Unless you can completely automate torture (as is done in some cases of judicial killing), the most significant costs of torture are psychological: the torturers are damaged almost as much as the torture recipients.Please, discuss. The context is found here (in the comments).
HOW I FEEL WHEN I’M TWO WEEKS OUT FROM QUALS
9 years ago
Posts
5 comments:
Yes. Which begs the question -- should the "judicial killings" be automated? Should they be performed at all?
So, are we supposing for the sake of discussion that American enhanced interrogation techniques qualify as torture, or are we just talking about torturing people in the abstract?
My first reaction, assuming the latter, is that whoever wrote this doesn't know a lot of actual torture victims. Of course engaging in sin is bad for people, on some level, but it is not the case that a sadist who finally gets to act on his horrid fantasies is materially more corrupt than he was before.
I grant it is possible to distinguish the two on some level - given the choice, Jenny might prefer I look at porn online as opposed to renting hookers - but to advance that as a serious moral distinction seems absurd.
Mostly, I don't think that people in general are all that fragile, psychologically or morally speaking - fragile isn't the word you use for a smashed bit of crockery.
Joel, I think the gist of the claim revolves around the change inherent in the following statement (supposedly attributed to a former Nazi soldier):
"At first, we killed the Jews because we hated them. Then we hated them because we killed them."
I think the basic idea is that indulging in sin / evil acts makes it more difficult for us to *not* indulge in sin / evil acts. From your comment, it sounds like you are saying this may be true, but it doesn't matter.
Yeah, I've heard that quote before, but have never really been able to make much sense of it. After all, the fellow hated the Jews before he killed them as well as after, presumably for reasons that had nothing to do with them being murder victims and which we have no reason to suppose disappeared over the course of the holocaust, so I see no moral degeneration there. Do you? Is it worse to hate someone for being victimised than it is to hate him for anything and everything else?
My point is, once you're already torturing people, how much lower can you go? Once we grant the existence of Mr Fred Sadist, who is simply looking for an opportunity to kill and maim, who cares about his character? That is to say, in Mr Stryver's phrase, that we have already got his measure, and although we would doubtless prefer that he keep his villainy potential, the real reason is because of his victims.
I certainly wouldn't deny that doing any sin habitually sears the conscience, so as a mere statement of fact that bit of the quote was spot-on. Rather, I object to comparing the bruised sensibilities of the wicked to the broken bodies of the innocent. It seems to me incredible that these two harms, so utterly incommeasurate, should be equated.
Yeah. Pretty much right on. Of course, I think we all know how I feel about the death penalty and such things
Post a Comment