly surprised.

Right now, my rule-of-thumb is that killing is bad. But that's only a rule of thumb. In certain scenarios, killing is permissible in order to avoid A Greater Evil. I don't personally know anyone who would object to their right of self-defense, which includes the right to kill the assailant in the process -- though not with previous intent of doing so, otherwise you (the assailed) would become the assailant instead. The assailed earns this right from the assailant's implicit forfeit of their own rights to life, at the moment they became the assailant.

There are epistomological questions (read: problems), such as, "but do you know if the assailant really intends to harm you?" or, "but do you know if the assailant really intends to make real what they have say they want to make real?" Of course you don't know, you couldn't know. Maybe they're bluffing when they threaten you. Maybe. Or maybe not.

But this skepticism is depressingly true, and can be so paralyzing... It mustn't be the reason for inaction! Are you gonna wait and find out? A more pragmatic approach, because we can only ever see the outside of someone else, is to appropriate duck-typing: if it looks like an assailant, it talks like an assailant, and it acts like assailant, then it is an assailant! And you should defend yourself however you need to. Unfortunately, the "real world" is a lot messier than this...

My personally limited view on Trump is that he's talked like a bad guy and acted like a bad guy for long enough to be considered a bad guy. If someone has decided to take action by themselves on this particular bad guy, hopefully believing it will be better for everyone, I will not blame them. The bad that Trump will presumably make reality, as he says he will, for his benefit and that of people around him, is expected (by me; maybe not by you) to be greater than killing him.

And while I do not believe violence is THE means to achieve great deeds, I do not believe non-violence will get us all into a violence-free world either, because even if we stopped acting violently, the other side doesn't need to play by the same rules. The people in power will continue in power, and they'll use whatever violence they deem necessary to keep it, until they die and their power is inherited by some "natural" successors. The power relation will never be upended this way. The tools we have were given to us, but they're lame, they don't apply equally to all. We have proof of that. Thus, we need to make our own tools.

So yes, it IS a serious question to be asked seriously. Let us not get killed by inaction.

https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/war/

https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/repugnant-conclusion/