Re: Genocide sucks

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu Jul 31 2003 - 14:47:48 MDT

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    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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