So today I made a rather glib and tasteless status update on Facebook regarding a single vehicle car accident in Melbourne on Saturday night that killed 5 teenagers. I made judgements based on their names, assumptions regarding their socio-economic status and gross generalisations as to the overall "worth" from a social-Darwinism perspective (I understand that thanks to the Third Reich social-Darwinism can be a truly horrific construct) to our community. Nonetheless the reactions to this post were to be expected, a mix of back slapping, noble condemnation and quiet opposition. I am very much appreciative that outright hostility has not been sighted as of yet, I guess my friends are well aware that everything a say should well be digested with a good solid swig from the Dead Sea. But as the commentators argued amongst each other, I felt obliged to elaborate not only on the incident that created this debate, but my personal perception of the societal and political influence that results in such an incident, that varied responses that are created from such, and the wider ramifications of these attitudes on a larger scale.
One argument raised in the post was that indeed these kids were as much a victim of environment as well as their own dangerous behaviour. Taking a holistic approach to this argument, it is first necessary to identify the "environment" in question, what defines this environment from other environments that can exist within a whole societal structure, and what are the factors that influence and create these variations across a community.
The second argument discussed primarily dealt with the philosophical question as to the "value" of the lives lost. As a supposed egalitarian society, as is often purported to be the case in Australian society, how can some lives be indeed more "valuable" than others? Is the unemployed vagrant who dies of pneumonia as valuable as the Brain Surgeon who dies in a yachting accident? How about the environmental activist versus the corporate lawyer? The famous Racing Car Driver versus the highly praised visual artist? If these analogies were presented across society, what would one make of the varied responses? How many of these people would approach this question from the perspective of firstly acknowledging the impact on these losses on the actual direct relations of these people? Or would it primarily just be from a total societal view? Then of course, what can be made of the value of whole societies from a global perspective? Are those lives lost in Haiti just last week as valuable as those whom perished from the 9/11 incident? It certainly raises a very great deal of questions.
Instead of answering these questions myself, I would love to see this blogpost become an open debate, as an example of democratic process in play. I will be happy to elaborate my point of view along with others, lets just hope we don't get all 18th Century Germanic Philosophical and prove that it is all indeed pointless, that reality is indeed a false construct and we are all hopelessly redundant within our own existence.
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Okay, I'm going to have a crack at putting across an opinion (or a combination of a couple of opinions). Here goes.
ReplyDeleteThere is a famous thought experiment in philosophy where there is a train whose brakes have failed that is hurtling down the tracks and cannot be stopped. You are standing at a switch in the tracks and on it's current path the train will hit a group of five young children who are playing on the tracks, on the other track, there is a single railway worker. You cannot stop the train, nor warn either of the respective groups that the train is coming. Whichever side you choose to send the train down effectively condemns those on that track to death. Do you switch the track? Killing one person but saving five? A utilitarian like the philosopher Peter Singer would argue that it is better to kill the railway worker because the net result is that you save four lives.
Extending that argument further, an argument could be made that the quality of their lives should be considered as a factor. For example, if hypothetically it were Nelson Mandella, the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu on one track, and Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot on the other, few would argue that the train should hit the former group instead of the latter (ignoring the fact that all of the members of the latter group are already dead of course).
Now when that logic is brought to less extreme lengths and made more realistic (and plausible), if the choice were between a group of 5 productive, valuable and meaningful members of society that contributed to the community in a constructive and positive manner on one set of tracks and then 5 people not unlike the group that died in Mill Park, the utilitarian argument would suggest that the latter group be sacrificed. Much like they were. And although it is an imperfect analogy, the underlying logic still holds.
I should qualify this by saying that the loss of any life is unfortunate, and if possible to be avoided. Whenever anyone dies they leave behind a group of people, be it big or small, who are negatively affected by the passing of that person.
There is no doubt in my mind that the people shown grieving for the dead Mill Park kids were experiencing genuine grief and sadness, but when they expressed their grief by spray painting stuff at the scene, getting pissed at the scene and yelling 'I'll fucking kill you' to media at the scene, I lost a great deal of the limited sympathy I had for them. The death of the 5 is unfortunate, and the saving of the one surviving passenger in the car by her brother at the cost of his own life is in many ways heroic, but the fact remains that when looked at objectively, an argument can be made (and convincingly I think) that better them than 5 others.
That sounds harsh I know, but consider this; if that car load of 6 people, who had (allegedly) been drinking and who were travelling at speeds of approximately 140km/h, had ran another car off the road as a result of their driving and killed a family of five as they drove home from a family dinner, everyone would be demonising those six kids in the car. It would have been a travesty rather than a tragedy. In many respects, it is better that they killed themselves and not others. They have no one else to blame but the driver of the car and their own stupidity for getting in the car for their deaths. It is unfortunate, but it is far from a tragedy.
The estimated 200,000 people in Haiti, that is a tragedy.
The 3,000 killed in the attacks of 9/11, that is a tragedy.
The 95,000-105,000 innocent Iraqi's killed since the invasion of Iraq, that is a tragedy.
The 7 million Jews, 3 Million Gypsies, and thousands of homosexual, disabled, or otherwise 'unwanted' that were killed by the Nazi's during WW2, that is a tragedy.
The 3 million killed in Cambodia under Pol Pot, that is a tragedy.