h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There's another aspect of knowing your mind and being prepared for sudden surprises. If you know exactly where you draw the line on what you think is justifiable it'll prevent you doing something rash that you'd later regret.

If I'd not *thought* about it beforehand I'd have just shot that guy when he was at my window hole. I was scared and totally wired and living alone in the chaos that occurred after hurricane Andrew wiped out the area I lived in. Life became very...basic, and there were many, many scavengers out there. If I'd just reacted the way I *felt* like reacting, well, I'd have a big question on my conscience today. If that guy had continued to come toward me after what I said to him I'd have shot him and I doubt I'd feel any guilt.

I think I've just found the core of the matter, for me. It's somewhere in people taking advantage of others *knowing* what the repercussions of their behavior will be and doing it anyway because maybe they think they can get away with it.

I think that prisoners have a right to kill themselves. After all, the main purpose of keeping the person locked up it really just to keep them out of circulation--it would be torture to force them to live in prison if they'd rather kill themselves.

I just wanted to add something. It is also ok to kill somebody if they wake you up at ungodly hours in the morning.

There will always *ALWAYS* be innocent deaths when you decide upon any death being justifiable, because at some point someone will make an error, or someone will be cleverer than people realise.

Whether or not this is acceptable depends on your viewpoint. If you are happy to accept this over-head to protect society then you believe that killing another human being is justifiable.

If you cannot accept this then you have to accept that there will be people who will take advantage of your decency, and are going to kill or damage others.

Either way we lose.

I guess it comes down to if you want to lose with a clean consience - I'm prepared to say there are people who are a drain on society and that society could do without. There are people who are evil, and I think they have relinquished their right to our consideration. I will take that stain upon my soul for the benefit of the innocent.

>....but don't walk away thinking you are a hero.

Damn straight he'd be a hero. He saved lives and risked his life doiong it. That's heroism!

If someone saved my life when I was being raped or fired on by a maniac with an automatic weapons, I'd be greatful as hell. The idot who did the attacking is the only one who is wrong here.

Even though a killing in self defense may be premeditated, not in the sense that you planned it for days, but in the sense that you have to approach the situation as carefully as possible, it does not make put it on dodgy moral grounds. Thinnk of it as a defense to a crime. The act of self defense or the defense of others means that you are not responsible for the killing in a legal or moral sense.

Actually, whenever I've been in fights, I've been able to maintain rational thoughts. I've been able to give commands, consider tactics, employ force, and in a couple cases, I carried on a conversation. There was one time I lost my temper. While I have no hesitations about using force, the ability to delibratly hurt people to mete out punishment is just not in me. Part of me wanted to rip the guy apart, but once the threat stopped, I didn't have anything else to do.

I use a legal model to analyze this stuff. I think Georgia has some very good self-defense code sections. I'm happy to use them in making my moral decsions. As I noted somewhere else, I am Lawful Neutral.

There's a clear difference between a killer and mental patient. One hasn't killed anyone. I've met several murderers. As a rule, they're easy to get along with, although there are exceptions. I still don't have a problem with having them executed.

You make some good points and I agree with a lot about what you say (although I am still opposed to the death penalty).
You said "There's a clear difference between a killer and mental patient". Here, I'm not so sure, I think that some would-be killers do have mental problems (once they've "achieved" their potential it doesn't make them any less mad). Sorry to go off track, but when does society decide that someone should be interned, i.e. lock some one away before they kill. Until someone has "done something" it is hard to take action in many places. To my mind, "hard choices" should be made before something happens. This is more frightening than what should we do with undeniably guilty killers (after we KNOW they did something). Can we justify locking up someone up because an inexact science thinks "he might"..... or do we wait for some innocent to be killed? For me it is never OK to kill someone but I'm not so sure of myself when it comes to taking pre-emptive action.

Another point (maybe I should have read more of the backlog !), what do you mean by Lawful Neutral : I've never heard the expression before

Just a kind of oddish, on-topic/off-topic Zen kind of thing, but when I go back to my space after posting this, it will say: *When is it ok to kill people?* And under that it will say *Just Now*

Is that a confession ?

Was it a semantic debate with Anhaga that went too far?

Just an early morning daydream thing. I am still asleep, actually!

I can't believe you are all beating yourselves up over this. Maybe it's the neighbourhood I grew up in, maybe it's just me. I find the idea of NOT fighting back if someone physically attacks me or mine actually laughable. It's not even an option. It is my duty to defend myself against assault and doubly my duty to defend my family, especially my children, against assault. And no we are not talking about verbal attacks or an occasional push etc. - but real physical assault - just so's nobody chimes in with anything irrelevant and nonsensical. I live my life by: Always walk away if you can, never start a fight, but if you are absolutely forced to, do your best to end it.

Maybe some of you need to spend a year or so on the streets of a really bad neighbourhood. People who tell me they would never hit back are almost without exception those who have never had several people jump them at the same time, slam their head off of a wall, and try to pull their hair out of their head. In such circumstances you learn very quickly to hit back hard and fast so you are not a continual target - or else you become just that, a continual target.

Someone who claims that violence is never the answer is asking the wrong question. I've never understood who they are trying to convince? Unless you live on planet wonderful with other aliens like yourself who would never try to beat your brains in with a brick - who are you trying to kid? The answer depends on the question I guess. When someone is coming at you with a weapon, the real question is - do you want this person to beat the shit out of you and perhaps kill you/your loved ones - or not? My answer is a resounding NO - perhaps yours is Yes, please kill/maim me? Because the only resolution to not defending yourself against a would-be murderer or person bent on GBH is that you, or your loved ones are going to wind up dead or seriously damaged. Not an answer? What question are you asking?

As for state-sanctioned killing of some people - not only do I have no problem with it, I'll do it myself if they can't find anybody else to (although I do not live in a country where the death penalty is the issue). Give me a three times convicted paedophile, or murderer, or rapist or anybody else thrice convincted of violent crimes and I will give you a body as soon as you show me which button to push/switch to press. I say three times to eliminate doubt that they might have been wrongly convicted. To say that you would not kill someone who murders/rapes children says to me that you are almost as bad as they are, your faint heart would allow the next innocent to die or be horribly hurt.

We can't fix them. Nobody can. Violent re-offenders are like rabid dogs, pity them all you want but put them out of their misery and protect people from their disease. We can crap on about people's ability to change all we want - but nobody has the right to risk the life of one single person in order to see if *maybe* a violent offender has turned over a new leaf. It is our duty to protect the most vulnerable members of our society. If we cannot, or refuse to do that we are almost as bad as they are.

Once again for the record, we cannot fix them - to date nobody can. Feeling sorry for them is irrelevant - I do genuinely pity many of the violent offenders I have read about, because often they became that way in part because of violence done to them. But I can't change that, nobody can, and nobody can make them sane and whole. The only other possible option is lifetime confinement until they die - no parole, no bullshit, until they die. Either way, so long as innocents are protected, that's the main issue.

We are all born human, but some of us lose the right to call ourselves human. Just because it walks like a human and talks like a human doesn't make it human. Anybody who doubts that deserves a rude karmic awakening.

Just my opinion.

I don’t think that many people expressing themselves here have said that violence is never the answer to a physical attack (I haven’t read each and every post, but I haven’t seen anyone say that). The focus is more on does one have the “right” to kill in specific circumstances (lots of talk about different specifics). I – and I think quite a few of the people expressing themselves here – think that if you have other options that do not endanger you, you should use them. In violent attacks to you/your loved ones, you might not have time to study the options, the instinct to survive/protect is foremost. I haven't seen any postings that disagree with that.

I’ve spent a lot of years in not a “really bad neighbourhood” but still in a “not too fancy” neighbourhood (where taxis might refuse to go, and some friends prefer not to visit). I agree with you that have to “show” that you are as hard as the next person (and prepared to be a real s**t if necessary) in order to avoid becoming a continual target. Still don’t think that it gives me (or you) a “right” to kill someone or consider the killing of anyone just OK. Perhaps we understand “OK” in different ways!

In some extreme cases involving indubitable guilt, I think we can lock someone up for the rest of his life even the 1st time he’s caught (without waiting for him to be caught two more times). I continue to think that the death penalty has an adverse affect on the morality of society as a whole. You recognise that another possible option to the death penalty is “lifetime confinement until they die”: in my opinion, if there is an option to killing, use it. [Then we can have really long arguments about redemption…]

We don't have to kill criminals to protect society.

I'm uneasy about making ethical decisions like this... I mean, there's no real foundation for it at all apart from our internal convictions. Explicitly saying you'd only defend your own family sounds extremely biological to me.

Tibley Bobley:

"It looks as though there are people here who would have strong objections to this man being killed"

Yup, that'd be me, assuming you mean "killed in cold blood by the state" as opposed to "killed by me in self defense".

"even if there was absolutely no doubt that he was the perpetrator of a whole bunch of heinous crimes. Where does this idea come from...? Is it a religious thing?"

No, it isn't, at least it certainly isn't for me. It's a realism thing, a depressed-acceptance-of-human-fallibility thing. The problem lies in that whole "absolutely no doubt" line. There are, obviously, more cases than you need to tell me about where there really is no doubt at all that the guy did it - Manson, Sutcliffe, Dahmer, Brady, we know the names. The problem is, you have to try those guys under the same law you use for Kisko.

When Stefan Kisko was convicted, there was absolutely no doubt he was the killer - he'd even CONFESSED to it, poor sod, because he honestly thought that if he did the police would let him go home to his mum. They didn't, of course. He didn't go home again for over sixteen years, and if we had the death penalty in this country, he'd never have gone home again.

There have been far too many cases where there's been absolutely no doubt about someone's guilt, and then a few years later it turns out that they were not only innocent, but actually physically incapable of committing the crime. I for one am glad I live in a country where I can't be killed for being on the wrong end of that kind of cock up.

So, Tibley Bobley and anyone else interested, I put to you my questionnaire about the death penalty:

Question 1: Are you in favour of the death penalty?
Question 2: Do you personally volunteer to be the first/next innocent person killed by the state?

Notes: Anyone answering "yes" to the first question and "no" to the second doesn't get their vote counted because they obviously don't understand or accept the consequences of the system they're voting for.

Anyone answering "yes" to both questions is congratulated on their commitment to their principles and shot in the back of the head as they leave the polling booth.

Any answers?

H.

Big kisses H

I vote no to question number 2.
To number 1: I am against the death penalty for innocent people and unsure about it for guilty people. Since it is impossible to ensure that someone is really guilty, I would have to say I am against the death penalty in reality, since it is impossible to ensure that no innocent people will be executed.

To post 217. That was the impression I had Mother of God: well meaning idealists, happily detached from the real world. But that was just an impression. You can never tell. You have to check to be sure.

To post 218, deni: "Didn't someone say that a civilisation is judged on how its treats the lowliest members."

Someone may well have said that and I could respect the sentiment if the welfare of the young, weak, innocent and generally law-abiding were put first and then the 'lowest members' were considered. But when the welfare and rights of murderers, rapists, child-molesters and other psycho and sociopaths are placed before or equal to those of their victims, then the sentiment makes no sense at all to me.

"OK we're talking about the lowest of the low that perform sickening acts, but if we can justify killing someone (the death penalty) to save money I think we're taking a dangerous path."

Money is just one and not the most important issue. But still, most if not all the people contributing to this thread live in democratic societies. Their views should count for something. It would surprise me if the majority wouldn't, as Mother of God expressed some time back, prefer their taxes to be spent on things like health and education. You don't have to be rich to pay taxes. You may be struggling to bring up a family and pay a mortgage. You may have to take out loans to make ends meet and yet you have to pay taxes that are spent on things like keeping the paedophiles who would like to molest your children better fed and sheltered than you can afford to keep your own family. That is bound to annoy people. It annoys me.

"I think it is important to make a distinction between what an individual/group/country may do "when there's no other way" (self-defence, imminent attack, ......) and what we as a society should do when options are available (the "thou shalt not kill" notion has been around for some time and sounds OK to me)."

Can't argue with that as far as it goes. The problem is that all of us have given up our right to meter out our own justice for wrongs done to us and ours. We've handed it over to the state on the understanding that they will protect us. We all want to live in a just and orderly society. If somebody attacks and harms me, I want to know that the police will apprehend my attacker, the courts will find him guilty and his punishment will fit his crime and beyond that I want to know that I won't have to worry that the vicious creep will come after me as soon as he comes out of prison. That's the ideal we've surrendered that right for. But look how far reality is from the ideal. The police and the courts often seem impotent. Many crimes are not even reported because the victim of the crime knows it's a waste of time. The police don't even bother to investigate some reported crimes. The courts throw many cases out or dole out insubstantial sentences for terrible crimes and the prisons are so overcrowded that judges are reluctant to hand out prison sentences in any case.

I'm in England and I don't know what the legal situation is in other parts of the world. Actually, my knowledge of English law is very limited so anyone who knows the details of these cases, feel free to throw in what you know. I offer the following as examples of why some people are no longer satisfied with the agreement we have with the state.

1) Mira Hindley, the child murderer, was mentioned earlier I think. She died recently but Lord Longford was trying to get her released. As far as I remember, they were going to appeal to the European Court of Human rights to intervene. The families of the children that Brady and Hindley had sexually tortured and murdered were in mental agony, wondering whether this monster would be released. One of the mothers interviewed was prepared to hunt her down and kill her if Hindley's campaign to be released was successful. Why should those families have had to worry about the possibility of Brady or Hindley being set free? Those families had been serving their own sentences since their children were tortured, molested and murdered and then they had to worry about people like Lord Longford working hard to get Hindley out, and the European Court of Human Rights (you'd think they had enough to do looking after the rights of the law-abiding oppressed) making sure Hindley's rights were respected. Hindley obviously didn't respect the rights of her victims, if indeed she was aware that they had any rights, but she was very eager to have her own rights respected.

2) Within the last month or so a murderer who received a 40 year prison sentence has had it shortened to 25 years. He murdered a woman who was taking a walk along a river bank. This wasn't his first offence. The judge gave him a life sentence (I think that really means 16 years in this country) and stated that he should serve a minimum of 40 years because he was such a dangerous man that he wanted to ensure that he would be old enough not to be too dangerous by the time he came out. That judge (now retired) has been wrangling with the secretary of state to get the sentence set back to 40 year. His argument is that he was set the task of judging and he made a rational judgement based on the facts. The person who decided to cut the sentence was not in possession of all the facts and not aware of what a dangerous criminal this man is. The husband of the murdered woman, again, is in turmoil because of this arbitrary decision that has come out of the blue.

3) A case mentioned earlier. A farmer in Lincolnshire is in prison for shooting some burglars who broke into his home. It wasn't the first time his home (situated conveniently for burglars in the middle of nowhere) had been attacked. The gun he used wasn't licensed. He must have been terrified, so one burglar died and another was injured (and that one is after compensation). It happened quite a while ago and the poor old man is still in prison.

4) A little girl called Sarah was kidnapped, sexually molested and murdered in West Sussex a few years ago. Her parents have been putting all their efforts into promoting what they call "Sarah's law". They just want parents to know when a convicted paedophile moves into their neighbourhood. Their efforts have failed because people might decide to take the law into their own hands and remove the person endangering their children, if they know who he is. Of course, if the police, judges and prison staff know that a paedophile is dangerous and they let him out of prison despite that knowledge, you could quite understand why parents might feel that the state was reneging on the deal and leaving the removal of the perv up to them, couldn't you?

Control is out of our hands. The state is in control, but how well does that work for us? Too often dangerous criminals are let out to kill, rape and molest again. A life sentence isn't a life sentence at all. The criminals' rights seem to be better respected than the rights of their past and future victims.

Hoovooloo (post 233)

Ok you've got a good point. We should be able to trust our legal system but we can't in reality. When there's a really nasty crime the police will be under pressure to get a conviction and sometimes they get it wrong because their instincts are way off and they are in a hurry. I hesitate to point out that DNA tests seem to have been fairly reliable in recent years. I suppose they aren't 100% accurate but damn near. I wonder if Stefan Kisko would have suffered the injustice if that had been available at the time of his conviction. Even without those changes in the quality of evidence though, if Stefan Kisko didn't commit the crime then there must have been room for doubt - at least for those willing to see it. And that just goes to reinforce my view that the system doesn't work very well. It seems likely that the inadequacy of our legal system would influence some people to take the law into their own hands. They might feel less inclined to do so if they believed the state would do its job properly and put dangerous maniacs out of business for good.

Quite an interesting thread.

Excuse me if I'm repeating something already said, my eyes are too weak to look through the backlog

I heard a very sad story. Somewhere of a man whose job was to lower a bridge when a train came along to go over it. He took his child to work, and just as the train was coming, he told his son to gather up his toys, because he had lost track of time, and had to lower the bridge immediately. The child fell into the gears and machines. He had no time to rescue his son and had to make a decision. If the man lowered the bridge, it would turn the gears and crush his son, but if he didn't, he would be responsible for the deaths of dozens. He put the bridge down and killed his son.

In that situation, either way, he would kill someone. He didn't do anything particularly bad, except lose track of time. In this situation, when the intent is not bad, and when faced with killing one or dozens, is it okay?

I believe Jewish ideas say that you should sacrifice the entire group before sacrificing one, (This isn't exactly the case in this situation, but sort of) but what place does this have in more practical society?

I've also often wondered. If a man took a single person hostage, even a somewhat insignificant person hostage, and demanded the equivalent of the world's GDP, and nothing less, what would the world do. Well it's obvious they wouldn't pay him, but that's saying that money is more important than a human life. You can't blame them really. When a situation would harm many others if one didn't die, then I think it's somewhat okay. But I'm sure I'll contradict myself...

My

I think the man was right, but I'm not sure.

I like to think I would rescue my son, as those people aren't certain to die, just crash, but I know I would bring the bridge down.

It's a damning situation

I think it is possible to know that someone committed a crime. There are many cases where the evidence is overwhelming.