Right. It’s an End. It’s not the Means. The means in this case would be how you fight to win. Do you drop titans on a small interceptor gang? Do you attack someone’s civilian, baseliner family with chemical weapons? Do you not bother with niceties like giving your enemy an almost-fair fight they might have a chance to not lose horribly?
The things you identify as ‘means’ here… are ends. How you achieve them… how do you seek justice? How do you liberate slaves? How do you seek to uphold those abstract moral principles?
When you have a goal, you can make a plan, and you can follow it and achieve it.
When you fight for abstract moral principles, you are just trying to position yourself as “better” than those who you fight, and try to enforce your ideals on those, who do not accept you. Firghing for any abstract moral principle is just bullying.
Even if you fight “for justice”, that makes you a vigilante, not a bringer of justice. If you want to enforce justice, you need to work for that, for example, in judical system, or if you want really to do some actual fighting - in a security paramilitary arm of a corporation. And then they will give you exact concrete goal to achieve, so you will become a professional and not a bully.
I have not identified the liberation of slaves as a means. It is concrete, measurable and therefore has the properties of an End.
There is no clear divide with regards to examples between the two. If the end is to liberate slaves, attacking a slave transport could be the means. But for a particular operation, the attack is the end, and employing fast attack craft could to engage the transport could be the means. Etc. etc.
I am saying that if your ultimate ends are moral principles and if you keep those principles in mind, choosing a means will be easier for you. If being just, truthful and fortright is an end, not lying is a means. But if you consider not lying an end in itself, then you might choose to speak the truth in a situation that would not benefit your ultimate end. That is folly.
While you have pointed out a very essential issue indeed, it is not entirely as you claim. I’ll explain:
Setting goals (or making laws for that matter) makes moral principles enforceable, measurable and clear to communicate to others.
That doesn’t mean those laws, goals and rules are automatically morally right. They and the circumstances are always in motion. Even the clearest goals and well written laws cannot foresee all situations. Some situations will occur in which blindly following the law order or goal will be harming your moral principles.
Having moral principles as your ultimate guide does not mean at all that you could just do ‘what feels right’ and act as a vigilante. Those laws, rules and orders should help you inform you what to do in many situations but they don’t excuse you from using your own judgement as well.
I follow higher moral principles, but many capsuleers think me rather nflexible when it comes to following rules and laws. That is also why I have a security status close to 5.0 while I operate mostly in low-sec and in a military capacity. FCs don’t like me when I refuse to open fire on a possible innocent when they command it.
I try to work within the judicial system set up by Concord and endorsed by the Amarr Empire. I do not fire first on unknown entities that enter a installation I am attacking or defending. In 95% of the cases, the person entering the installation will opens fire on me, but in 5% of the times, they don’t open fire. This means that me giving nearly every pilot the benefit of the doubt saves those 5% of those pilots from destruction.
But in very rare cases, I do fire first. Sometimes I act on circumstancial proof of hostility, but I always weigh the particulars of the situation. If there is no military risk (it will not threaten the current operation), I might just warp out, ibut f there is, I might open fire and find out afterwards if the person was hostile, and apologize if they have sufficient proof that they weren’t.
However, simply contacting a pilot and asking if he’s hostile is often sufficient. Most pilots readily admit their intentions and even though they might be lying, that is sufficient evidence for me.
So even though I appear to be very rigid, I am constantly judging and balancing the proper application of laws, rules and moral principles. I find the wisdom of my peers and betters, like the wisdom written down in the Scriptures, a great help in doing so.
I find that many people who say ‘the law is the law’ or ‘orders are orders’ are usually trying to absolve themselves of responsibility when they know what they have done or will be doing is morally wrong. I believe you are always responsible for your choices.
And still, when you enforce not a law, but a moral principle, you simply turn yourself into bully. As I have mentioned before, for me main moral principle is Honor. But have you seen me even trying to enforce it on people who don’t follow it?
I would enforce it only on those, who would unfairly offend me in a dishonorable way. And under unfairly I understand without me prior offending them by word or action or lack of proper formal respect from my side. Then I can enforce on them my moral principles - but only as a leverage for their own offense.
I can tell others about my moral principles, I can argue about them and prove why I consider them right and their - wrong, but I would never enforce my moral principles without them attacking me first, because otherwise it would be bullying.
And I cannot afford me bullying.
Do laws have to be morally right from the start?
I think the best way of action is to accept that morals and laws can contradict each other. And even one law can contradict another. In this case you will have to decide, what are you going to break and how you will have to pay for that.
For me personally, I believe that breaking a law is more acceptable than breaking the moral principle And breaking the moral principle is more acceptable than breaking objective and/or order. Of course, whenever you break the law or moral principle, you have to take proper punishment for your actions. Legal prosecution for breaking the law, and whatever your cultural and moral norms require of you for breaking moral principle, up to and even including ritual suicide. For example, again my moral principle of Honor dictates to me that whenever I violate the law, I must report my actions and take proper legal punishment.
First of all, possible innocent means also - possible guilty.
Of course, according to standard judicial maxims, everyone is innocent until their guilt has been undoubtfully proven.
But you’re not executor, nor I am. We are soldiers, and as soldiers our job is not "punishing baddies™ ", but rather providing security, protection and completion of objectives. Of course in majority of the cases it also involves killing same baddies™, but not because they’re bad™, but because they’re obstacle to security, safety, mission goals, etc.
For security forces it is more that allowed to shoot just a suspect if they don’t disarm themselves - and from the point of view of the tribunal even armed murder suspect who shoots you is innocent until you kill him or subdue him and bring to the court who will say - yes, he did that, he’s guilty now.
And, more important in this regard is following orders. There’s almost classic example we studied back in SWA. Imagine your officer has ordered you to shoot down a civilian transport with clearly civilians on board. Say, 50 heads. And you refuse the order, saying its amoral. He tells you, that it’s not civvies, that’s gallente military ship - but everything else shows otherwise.
You can even arrest your officer, and most likely the rest of the crew will stand on your side, because they will agree with you, that’s it just civvies.
Knowing that you’re gonna win the tribunal, you take command of your ship, dock it and drag your former officer into the cell for the Navy to take care of him - after all, the tribunal will be for both of you, for him for wrong order and for you for violating order and arresting that officer - one of you is going to die, and you’re sure that it’s gonna be this amoral officer.
But next morning you watch news: there was a sabotage, caused by a group of 50 gallente diversants, pretending to be civilians, docks of a navy station destroyed, thousands of casualties both from military and civilians, even more wounded… And you look at this number of 50 “pretending to be civilians” with cold shiver running down your spine…
You see, in the majority of cases, commanding officers have WAY more knowledge and information than subordinates. They can give “morally wrong” orders or suicidal orders, orders that can be seen as wrong at a time… but in the end, they will be right - because they had the plan, because they had the information…
Don’t mess up with FC or other commanding officers unless you 200% sure they violate law. And if you disagree with their operation, just let them finish it, follow throgh their orders and tell them what they did wrong only AFTER the said operation. Trust me, that will be better for everyone, even the FC will love to hear your feedback after the op, especially if the critics will be constructive. Just… try not to confront their orders during the operation.
Following a criminal order makes you a criminal, just like flying under pirate captain makes you a pirate. Of course, orders are orders, the question is though, do you trust your FC or no? And if you don’t trust them, why do you fly with them?
I do tend to trust people myself. And I put my life, my ship and lives of my crewmembers into hands of those, who command me. I believe they know better than me and they’re smarter than me. And if they will violate the law, I will violate the law. And for that, I will answer and will have to pay according to the said law.
I would say that blindly following same orders can make you way more responsible than taking always decisions by yourself. Because when you follow orders, you answer both for your actions (since we execute orders as humans and not machines - according how we feel it is more fit) and for actions of your commander.
Subcommander Diana Kim, you lying pirate!!! You tried to enforce your evil ways on me, when I was sharing the Good News about James to the miners, and you warped around threatening to murder me and my fellow agents. You even tried to duel me and lost!
Praise be unto James, your bullying attempts to grief me came to naught, but don’t pretend like you didn’t try to employ force as part of your attempt to scam the miners into committing tax evasion and selling cheap unethically sourced ore.
It’s Strike Commander, how it is written on my insignia. I believe reading skills shouldn’t be that hard to acquire.
Both of these accusations are false. If you believe (by any weird reason) that I have committed an act of piracy, report it to CONCORD, Protectorate, CBT or CN. You might try to report it to our CEO as well - though it will be quite amusing and I am looking forward to reading their reply.
As for daring to blaming me in conducting such dishonorable crime as lying - since you have stated it on public comms, would you prefer bringing public apologies, stand on your word and fight me for it, or do neither and display your own dishonor?
Besides, calling someone pirate after openly committing an act of piracy in front of their eyes is neither smart nor wise.
Most certainly it wasn’t. Maybe some of my ways are evil, and I trust many gallenteans believe so. And I am not surprised you will share such a point of view of enemies of the State like gallenteans, but really, don’t you think it’s not really wise calling someone evil after you yourself was popping civvie vessels that weren’t doing anything aggressive?..
But mostly important, I don’t think I ever tried to enforce my “evil” (as gallenteans think) ways on you. I am just protecting souvereign State space from enemies and pirates (including those like you). And if you don’t like that - you’re pretty much free to move to Gallente space and commit your mischief there, for all I care.
I don’t care what you share, really, but in the State the punishment for piracy is death. And yes, that means if I’d catch you after committing an act of piracy, it would mean almost certain death for you.
Double lie. First of all, I only tried to challenge you, but you backpedalled hard, starting to make a demands for me to commit random criminal acts instead of fighting me. An offender demanding challenger to commit something… I really have no idea what’s in your head.
And no, with your backpedalling the duel didn’t even happen, so there was nothing to lose or win.
I am not scamming miners into paying a racketeering fees like CODE criminals do. I am only calling to them to keep awareness and not to pay to criminals.
As for what is ethical and unethical - in either way it doesn’t let legally anyone to commit an act of violence, simply because different people have different notions on what is ethical and what is not. Murdering miners because they do something you deem as “unethical” is simply illegal. And you’re a perfect example why murdering people over ethics is not allowed by law: simply because your view on what is unethical is not shared by any normal human being.
Ahh, and here’s well-known troll Nevyn with his mental diarheea picture, absolutely unrelated to to discussion.
I mean, really, shouldn’t clone technicians detain anomalous clones like that? That’s clearly a severe disorder (or even several) if he makes or posts that sort of “assembly” - it looks like some sort of psycho mounting on a wall unrelated newspaper cuts, even multiplying some of them and keeping glueing them on the wall in a row while drool and foam leaks from his open mouth…
Detain him, really, someone. That’s disturbing that Nevyn is still at large.
It’s almost like I have committed no crimes.
Unlike the above evidence showing you are a criminal.
As for relevance, when you are busy making claims you aren’t a pirate and accusing others of criminal acts, your criminal history is very relevant. I mean really… That’s weak, even by your Kimbot standards.
Nevyn’s right, the trumped up Subcommander Kim is nothing more than a low security pirate, masquerading behind her self-proclaimed promotion to ‘Strike Commander’. I’ve met Guristas who were more loyal to the Caldari Navy. She just wants to enslave the miners so that she can obtain cheap ore for her pirate fleet.
Subcommander, you know as well as I that CONCORD is just a corrupt automated rogue drone network that you hacked into for your own personal benefit. In the image posted above, I can see you making a comment about ‘station defenses’ - what, what was that? Are you telling me that those sentry guns are controlled by bots?
