@kinzokukae
Yeah, I remember that. I felt the same, same with celebrity suicides like Chester Bennington and Robin Williams. Now, you mentioned you're almost entirely apathetic as per online tests so I wonder if it had been your childhood home (assuming positive association with it, if not some other cherished place), would you feel differently or remain apathetic?
@madgod
I'm very sorry you've had to go through all that, but thank you for sharing despite how painful it might be. I don't want to sound like some shrink lol but I know it can be hard to talk about personal stuff and I appreciate you indulging me.
@Jean Améry
Interesting perspective, but I'm going to stand by my assessment. I strongly disagree with a lot of the points you make, actually.
in the case of the infant you're directly responsible for his death while in the second case (the others die) you're not responsible at all since you neither wanted to cause harm nor did anything to make it happen.
I don't agree with your evaluation that you're directly responsible for the infant's death. Did you cause it? Yes. Are you personally responsible for it? No, you're under someone else's power, following their orders and you presumably did not volunteer for the position. You are a hostage at the mercy of your captor. Saying otherwise is like saying the bank teller who hands over the money to a gunman who is threatening to kill patrons was complicit in robbing a bank.
There is no guarantee the 10 other people won't be killed anyway (you'd be counting on someone's word when it's clear they simply have no ethical standards whatsoever)
And there's no guarantee the infant won't be killed or you won't be killed either, therefore I don't see what purpose it serves to assume your decision has no bearing in the situation. Worst case scenario, the captor kills everyone and there's nothing you could have done about it. Best case, one person dies and 11 others go free. Unless the captor has no intention of killing anyone themselves but gets a thrill from forcing others to kill each other, choosing to do nothing, which is how I interpret your response, (baby lives, 10 die) does not give you back power in the situation. Further, choosing to save the baby (same result, baby lives, 10 die) makes you as equally guilty of killing 10 people as you would have been of killing the baby. A subtle difference with no outcome effect, but if one is to feel personally responsible for the outcome of the situation, then I can't imagine how choosing to save the baby doesn't equate to condemning the others even if you didn't pull the trigger yourself, so to speak.
Plus you'll likely screw up your own life beyond repair if you kill the child which would mean not only turning yourself into a victim but it in turn it could and likely would create a ripple-effect in the form of further harm to those you care about.
That's quite an assumption. Most people will probably have PTSD to some degree regardless of what they choose, but saying you would screw up your life beyond repair for killing a child is a dramatic exaggeration. Worst case scenario, yes, that's entirely possible. Is it likely? Is it probable? No more so than if you decide to do nothing or if you decide to save the baby, assuming you also have to watch the 10 other people die.
Not to mention you'd be giving in to evil: maintaining one's own moral integrity in the face of evil is worth far more than any utilitarian calculus.
That's your opinion. The way I see it, you saved 10 people. Nothing evil about that. Sucks that the baby had to die like it did, but at the end of the day, I still think this is the right decision. Unless we get into who the people are. Saving 10 miscreants or people who just are leeches on society? Horrible decision. Saving 10 upstanding people who serve their community well? Or even just a hodgepodge of average joes ranging from Maude Flanders to Barney Gumble? The better decision. Remember, these are ten people who have lives. They have parents, friends, maybe kids, spouses, pets. There are people who love them and people who need them. They are people who give back to society (okay, maybe not Barney, but he's got a good heart and hidden talent). These are people who will be missed. If each of these people has even just 4 people who will be hurt by their loss, then that's 40 people hurting for their loss. The baby has no life. Maybe parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, maybe siblings. But it has no friends. It has no role society except to exist for these people. Its loss will devastate those people, but the fallout of its death will be much smaller.
As to the notion of morality being subjective: the great majority of humans will react in the same way to morally relevant situations (e.g. watching someone being abused or tortured will make most people sick). Certain prohibitions are common throughout the world and time. That tells me morality isn't subjective (purely individualistic) but (largely) intersubjective and very much tied to our very humanity. It would be extremely odd if social animals would not have an instinctive aversion to harming their own kind.
Which is why in war the enemy has to be dehumanized before he can be killed. Most soldiers will purposefully miss when they shoot at the enemy unless they've received specific training to the contrary. The same for say full-contact boxing or kickboxing: you won't win matches if you're not willing to hurt and damage the opponent so he/she needs to be dehumanized first and reduced to a set of targets.
The Spanish inquisition comes to mind, where "good Christian folks" used torture devices that impaled or split people open from the crotch area or used instruments that would tear a person's flesh off. And let's not forget slavery was legal up until the 1800s in America, and I'm sure we're all aware slave owners were not kind to their slaves. If I recall correctly, I remember my history teacher saying how in the Caribbean, slave owners got a kick out of putting a lit stick of dynamite in a slave's anus. The Holocaust, of course, where Jews were tortured by Nazis, who did things like performing vivisections and electrocution and all sorts of inhumane experiments. In the Middle East today, women get acid thrown in their face or are set on fire. Consider how many rapists and child molesters there are even in countries that outlaw those things. Look at how popular Game of Thrones was, a show renown for its gore and violence. I recall one scene where a character has rats placed in a bucket strapped with the open end to his chest and hot coals or something were placed on the closed metal side until the rats burrowed through his body. In another scene, a man gets eaten alive by hungry dogs.
I think you're on the mark when you say the enemy has to be dehumanized. That's the root of all of the things I cited above: the "us vs. them" mentality. And that mentality is something that is very inherently human. People are very good at finding the differences and not so good at seeing the similarities. It's nature to be suspicious of what's different from you, and while most people would claim to never harm their fellow person, that's much easier to keep to when you define "person" as "someone like me."
Morality is great and all, till it's the other guy. Then, anything goes.