Torrasque said:
Birth isn't always random, but I'd be an idiot to say that it is 100% planned.
That wasn't quite what I meant. Conceptions may be planned, but the creature being born largely aren't. Especially, we don't get to plan many of the circumstances that substantially influence our later behaviours -- our genetics, temperaments, social circumstances, milieu, education, family and childhood influences, economic opportunities. That's not to suggest that we're not responsible for our actions, but it may make more sense to say "You don't deserve your circumstances" and "we don't deserve the danger you represent" than to say "You don't deserve to live."
Torrasque said:
It is interesting that you are the first person to see this kind of difference between a soldier and a judge.
For the most part, a judge doesn't get to decide what's moral, only what's lawful and what penalties apply when it's not. I don't know how judges cope when they oppose laws they're meant to serve, but I don't doubt that many suffer ethical quandries.
But (excluding the killing part) the power vs authority problem is one anyone can face - parents, teachers, employers, officials. Most of the power we get arises from custom and law, but it often comes with rules for how to apply it. Our rules give us the semblance of authority, but the rules are created by others who claim to authority by virtue of exercising power. So do we really have authority, or just power?
My answer: the authority is a consensual illusion; there's just power. But we prefer to invest authority in those who use power responsibly, for the common good (when we're not grabbing it for ourselves).
So your question "when is it okay to kill" can be reinterpreted as: "when is exercising the power to kill seen as a responsible action (and hence one with some claim to authority)?"
My answer: our sense of responsibility is based on our social compacts, and those are based in turn on our economics, circumstances, cultures and whatever we know. These things change by place and time... so for example the Australian aborigines were traditionally nomads, and lived in a harsh land where individuals couldn't survive alone. But they had no jails, so how did they punish people who broke their laws?
In many cases, they would spear an offender's leg. Speared one way it was painful and would make them limp for a while, but would heal. Speared another way, it would cripple the offender and make them unable to run -- a sort of mobile prison sentence that would protect other tribe-members from attack, yet still allow the offender to work within the tribe. Speared a third way it would make the offender bleed out -- arguably kinder than exiling the offender to starve.
Within the tribe, those actions could be seen as very responsible because the punishments did the least harm needed to protect the tribe. But relocate the same tribe into a city with jails and a huge food surplus and you could argue that it's irresponsible -- wouldn't it be more humane to isolate offenders from the community and try and rehabilitate them?
But in a generation or two with advanced gene surgery, improved electronic communications and pharmaceuticals, might not jails be seen as irresponsible? Wouldn't it be better to render offenders 'safe' and have them integrate back into the community?
What I'm trying to show here is that (ethical) authority depends on responsibility, and responsibility depends on society and circumstance. I don't believe we can apply an absolute rule to when it's responsible to kill. We can only acknowledge that killing is never deserved -- that it dehumanises us to say that it *is* deserved. But we can acknowledge that killing is sometimes expedient, even responsible... But determining that requires a thorough examination of the alternatives, and we need to recognise that responsibility is about minimising overall harm, and not exercising power just because we have it.
