From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu Jul 31 2003 - 14:47:48 MDT
On Thu, 31 Jul 2003, Emlyn O'regan wrote:
> Genocide (n): The systematic and planned extermination of an entire
> national, racial, political, or ethnic group.
>
> The various defenses of the discussion of genocide are based on arguments
> resembing "we must consider all things, even awful things". That is well and
> good, but these discussions suck, for a reason to which I will come shortly.
[snip]
Sorry Emlyn, but I have to *most* strongly disagree. Just because a
discussion "sucks" does not mean that it may be useful to engage in it.
The Public Broadcasting System of America offered me a good example
of this last night in a program "Under Orders, Under Fire" which
included a Harvard Law Professor (Charles Ogletree) grilling
everyone from military generals to congressmen to leading journalists [1].
The premise of the discussion was "A soldier has a duty to serve his
country, but does that mean following orders no matter what? Should
a commander counsel - or kill - a deserting soldier? How does a
soldier protect himself from guerillas disguised as innocent
civilians?"
Though I do not have a transcript for the program -- the conversation
did deal with issues of "How many people do you lose?" and "How does
one lose them?". (Interestingly the series may be over a decade old,
long before the current environment evolved.)
Here are another two definitions of genocide:
1. "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political,
or cultural group" (Merriam-Webster online).
2. "the systematic killing of a whole people or nation" [Webster's
New World Dictionary]
Now, my proposal was not in any way based on race or culture.
It was based on a clear presentation of the value of current
vs. future human lives. If that isn't trying to look at things
from an extropic perspective then I don't know what is. If we
discover a NEO is going to strike the Earth in a month and the
probable death toll will be half of humanity then decisions
are going to need to be made. "*Who* do we save?" and "*How* do
we save them?". And we aren't going to have all this "flak"
about "genocide". If anyone on the list thinks that major
military organizations, the Center for Disease Control, and
perhaps other security & health related groups have *not*
thought about scenarios (that might kill large numbers of
people) and do not have contingency plans for this then
they are simply being naive.
The only thing that I am guilty of might be having the
audacity to ask the question of "Do the needs of the
many outweigh the needs of the few?" and ask it in a
rather controversial way. But it is *not* an unusual
question (or one that should be discarded from the ExI
list) as the PBS special I cite above shows. If PBS
can debate issues like this, then I think we should be
able to do so as well.
Robert
1. "Under Orders, Under Fire" (Part 1)
http://www.pbs.org/pbsyou/schedules/description.html?nola_root=ETHA&date=2003-07-3103
part of the PBS courses description of "Ethics in America"
http://www.pbs.org/pbsyou/schedules/telecourse.html
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