How do we teach the value of human life?

[Blaze]

My personal rule is that human life should be spared when possible. I treat everyone with some measure of respect and avoid taking their life (unless they threaten mine), despite a fervent desire to do so in some cases.

Don't you think that should be a minimum universally, though? I think the average, rational person feels that way or more so in regards to humanity. There's got to be some base limit that people can comprehend, doesn't there? Even if it's just, "I don't kill people just because I feel like it." I mean, even in the most depraved mind, it's at least slightly harder to find validation for such an act, than it is to simply not care.

[StruckingFuggle]

I believe there is a quote, and I'm quite sure you've agreed with this. "You can't legislate morality."

Agreed-ish. You can, but you shouldn't. /semantics

Isn't that what you're trying to do here?

Seeing as how I haven't said anything about government or laws, no, I don't think so. Even if you talk about using societal pressure to take the role of government guns (something I actually believe is possible and am, if anything, more opposed to than government force, but that's another topic?), I don't quite see how. I'm not saying you should force people to be educated, I'm saying we're sending the wrong messages to be encouraging viewing life as having some inherent value that you can't just play with according to your whim and avoid doing only because you fear the consequences.

And even then, I was saying how it looks like it would have to be done. If it's worth doing or not is another(ish) topic, no?

I'm pretty sure that you can't teach it in the way you are trying to say you want it done.

Sad as it makes me, I believe I also said that humans suck and are pretty incapable of doing such a thing, yes.

All you can do is make the barrier to it higher than most people want to jump.

Maybe. I guess. That sucks, though. And it's not a good solution. But maybe it's the only one that kinda works, which is maybe, to an extent, better than nothing at all...

Sure, but I'd still argue I was in my right mind.

I'd say differently, but I doubt we'd agree. If you were in your 'right mind' then why would you do things you wouldn't normally do / would normally know better than to do? Sure sounds like being wrong-minded to me.

Or is 'loss of control' something we shouldn't be blamed for?

You know, I don't know. If you're truly not in control, then really, what reasonable cause is there for blame; except maybe if we blame them not for what they did but for losing control to begin with.

But that seems like a separate, unique question - rather than something linked like a sub-question to defining what is or is not in your right mind and how common it is or isn't or if people go in and out of it enough that it's something we're all familiar with - too.

[adciv]

Really, the only messages one can send are by example, aka the consequences of ones actions. I think the robbers came up in this, so using that for this. I think people don't care about the robbers because they were doing something so brazen that had they not been stopped, they most likely would have gotten away with it. In this case, they were stopped by being shot. The perceived benefit is greater than the perceived loss.

So you still get people who try to work around those laws, or who think, rationally or irrationally, that losing their life is worth whatever they're going to be doing, and it's still reactive. Unless you intimidate all of them into inaction, you still are left rather pointlessly punishing those who do act after it's too late. And even if people, everyone, still rationally obeys the law, it goes back to undermining arguments of some sort of value of human life and reinforces the notion that you shouldn't care about other people (which would seem to help encourage the bigger acts of not caring about them, up to they as other people matter so little that you can include them for your own ends in your little suicide melodrama), because you not only do nothing for what's actually wrong, but you get people - probably like Deacon there - who see no point or cause to help them.

Going back to this, there is a saying. You can't stop a kamikaze. Once someone doesn't care about their life, you really can't convince them to not do something. You would have to keep them caring about their own life in the first place.

All one can do is punish them after the fact. After all, you can't punish people for something they haven't done yet. That means that all acts come into terms of us not doing something because of what will happen to us later on.

The death penalty reinforces that a human life is worth a human life. If you take someones, yours becomes payment. Lock someone up for life and they still have their life. The only thing you've taken away is their freedom, not what they've taken away from someone else.

I'd say differently, but I doubt we'd agree. If you were in your 'right mind' then why would you do things you wouldn't normally do / would normally know better than to do? Sure sounds like being wrong-minded to me.

Because I finally got to the point where I didn't give a flying fuck about the consequences and instead decided to do what I did. Each point, building up to that, was a brick in the stairs over the wall. At some point, it go to the point where the wall was low enough that I no longer cared.

Loss of control is related. Because if we say that killings only take place when one loses control, then a whole host of questions come up. The question comes down to why we are punishing someone in the first place. Is it because they committed the act? Is it because the lost control? Is it because they are more likely to lose control again? Is it because we can no longer trust them? If they lost control, then are they criminally responsible for any acts they then commit? (i.e. insanity plea) Which is also related to them learning the value of human life. If they understand the value, except when not in their right mind, what is the use in teaching it in the first place?

I hope you get where I am going with that.

[Deacon]

...Deacon, of course, misses the point entirely.

Thank you for that so very helpful explanation.

So then why should others share or respect your values, or operate life-transactions with consideration for them?

Because it helps society run smoothly which, in the end, benefits the others in your sentence.

And even then, barring perhaps some sort of physical mental disorder that made them do it, it's not really something unavoidable, that they would end up in such a position no matter what - for the most part, we could, if people actually tried, do something to prevent people from ending up in that place.

Not every time. A person is, in the end, responsible for their own actions, but of course there are things that parents and friends and family and teachers and who knows who else might've done differently that could've maybe changed the shape of the outcome in a massive set of gigantic what-if scenarios. I don't know who the "we" part is in your last sentence, though, but it certainly would include neither you nor me nor anyone shot in that mall in Nebraska, etc.

I believe there is a quote, and I'm quite sure you've agreed with this. "You can't legislate morality."

Agreed-ish. You can, but you shouldn't. /semantics

No, you can't, in that your laws mean nothing. They tried it with prohibition, it continues with the war on drugs we've been fighting with both hands pinned behind our backs by each of our various government branches, and it happens with prostitution, etc--hell, even theft, rape, and murder. All you're going to do is keep the honest people honest.