How Much Should We Love People

[General Mung Beans]

In your opinion how much should our love for people extent? Should it be extended only to believe close to us (ie family and friends) or to all good and decent people or all humanity in general?

Related to this should we value all human life equally. For instance should you rather save five strangers than a close family member or friend?

[Alyrium Denryle]

There is a distinction to make. There is a difference between personal value and moral value. Morally, I value everyone and do not condone actions or policies which will cause them harm. Personally however there are a lot of people (and I mean a LOT) who I am either apathetic about or actively cannot stand. For example: i oppose the death penalty on moral and practical grounds. That does not mean I have personal compassion for those who commit premeditated murder.

[Lagmonster]

"Love" is a wishy-washy term. What practical things do you do for people you love? Do you patronize their stores? Do you volunteer to paint their fence? Do you sacrifice your life for them?

I like to simplify such arguments into the context of being a dick. I can't easily define what it means to be a dick, but if you start tossing about words like 'harm' and 'value' people start introducing hypotheticals left and right and exceptions crop up all over the place, illuminating the holes in our morality and plunging us into arguments over specifics. However, if you just implore someone to not be a dick, most people will get the gist of it even though its a far more subjective and undefined term.

For all intents and purposes, I don't know most of humanity, and I don't know if they've agreed to the same social contracts as I have. Even so, I think the fairest and best I can offer them is my own committment to not be a dick. At best we would hope for compassion and charity when we're down, but we shouldn't expect it - the baseline for reasonable expectations is a lack of dickishness.

[Lord of the Abyss]

In your opinion how much should our love for people extent?

Not very far. I don't really think much of love. Maybe your spouse and children but even that can have bad consequences (such as helping your loved ones getting away with crimes or just looking the other way).

Should it be extended only to believe close to us (ie family and friends) or to all good and decent people or all humanity in general?

By nature love is restricted to those close to you, with a direct lessening of concern for everyone else as a result. That's why I don't think much of love. Someone in love tends to be willing to sacrifice the welfare of everyone else in favor of their love object.

Related to this should we value all human life equally.

Of course not. If I have to choose between the life of, say, my next door neighbor and a serial killer, my neighbor will get priority since to my knowledge she's never killed anyone.

[LionElJonson]

Family comes first. Then your nation(s). Then everyone else.

[Kanastrous]

Since the web of personal connections is unique to each individual person, I don't see a meaningful answer that applies outside the experience of the person answering.

[General Mung Beans]

In your opinion how much should our love for people extent?

Not very far. I don't really think much of love. Maybe your spouse and children but even that can have bad consequences (such as helping your loved ones getting away with crimes or just looking the other way).

If you considered all people equally that wouldn't be much of a problem since the good of society would outweigh the good of the individual.

Related to this should we value all human life equally.

Of course not. If I have to choose between the life of, say, my next door neighbor and a serial killer, my neighbor will get priority since to my knowledge she's never killed anyone.[/quote]
[/quote]

Suppose you had to choose between your spouse or five strangers (none of whom are murderers or any sort of criminal) who would you choose to save?

[Channel72]

In your opinion how much should our love for people extent? Should it be extended only to believe close to us (ie family and friends) or to all good and decent people or all humanity in general?

Love usually entails a great deal of emotional investment in another person. This is clearly not applicable on a global scale. I can say I love humanity in the abstract, in the sense that I feel a deep emotional commitment to the well-being of the human species, but I certainly can't say I actually love every single individual human on the planet. The reality is that I'm mostly apathetic to people I don't know, unless I'm somehow made aware of their problems individually.

I think a more practical concept is empathy. It may not be possible to empathize with every human being on Earth, but you can use empathy for individuals you know as a starting point to guide the way you interact with everyone else. This is more or less summed up in the Rabbinical version of the Golden Rule: "do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you." So, while love is reserved for family, close friends, lovers, etc., empathy should be extended to all humanity. (Excluding, of course, individuals whose actions make them undeserving of empathy.)

[Lagmonster]

Suppose you had to choose between your spouse or five strangers (none of whom are murderers or any sort of criminal) who would you choose to save?

I HATE scale questions like this in morality. Rescuing your wife over five people usually passes muster, but people get shaky when you raise that figure to a million people. All people can agree on in scale is that the number of people that have to be threatened before you're not allowed to be selfish anymore is somewhere between 'a handful' and 'a crowd'.

Value also inevitably comes into this; eventually someone brings up the whole 'exchange your child for the life of the world's most brilliant scientist' thing. You know what, Einstein can go fuck himself, because I'm a selfish daddy.

[Lord of the Abyss]

In your opinion how much should our love for people extent?

Not very far. I don't really think much of love. Maybe your spouse and children but even that can have bad consequences (such as helping your loved ones getting away with crimes or just looking the other way).

If you considered all people equally that wouldn't be much of a problem since the good of society would outweigh the good of the individual.

I'd also be insane since people are NOT all equal, either from a moral or practical perspective.

Suppose you had to choose between your spouse or five strangers (none of whom are murderers or any sort of criminal) who would you choose to save?

Most likely being human I'd choose my hypothetical spouse; but I'd be morally in the wrong to do so.

[General Mung Beans]

If you considered all people equally that wouldn't be much of a problem since the good of society would outweigh the good of the individual.

I'd also be insane since people are NOT all equal, either from a moral or practical perspective.

I mean by that while some people may be "superior" in certain characteristics than others or not as morally good all humans (with perhaps some exceptions such as mass murderers who forfeit the right) possess the right to live and that they're equal in that sense.

[Kanastrous]

Do you have a universal metric by which to quantify the morality upon which you're basing the judgment?

[General Mung Beans]

Do you have a universal metric by which to quantify the morality upon which you're basing the judgment?

What do you mean exactly?

[Kanastrous]

Well, if you are positing that there is a moral metric by which to judge that some number of people are 'good,' I wondered what that metric might be. Since you seem to be speaking in universal worldwide terms and moral systems vary from one society to the next.

[General Mung Beans]

Well, if you are positing that there is a moral metric by which to judge that some number of people are 'good,' I wondered what that metric might be. Since you seem to be speaking in universal worldwide terms and moral systems vary from one society to the next.

Although you may guess this from my title ( ) I base my morality on Biblical precepts.

[Lord of the Abyss]

I mean by that while some people may be "superior" in certain characteristics than others or not as morally good all humans (with perhaps some exceptions such as mass murderers who forfeit the right) possess the right to live and that they're equal in that sense.

One problem with that argument is that a person's options on how to treat people are a lot more complicated than a binary choice of kill/don't kill.

[Kanastrous]

Well, if you are positing that there is a moral metric by which to judge that some number of people are 'good,' I wondered what that metric might be. Since you seem to be speaking in universal worldwide terms and moral systems vary from one society to the next.

Although you may guess this from my title ( ) I base my morality on Biblical precepts.

Okay, you've got your arbitrary morality book. What about everybody else's arbitrary morality books? Think the whole world defines morality in the way that you would? Or even in the same way as all of your co-religionists would? Without a universal standard for moral behavior how should a world full of people be evaluated when it comes to, well, anything at all, to do with moral behavior across that whole world? You've framed what appears to be a universalist question without setting out a set of universal standards by which to compose an answer.

And to be fair, Fundamentalist Morons come in more than one flavor, so I wasn't going to make assumptions regarding your particular flavor of choice.

[General Mung Beans]

Well, if you are positing that there is a moral metric by which to judge that some number of people are 'good,' I wondered what that metric might be. Since you seem to be speaking in universal worldwide terms and moral systems vary from one society to the next.

Although you may guess this from my title ( ) I base my morality on Biblical precepts.

Okay, you've got your arbitrary morality book. What about everybody else's arbitrary morality books? Think the whole world defines morality in the way that you would? Or even in the same way as all of your co-religionists would? Without a universal standard for moral behavior how should a world full of people be evaluated when it comes to, well, anything at all, to do with moral behavior across that whole world? You've framed what appears to be a universalist question without setting out a set of universal standards by which to compose an answer.

And to be fair, Fundamentalist Morons come in more than one flavor, so I wasn't going to make assumptions regarding your particular flavor of choice.

There are certain moral beliefs that virtually everyone regardless of religion supports. For instance virtually all people in the world (other than the mentally deranged) would agree that the intentional killing of a person without provocation is wrong. Those basic precepts I think can be considered de facto universal morality. Also I'm not in favour of imposing the Bible as law.

[Lord of the Abyss]

There are certain moral beliefs that virtually everyone regardless of religion supports. For instance virtually all people in the world (other than the mentally deranged) would agree that the intentional killing of a person without provocation is wrong.

Not at all. Plenty of people have no problem with killing people because they are the "wrong" religion, gay, wrong skin color, a "witch", had sex with the wrong person, because they are ordered to do so, or just because they have something the killers want.

[Kanastrous]

Not to mention societies like some that you can find in the Amazon and New Guineau and Africa in which killing other people without anything that you or I would recognize as 'provocation' is either morally neutral, or even positive. Those people are 'people' just as much as you or I. So your 'universal morality' obviously isn't.

[General Mung Beans]

There are certain moral beliefs that virtually everyone regardless of religion supports. For instance virtually all people in the world (other than the mentally deranged) would agree that the intentional killing of a person without provocation is wrong.

Not at all. Plenty of people have no problem with killing people because they are the "wrong" religion, gay, wrong skin color, a "witch", had sex with the wrong person, because they are ordered to do so, or just because they have something the killers want.

They are mostly people in areas that are dominated by a fanaticism for a certain ideology (ie Christianity, Islam, communism etc.) or by people who are extremely selfish. But most people on the forum would, I suspect agree with the statement.

[General Mung Beans]

Not to mention societies like some that you can find in the Amazon and New Guineau and Africa in which killing other people without anything that you or I would recognize as 'provocation' is either morally neutral, or even positive. Those people are 'people' just as much as you or I. So your 'universal morality' obviously isn't.

There are such people but they are not exactly civilized-they have retained caveman morality while the rest of the world has moved forward.

[Alyrium Denryle]

There are certain moral beliefs that virtually everyone regardless of religion supports. For instance virtually all people in the world (other than the mentally deranged) would agree that the intentional killing of a person without provocation is wrong.

Not at all. Plenty of people have no problem with killing people because they are the "wrong" religion, gay, wrong skin color, a "witch", had sex with the wrong person, because they are ordered to do so, or just because they have something the killers want.

They are mostly people in areas that are dominated by a fanaticism for a certain ideology (ie Christianity, Islam, communism etc.) or by people who are extremely selfish. But most people on the forum would, I suspect agree with the statement.

That is the sad part. They dont. Once you add up the entire african continent (with the possible exception of several countries such as S. Africa these days, even relatively[sic] stable countries like Nigeria sometimes have religion riots in the streets), most of SW Asia, large portion of SE Asia... you get a very significant fraction of the worlds population. I am not sure I would say half necessarily, but it is enough that the term "most" gets a bit sketchy.

[Kanastrous]

Not to mention societies like some that you can find in the Amazon and New Guineau and Africa in which killing other people without anything that you or I would recognize as 'provocation' is either morally neutral, or even positive. Those people are 'people' just as much as you or I. So your 'universal morality' obviously isn't.

There are such people but they are not exactly civilized-they have retained caveman morality while the rest of the world has moved forward.

Hey, you said people with the clear implication that there is a baseline standard for morality that we can expect no matter what specific society of 'people' we're talking about. You *never* said anything at all about anyone's degree of 'civilization;' your position was that morality is inherent to people of whatever stripe, and that the morality involved is your morality. The only allowance you made for divergent behavior was on the part of the 'mentally deranged.' So are you now going to try and argue that any society that doesn't fit your requirements is made up solely of 'mentally deranged' people?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Not to mention societies like some that you can find in the Amazon and New Guineau and Africa in which killing other people without anything that you or I would recognize as 'provocation' is either morally neutral, or even positive. Those people are 'people' just as much as you or I. So your 'universal morality' obviously isn't.

There are such people but they are not exactly civilized-they have retained caveman morality while the rest of the world has moved forward.

Hey, you said people with the clear implication that there is a baseline standard for morality that we can expect no matter what specific society of 'people' we're talking about. The only allowance you made for divergent behavior was on the part of the 'mentally deranged.' So are you now going to try and argue that any society that doesn't fit your requirements is made up solely of 'mentally deranged' people?

That also completely ignores history too. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" did not include people who were not jews
(Judges 21:10-24)

Unless of course you regularly kill your parents and siblings before raping yourself.