"Moral compass" of killing people

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
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I was inspired by Ms. Jenneth’s reply, and my main thesis will be:
“Nobody ever should take a decision to save or take a life based only or predominantly on the morality.”

And I strongly disagree with the need of binding anyone to other person who will make such decisions. First of all, because it doesn’t really matter who will take the final decision and it looks to me as just a mean of evading responsibility for pulling a trigger.

But my main issue is with taking a decision to kill someone using a “moral sensibility”. Because, basically, it comes to formula:
If I think you’re a BAD person, I shall be able to KILL you.

Can you imagine a pure CHAOS it will rise if ALL the people will suddenly start following this scheme? You could just kill your neighbor if you will think he is amoral and if you think killing him will be moral. Or, can you imagine if I myself would follow this formula? You pretty much aware, that I consider gallentes to be highly indecent and amoral people, but what if I jump into Crystal Boulevard, pull out a gun and shoot whomever I can find wearing too revealing clothes, then quickly extract before their police will arrive and put a report on a table of Navy admiral… Oh, and trust me, if I do that, I’ll either will be sent to mental clinic or will be executed by the Navy itself, even if I tell and prove them how bad these people were. Despite how bad they were, I simply had NO valid reasons to kill them, even if everyone in the Navy will agree with me that they were bad people, they will never agree with me killing them.

And if now we switch to the topic of justice - it is one of the main principles for judges, you provide them with facts, they provide you with law. They don’t estimate your merit, they don’t estimate your moral, they don’t consider if it is moral to kill you or not, they don’t consider that other judges said or other people think. Their job is to provide law for your facts.

Because no one shall decide on such matter just because of their like or dislike of a person, and morals, in the end, come down to these questions, of acceptance, of liking, of your own understanding what is right or wrong.

That’s the difference with the law, it is a code, written set of rules, which you either violate or follow.

Of course, judges are humans too, they can have their own likes and dislikes, their own morals, that’s why in many systems, for example, in quick court martials, you can have three judges instead of one to minimize simply risk of human error.

Whatever your morals are, never ever use so-called moral sensibility when you take a decision of life and death, becasue whatever you chose, even if other people will agree with your morals, just a mere fact of making such decision on a moral sensibility will make that decision the most amoral one.

After all, people you kill or save - they’re just humans like you, they have their own life, their familites, plans, their own destiny ahead of them, and, of course, their own morals, they could consider them to be moral and you amoral, and they might consider it’s you who shall die, and they should live.

The decisions you take shall be based on the pure necessity of sparing them or the necessity of killing them. A cold and well-weighted calculation must precede any “moral sensibility”, because life and death are the most important questions in our Universe, that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

The other side of the story is that we are combat pilots. That’s what our capsule interface provides us with. And, really, proper soldier shall never ever question “is it moral to kill an enemy?”

If any of you need ANY SORT OF MORAL JUSTIFICATION of your actions, drop your capsule and go to the kitchen to bake potatoes for soldiers who know how to fight, okay?

I like that part of Ms. Jenneth that she kills people just because she was ordered to. Not beause she thinks it’s “right”, but because she got an order.

And as soldiers we must execute all orders, disregarding how morally right or wrong they are. For us in the State the highest morality is Honor, but even that never shall stand on the way of executing orders, and we have a simple solution: if you think that the order will violate your honor, you execute the order and then commit suicide to regain your honor. That’s what you do if you’re a professional soldier. Orders are not to be questioned.

The only time you’re allowed to violate the order is when the given order is illegal. For example, if one of commanding officers orders you to shoot another commanding officer, without seeing them doing anything clearly illegal, you can ask them bluntly, “What the ■■■■?!”

Now here comes other part - that we are not simple soldiers, but we are actually captains and commanders, we pilot vessels and quite often - without fleet commander or other officer who can give us orders. And inside our ships we are executive officers and we have to take decision and responsibility of life and death.

And again, as military commanders we must take decisions based on rules, laws, treaties, obligations, and of course, necessity. Good military commander is a goal-oriented person who can achieve the objective with the lest losses and costs. Moreover, if you’ll be bothered with the morality of actions you’ll be taking, most likely it will stunt your growth. The questions you shall ask is not whether particular killing will be morally sensible, but whether it will be allowed and necessary.

Otherwise, how would you better than the same GEWNS, doing stuff like “Burn Jita!”. They pretty much convinced themselves that they do it morally right for the betterment, awareness, or whatever else they invoke in their rhetorics, telling everyone that it is totally okay. But CONCORD said NO. That’s not okay. And that’s a rule. And they keep dying for violating that rule.

Another example, is this “CODE” group, that introduces their own law system, which contradicts official one. They believe their set of rules is morally better than official rules, so they try to coerce industrial pilots - and not even to follow their law, but just to pay them extortion fees, while neither of their kills is legally allowed or necessary.

And, as a conclusion, I’ll just tell what rules I myself do follow when I decide to kill anyone. Well, of course, I mean the situation where I have to take a decision myself and not just following an order of a superior officer, like a fleet commander.

For me, any ship that is marked as enemy by the State and CONCORD is an allowed target to kill. It includes, but not limited to: any FDU and TLF pilots, any baseline pirates and capsuleer pirates with security status below -5.0, any capsuleer with suspect status. They’re allowed targets. Necessary targets for me - every and all FDU/TLF/FedNavy/Republic Navy pilots, as they represent the direct threat to our State. Necessity of engaging other target I estimate on the grid considering their behavior. And the most determining factor in that regard would be whether they behave hostile towards the State and soldiers of the State (like me and those I fly with). Finally, when legality with necessary contradict each other, I usually stick to the legality, breaking it only in extreme cases: I surely will attack those, who behave in clearly hostile manner just to prevent them taking the first action, even if it will make me a suspect (for example, killing a neutral pilot for entering State military compound without declaring their intentions).

Finally, I’d like to emphasize one more time, that we are humans, yes, still same humans just with electronics that allows us to connect to hydrostatic capsules. And just like all humans, we are still prone to making typical human mistakes. It’s not even theoretically possible to safeguard ourselves completely from making them, and yet, there are rules that could help us allow to minimize it. We are not gods and spirits to decide who is worthy to live or die, who is good and who is bad. And if you are going to fight someone just on a basis of morality - you’ll become one of those, whom are you fighting against. You may declare yourselves blue, you may declare yourselves red, yourselves - ultimate good and your enemies as ultimate evil. But once you fight them just because they’re evil - you’ll be just like them. Same core: murdering others just because of some silly idealistic nonsence.

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If you can justify it in your mind, and strive to hold moral character in your actions, then everything is moral in your mind. Maybe not someone else’s mind, but morality is subjective towards your own perceptions of things and what your foundation is. Those who practice the Amarr religion would parrot their beliefs as morality, someone like myself who’s morality is more self centric would focus on their own code of conduct to deem things moral or amoral.

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Morality is more comfortable when we can justify it as subjective. It’s not, really, but it’s easier for a lot of people. Legality and morality of a set culture typically have their similarities, but are not strictly intertwined. There are many things I think should be laws that aren’t. There are many laws I disagree with on a fundamental level due to arguments on their morality.

Whether you’re capable of killing someone or not within the confines of the jurisdiction you’re in doesn’t make it a moral act just as much as a ‘righteous killing’ (put that in airquotes for me) isn’t automatically kosher. Then, as DK says, you have people like CODE who ignore both of these rulesets; the Goons, too, who decide to whip it out and stroke it, except this particular act of public indecency comes at the cost of thousand and thousands of lives for the sake, typically, of LMAO XD EPIC FUN or whatever.

Anyway, to speak on topic, regardless of the reasons why someone kills, I believe there should always be as much effort put in as possible to minimize as much death as one can. I disagree with the idea of identifying yourself as ‘good’ because you’re your own frame of reference. It creates dangerous ideologies and justifications.

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The thing about laws is, they are made by people who are merited enough to make them, laws are refined with time and experiences. And if you think you have enough qualities to change the laws and that they’re bad, how comes that it’s other people who work on these laws, and not you? Maybe these laws are pretty much okay, and the problem is within you? Have you thought about that?

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If your security status isn’t a nice, pristine 5.0, I would argue that you feel much the same way that I do.

Lawmakers are people. People are flawed. You said so on your own. Is there not a chance that a law is incorrect? Is there not a chance that you are flying beneath a flawed ideal you’re holding yourself to without any greater thought? People like you – Templis supporters, terrorists, war criminals, whatever – are outlawed, typically, by the State, but your license lets you bypass that. If it didn’t, would you heel to the law or ignore it?

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Oh, bummer.
First of all, I am certainly aware that I am neither smarter nor wiser than that CONCORD guy who was studying laws and making them. I am just a soldier and not gonna tell them how to set up rules. Their rules are pretty much an o-kay.

Yes, I do violate them on necessity, but as State Officer in a good standing and with my Honor on the line, I fully accept the responsibility of my actions and pay for my misdeeds as required by the same law that CONCORD enforces.

Second - well, I can’t say for everyone for sure, and I want to say “we”, but in this case I will say that “I” - since you said people like “YOU”, well, I am most definitely neither terrorist, nor criminal, nor otherwise outlawed by Caldari State. And if you will dare to speak like that, YOU shall answer for a slander. I am a Citizen of Caldari State in a good standing who haven’t violated State laws, my criminal record in CONCORD might be a bit dirty, but in the State it is pretty much pristine. If the State will present any charges against me, I, as a Citizen, will accept it and will, using your words, heel to the law and accept the judgement.

For now, however, it seems that it’s you who are clearly violating the law, spreading slanders about me. So, speaking about that, can you now, in front of all these people, either present evidence of any my illegal activity (in sight of the State law, not CONCORD), or submit yourself to the judgement of the tribunal for public slander?

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Diana,

This is why I do love to live in the Providence Marches. The code of law is absolute. We do not kill the innocent people or travelers that come to our realm to make a better life for themselves. We target those known criminals, pirates, and terrorists.

This process of identification of those people that are kill on sight is the same bases as the laws of the Empires. That concord and the military forces of the Empire, Federation, State, and Republic only target known criminals. For us there is a morale and ethical high ground in which the Paladin Wardens of Providence stand on. That is the only people we kill are those that wish to bring chaos and destruction.

What I see in Empire and other locations with groups like you mentioned is legalized extortion and piracy. Piracy and extortion protected by concord and it only allows thuggery and criminal behavior to only grow.

This is part of the reason that I enjoy living in null security space. It is because the law of the land is enforced by the holders themselves and not Concord. The holders of CVA obey the laws and do not allow such criminal behavior to continue. As it should be. We must hold ourselves to higher standards of conduct.

Very Respectfully,
Kyle Saltz

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Someone rubbed magnets all over my moral compass, it won’t stop spinning!

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That’s actually what I was speaking… AGAINST.
I do love to enforce ethical and moral superiority on my enemies on words. But actually defeated enemies whom I would personally hold an ethical stand ground from… would be probably something about 50%, which looks more like a statistical noise, because never ever I take a decision to kill from a position of a moral or high ground. I kill them because they’re enemies, because they’re targets, because they behave in a hostile manner that makes me undoubtfully assign them into enemy camp.

I am not a judge to decide who is guilty and who is innocent. I am a soldier. And my task is killing enemies disregarding of their guilt.

Of course, I would LOVE to put all gallentean war criminals into tribunal, all who put PoWs into exploding cells, who torture them, who planned and participated in the Operation Highlander… but it won’t be my job to judge them. My job is FIGHTING them, and of course, killing them - while they sit in a ships fitted with weapons. Disregarding if they committed actual warcrimes or not. Whether they are hired and get bloody money from Federation or they believe in their moral “superiority” over everyone else.

Actually, most of the time I am trying to enforce moral superiority on someone - it’s when they themselves claim to be morally superior to others, so I try to use logic and reason to show that… nope, they aren’t. You know how annoying it can get when some amoral and indecent character like a gallentean who is known to reveal some skin like some sort of Caille prostitute dares to enact moral superiority on you, spreading freedom-obsessed fanatical rhetorics all over you? Yea, I can show them I can play this game too, and unlike them I have way more facts to strike them down with. But that does it. I do it only to “dunk” their propaganda.

In the space, I simply protect the State from all the enemies, foreign and domestic alike, disregarding any morals, high grounds, etc etc etc. The only moral I do follow - is my Honor as Honor of Caldari Officer. But that’s personal. And if I violate that moral, I’ll have to answer to this only to myself and… my ancestors. Because I’ll have to take my own life and present myself to their tribunal… maybe with asking forgiveness from the Maker first through a certain ceremony.

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Very unfortunate for the original Minmatar settlers that were all deemed criminal and/or terrorist when they resisted the invasion by Amarr-allied forces. (Depending on which version of the history books to believe.)

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I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
I fear no evil because I’m blind to it all.

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Are you referring to Angry Concord Man?

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I will neither confirm nor deny that.

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I do not recall Burn Jita being ever “justified” in any way beyond “Hey, we can so let’s do it”. The origins of that event are actually quite political, tied to the reputation of back-then CFC, Goonswarm and today - The Imperium.

It started with the release of The Mittani following a scandal involving a lot of alcohol and a public speech (and a funny hat). Part of it was a celebration of his return, part - a reminder to the folks hiding behind CONCORD that we are still very much around and kicking.

Over time the event tended to pick up gimmicks that mocked our enemies. Like that time slapping a charity on dubious activity was all the rage - Burn Jita was spontaneously named one to poke at the double-standard and twisted morality of our enemies.

I guess nowadays it’s not really a terror event anymore - people broadcast their freighter losses live, cheering the swarm of ships as it blows them up.

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For the Capsuleers, I’m assuming you mean? Because I’m moderately positive that baseliners probably see it less positively, no? Do you think that maybe there’s a better way to poke fun of someone’s morality that doesn’t involve killing hundreds of thousands of people? Just… maybe?

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“Please don’t be afraid, it’s not a terror, we’ll just kill this thousand of industrial workers on that freighter for shits and giggles”

In any way, cheering these losses is same as cheering Mr. Nauplius when he was blowing up his own freighter with slaves. Absolutely same thing. :woman_shrugging:

Though I don’t understand how someone claiming about this cheering dares to blame their enemies in

I feel a desire to buy a huge mirror in Jita and send them as a present.

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thousand of industrial workers… on a capsuleer-piloted freighter?

It’s a box with engines. Full of other boxes. And automated conveyors and freight lifts. Sure, the Quafe Obelisks illegally destroyed by Caldari Customs had close to 1200 people on each ship, but those were baseliner ships. For capsuleer hulls, you’re probably looking at closer to 1/3 that number.

Really. It’s not rocket surgery. Given how long freighter ganking has been going on in New Eden, if pilots aren’t training their crews properly for that eventuality, that’s on them. Especially during a Burn, we make sure they have time to get out.

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And people.

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Not nearly as many as you seem to think. And they have lifeboats.

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Getting back to the original topic.
I’m not sure how much it really matters to try and debate the morality behind what we do. Ultimately it is impossible to create any type of universal morality, which means that all morality is purely subjective.

It is nothing more than a way to justify your own actions to yourself and condemn the actions of others. But since it is unlikely that they share your morality, such condemnations are meaningless.

Once you understand that, the entire concept of trying to find a moral justification for anything becomes pointless. We do things because we want to do them. If we later end up regretting those choices, then we deal with the consequences at that time. Anything other is simply trying to dodge responsibility for our actions.

In relation to killing. Yeah, I do it, quite a lot of it actually, at least it feels that way sometimes. Doesn’t bother me much though. They made their choices, I made mine, theirs left them on the wrong end of my guns and between me and my goals. Sucks for them.

As for the crew who die on my ships. I do my best to have it happen as rarely as possible. But they know the risks.

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