Do people have an inherent right to live?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Do people have an inherent right to live?

America Inc.: Nov 22, 2013; I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even 500 would be pretty nice.

Helsing posted:

Yes, it's well documented that countries with welfare systems routinely slide down the slippery slope of positive rights and are soon harvesting the surplus organs of their populations so they can be redistributed.

If a dead person stated that their organs should not be reused for science or to help the living, do the negative rights of a dead person to not have their organs reused trump the positive rights of a living person to stay alive, or to make scientific advancements which keep people alive? I'm not trying to bait or anything here.

Separate point: No system of negative rights can be maintained without positive rights to enforce them.

America Inc. fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Feb 27, 2015

# ¿ Feb 27, 2015 22:36

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 17:59

America Inc.: Nov 22, 2013; I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even 500 would be pretty nice.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

which person's rights are more important?

Why is anyone's rights more important than anyone else's? We can argue all day about who is more deserving than anyone else, but it doesn't matter. What matters is the power to create reality as we see fit.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2015 01:45

America Inc.: Nov 22, 2013; I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even 500 would be pretty nice.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Then what is the justification for having a tiny elite who can lord their wealth over everybody else and use it to control them?

There is no justification, just as there is no justification for overthrowing them outside those we have constructed within our own societal context and biology. Remove those foundations, and there is no basis. Look at the revolutions of history, done by people who thought they were right, and what damage they caused due to their own ignorance created from the narrow mental box from which they draw their perceptions and solutions to problems.
Right and wrong are illusory products of the human mind, and your wrong is my right. The only thing that really matters is the ability to force your perception of wrong and right upon reality.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2015 02:02

America Inc.: Nov 22, 2013; I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even 500 would be pretty nice.

quickly posted:

It doesn't follow from rightness or wrongness being "products of the human mind" or "constructed within our societal context and biology," at least without further argument, that they are (a) illusory, (b) relative to individuals, or (c) reduce to power relations. Both the realist and anti-realist traditions in ethics are replete with theories under which rightness or wrongness are (partially) determined by human cognition or biology, yet statements containing them are genuinely true or false, for starters.

What are you defining as "genuine"? What are your underlying premises? Because there are a whole litany of schools of ethical thought which all operate off of different underlying premises and argue against one another. Unless you're starting from empirical observations, you're operating off faith to some extent. Everybody has a different idea of what is right and what is wrong from their own experience, societal background, and teaching. Even if we were to say one school of ethical thought was the Only Right Form of Thought, as humans, it's worthless without some form of enforcement.
You could make a bulletproof case that a certain set of ethical principles are as "genuine" as 1+1=2, but it doesn't matter if I can shoot you and make 2+2=5.

The world doesn't care what you think unless you can make it happen.

E: Note that this isn't a might-makes-right argument. It's more pragmatic.

America Inc. fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Feb 28, 2015

# ¿ Feb 28, 2015 05:08

America Inc.: Nov 22, 2013; I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even 500 would be pretty nice.

Dead Reckoning posted:

So the only moral theft is the one I agree with, and might makes right when I think it does? I'm a little disturbed how quickly you shifted gears from saying that helping others is a moral duty to, "do it or we'll loving kill you and take your stuff" (which has the added problem of being a threat that most poor and starving people can't actually back up.)

Would any sane person rather die hungry than steal to eat? Would you?
It's not about logical consistency because humans aren't robots that you just feed a moral program.
If a large percentage of the population struggles to survive, you invite instability, and no amount of tantrumming will forestall it.

quote:

...which is how the Reign of Terror came about.

The great Count did indeed make a great effort to persuade the peasants of the irrationality of their behavior, and made quite a solid argument, before he was quite rudely interrupted by a bayonet!

America Inc. fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Mar 7, 2015

# ¿ Mar 7, 2015 23:34

America Inc.: Nov 22, 2013; I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even 500 would be pretty nice.

TwoQuestions posted:

No, it's just people seem to think we don't live in a dog-eat-dog jungle when in fact we do. If the government/social contract decides you don't deserve to live, then you will die. How many genocides are going on right this instant and nobody gives a poo poo?

Society functions because we don't let everyone just be thrown to the wolves. If you want to make an argument that it would be better if the weak were cleansed through violence, by all means do so.
Actually, we don't live in a dog-eat-dog world because people don't eat their kids, or regularly steal from their neighbors.

quote:

Yes, but I'm proud to the point where the only reason I'd ask for help is because not doing so would hurt other people.

You know for some reason I don't believe this at all.

America Inc. fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Mar 8, 2015

# ¿ Mar 8, 2015 00:22

America Inc.: Nov 22, 2013; I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even 500 would be pretty nice.

TwoQuestions posted:

I'm not saying those genocides are good by any stretch, I'm saying that's how the world works. Also, I take it you haven't grown up in a small poor town. People don't eat their kids, they make them work in legal and illegal ways and boy do people rob their neighbors left and right, but generally as revenge for some real or imagined slight. If you leave your door open, don't count on any of your stuff being there when you get back.

If these people weren't forced into such a desperate situation by society, would they act like that?
People aren't angels, but if you force people into a corner there isn't a hell of a lot open for them.
It's like the Nazis forcing the Jews into an extremely desperate situation in the camps and then trying to justify the supposed animal-like and wretched nature of the Jews by showing them starved and filthy.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2015 00:46

America Inc.: Nov 22, 2013; I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even 500 would be pretty nice.

TwoQuestions posted:

I argue nobody ever had it in the first place. The reason you (hopefully) weren't murdered today is only because either everyone you met had compassion and didn't feel like killing you, or were afraid of society punishing them. I'd like to do away with illusions to the contrary. Might alone makes right.

I'd rather we stop assuming that everyone values human life, and make arguments and plans without that assumption in place. If you personally value life, argue and act like nobody else does.

Do you have a lot of friends

# ¿ Mar 8, 2015 01:56

America Inc.: Nov 22, 2013; I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even 500 would be pretty nice.

AHungryRobot posted:

This is sounding like some naturalistic bullshit.

It's not even naturalistic, because purely selfish behavior in nature makes you extinct really fast, especially for a bunch of soft meatbags with no natural means of defense except our brains that take forever to mature.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2015 02:04

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 17:59

America Inc.: Nov 22, 2013; I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even 500 would be pretty nice.

Dead Reckoning posted:

I would rather suffer than victimize others, yes. Even if you want to argue that, were I desperate enough, I would do something I consider morally wrong, that wouldn't invalidate the moral code I subscribe to: it would just make me a hypocrite.
That's not a moral argument though: that's a practical one. Keeping people comfortable so that they don't attack you isn't a moral principle.

People are irrational, emotional and generally incapable of looking past their self-interest, but a moral code is supposed to provide rules to live by that are better than our base instincts, and if it isn't logically consistent, what's the point?

If you consider human life as more valuable than material objects, than you can say stealing in the general case is wrong but stealing to save a life is not, without being inconsistent.
Talking in absolutes about morality seems kind of pointless, because there is always a special case or situation that falls through the cracks.It seems like a better idea to use morals as a guideline, and leave the execution to individual discretion, which is how people do it anyway.
People come first, not abstracted concepts on high.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2015 05:33

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Do people have an inherent right to live?