Some Thoughts about the ethics of killing, a bit related to Buffy, Season Six, Villains.

[thorfinn]

nigelw inspired me to ramble on about the morality and ethics of killing...
I'm assuming this is, in part, a response to to Buffy, Season Six, Villains, aired last night on Channel Seven. If not from him, then certainly from me. A powerful episode... and Willow is pretty serious about that vengeance kick. Understandably so... but the morality of it is a little less black and white than Buffy seems to see it. Buffy seems to say "it's a human, therefore it is not okay to kill them because they are the 'natural order of things'." Admittedly, she did go on to say, "there are human means for dealing with this..."

My thoughts on the subject are as follows. There's no magic line that says "thou shalt not kill". Humans are not special. I am regularly responsible for the death of animals (and would be happy to kill and prepare them personally, if it was necessary) so I may eat, and ditto for the death of plenty of plants. Every day, millions of bacteria live and die in my intestines. Life feeds on life. The only reason not to kill humans is cultural and pragmatic - other humans are likely to seek retribution.

I sat down a while ago, and hashed out whether I could kill a human or not... and I've come to the conclusion that I could, if they were attempting to engage in applying forces that carried risk of killing me or people I care about.

The reason I had to think about that is because, well, I am sufficiently well trained to be able to kill the majority of humans, with my bare hands, without significant difficulty. So, I've trained my response-patterns to be "do-unto as you are about to be done-unto" - if somebody is trying to hit me (and I'm aware of it in time), they'll get hit about as hard as they were trying to hit me, and I won't get hit. If they're using potentially lethal force (a knife, or simply being big enough to hit hard enough to do lethal damage), my response patterns will scale straight into "kill or die" with zero qualms.

Non-immediate responses, that's different. I'm unlikely to seek direct vengeance, if I'm not around at the time an attack is occurring... but that's simply for pragmatic reasons. There are normal human-societal means (police, courts, etc - no they aren't perfect, but they are the accepted societal mechanisms, just as Danegeld payment was for the Viking culture) that are available and should be tried first.

If they don't work, and I'm convinced it's necessary to put someone out of my misery, then, I might well seek personal vengeance, if I feel the likely consequences are worth it. That's not a likely occurrence, though.

Comments

[kitling.livejournal.com]

I don't think i could kill someone, although i wouldn't know until faced with such a situation. I think i could have an abortion (where the morality of death conversation came from, boy isn't up to curent buffy yet)
Which i guess is a whole new conversation on when does a life become a life.. curiously enough i am in favour of enthanasia...

Anyway
Buffy morality, there is the thing that 'slayers don't kill humans' there are human mechanisms to deal with human bad guys - police,jail etc, there are those structures to deal with supernaturals - whcih is why slayers can kill them without qualms.

Although sometimes characters buffy has killed are people transformed into bad things by some means, and could maybe be changed back...
thats never been investigated on buffy tho.

The faith killing someone - the man faith killed was technically an innocent (even if he was working for the mayor) he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and not atacking or threatening the slayers. buffy got sent to kill faith, faith was technically a human - the slayer powers might make her supernatural enough to void the the slayers dont kill human rules..i'm not sure..

warren - was just a fuckwit, they were playing, admittedly we saw warren going into a bar afterwards and boasting about having killed the slayer, which i guess gave us a reason not to get to concerned about his death. but basically he wasn't 'the evil' he was stupid, he was upset when he fired that gun...

But willow's vengence trip was seriously over the top, and i think out of character - i realise its a tv show and they want willow to be the big bad..but seriously... aside from the dark hair looking cute...

You say you would harm someone if they were going to harm you or someone you loved... If someone threatened you with a knife, or a blood filled syringe, would you kill them? They are not trying to kill you (mostlikely) just trying to scare and prolly get money from you...

I'd prolly hand over my wallet and run to the nearest police..

where does the line get drawn?

[meleah.livejournal.com]

Warren is a little more than a fuckwit. All of them have been doing some pretty serious shit, especially Warren with the killing his ex. Willow had it right last night, the fucker gets off on it, and other abuses of women, he is seriously evil, albeit in a far more real way than any of the supernaturals. For that matter, killing a human who has done what he has is in my mind far more justified than killing a vampire - killing a vampire for doing what it does because it has a demon inside and no soul, which appears to be where all morals stem from in Buffyverse. Warren has a soul, and he behaves no better than them, therefore he is far more evil, and killing him far more justified. As for the other two, I don't care that they're funny, I don't care that they're 'innocent' they were accessories, and I'll only be a little sad if Jonathan gets caught in the crossfire. They're big boys, they were playing with fire, and deserve to be burnt.

I'm right behind Willow, and Buffy can take her hypocritical "morals" and piss off.

[kitling.livejournal.com]

Okay- on reflection i'll agree that warren is a dangerous fuckwit.. what with the girlfriend robots and then killing the ex girlfriend, maybe he belongs in a mental hospital instead.


If the other two in the trio get hurt/killed by
willow on her vengence kick, i think thats definately going to far.

Also there's the whole black magic thing being dangerous and evil (and apprently like crack)

However I think i'll stick with the real world has ways and means of dealing with criminals, so its not the slayers (or her friends job) The slayer is there to deal with supernatural occurances, because society hasn't got other methods of dealing, human crimnals should be dealt with by police etc

Yeah Willow is angry, she's pissed off.. but i wouldn't call her methods very sane or good for her, all morality issues aside.

justice or vengence?

Of course, to completely tangent... there oothoona's post of the other day about our justice system and the validity of jail as a punishment tool, and is there a better way to deal with criminals?... that i don't have an answer too, but could make for an interesting debate..

[meleah.livejournal.com]

If Warren was an abstract criminal, or someone who committed crimes against property, or someone who had killed by mistake, perhaps. But he knew exactly what he was doing, even if he got Tara instead of Buffy. The others too - they have to learn that these things have consequences. They didn't act like normal humans, they messed with the supernatural, and particularly, with Buffy, and for that matter Willow, with full knowledge of who they were in the greater scheme of things, and what they were capable of doing. They chose to hurt, hinder, kill the people who save human lives, and by doing so to by extension kill and bring destruction upon the society in which they live, and hundreds more humans - we've seen the world without Buffy. They aligned themselves with the enemies of these guys, and did everything they could to 'fit in' to that world - why shouldn't they suffer the punishment meted out to that world?

As for whether its good for Willow, screw that - she has nothing left to lose, and sometimes, people can love beyond selfishness, find something that is worth dying or destroying themselves for. She found it, and damn the consequences.

Justice or vengeance? What the hell is justice anyway? Justice, in your view, is Warren being, in the best case, locked up for a couple of years for manslaughter by people who abstract his crime. Explain to me how it is that justice isn't simply vengeance meted out by society? In the black and white world presented to us by Buffy where we can be sure of Warren's motivations and where we were eyewitnesses to his crime, I'm more than happy for Willow to hunt him down and kill him and everyone who helped him in horrible, unpleasant ways. In the real world, without magic, I believe its only fear of consequences, and the uncertainty produced by our lack of an impartial third-person audience to every action, that would keeps me from doing the same in the same situation.

[thorfinn]

*nodnod* Yes. Willow is in a place where she no longer cares about anything. The love of her life is gone, and she doesn't hold out any hopes for the future without Tara. Sure, if she could get past that, it would be a helluva lot better for her, personally. But it's not in her nature to. As for whether Warren deserves it... It's an odd problem.

The Trio as a group have been playing with some fairly supernatural foo. I think that puts them squarely in the category of "over into the grey area" as far as responding to them with supernatural foo goes. So what if they're "human"... they're humans who've been messing with dark and evil powers, and there are serious consequences to that in the Buffyverse.

Where things get a bit dicey, though, is that Warren, specifically, as opposed to the other two, mostly operates in "natural laws only" land - the robots are "science" (and whilst Buffyverse science isn't much like this world's science, there is a clear distinction drawn between the two) not "magic", and guns are definitely "science" not "magic". Sure, he's a nasty evil fucker, but mostly he's a nasty evil fucker in a "natural" human way, not a "supernatural" way.

By Buffyverse "rules", that means he should be dealt with in "natural" ways, not "supernatural" ones. Or at least, the only supernatural things brought to bear should come as backlash (which is appropriately proportional) to whatever supernatural forces Warren himself has directly been involved in using.

As far as I recall, that's actually very little. The Two To Go were the supernatural players... The only seriously supernatural thing Warren's done was use those magic balls, and that got dealt with by Buffy. Killing his girlfriend, he did by pushing her down the stairs. Killing Tara, done with a gun. Robots? Science, not Magic. Warren's not in Supernatural territory. Willow killing him is an evil act. Justified, IMO, but evil, in Buffyverse lights, nevertheless. Willow knows that. She just doesn't care any more.

[thorfinn]

> You say you would harm someone if they were going to harm you
> or someone you loved... If someone threatened you with a knife,
> or a blood filled syringe, would you kill them? They are not
> trying to kill you (mostlikely) just trying to scare and prolly
> get money from you...
> I'd prolly hand over my wallet and run to the nearest police..
> where does the line get drawn?

This one isn't hypothetical. Sitting on a mostly empty train in Sydney, once, I noticed a gang of youths moving into the carraige, and settling themselves around the carriage. The leader sat down near me, and looked at me. At this point, my reflexes were fully "on", and if violence had eventuated, it was definitely kill or die time (six people vs one in a complex environment full of hard pointy surfaces carries risk of death, even if the six aren't trying to kill). However, I'm not one to *initiate* violence.

It was pretty clear that what they wanted was my wallet, and nothing else. I carefully, and slowly (whilst tracking everyone, in that thousand-yard-stare way) fished out and handed over my wallet, and said, in a calm-but-flat-toned voice, "there's only five bucks in there, but you're welcome to it." The guy took my wallet, fished around, took out the five bucks, handed back my wallet, and the gang vanished.

No violence, no death. But I was certainly *prepared* to inflict it *if* it had been initiated from the other side. I don't *start* violence, but I *am* entirely happy to *finish* it. I'll do what I can to avoid it... but if it starts, I'm going to finish it, or die in the process.

It's all a question of timing. I was prepared to *respond* to violence with violence, but was entirely happy to (and preferred to) resolve the conflict in a violenceless fashion, because violence was not the direct aim of the gang. If it had been (say they had been calling racist insults, and looking like an aggressive asian bashing gang), then that would be pretty clear that violence *was* their direct aim. I still would've waited until it became clear that they were definitely going to attempt to injure me... but at that point, I'd be out to kill, no question of it.

Well, yes

[erudito.livejournal.com]

My first ever published article was entitled 'Against Pacificism'. I have no problems with violence being within the range of means of ethically justifiable acts.

Nor do I have any problem with eating meat, since I know, from experience, I can look at a piglet in the eye, say 'dinner', kill it, butcher it, cook it, eat it and feel very satisfied at the end of the process.

As a friend says, our eyes are on the front of our heads, not the sides. Predator, not herbivore.

But there is a difference between moral judgement and personal inhibition. Having done a martial art (SCA combat), I am probably much less likely to freeze up in a dangerous situation than I once would have been. Someone saying they do not think they could kill is not necessarily a moral comment at all, though a moral intuition might be part of it.

Also, Warren is evil, in the sociopathic sense. Totally wrapped up in his own wants, totally unconcerned with other people's.

I thought part of the Willow deal was not only grief, but temptation. Surely, her behaviour makes sense view like that.

buffy psychoanalysis? :-P

[hestia.livejournal.com]

Warren is definately a demented little creep. To my mind it would have been more fitting to let him be followed around by visions of Tara and his dead ex-girlfriend and driving him to a nervous breakdown. The more witchy revenge of invoking karma and asking that the god/esses put him through some 'trial of transformation' would have been quite satisfying to watch. So why would Willow kill him instead? Here's my theory:

Like Warren, she gets off on it. She's got a major problem with separation anxiety that makes her feel small and powerless. She never hurts the object of her affection but rather whatever stands in her way. When she flips out her eyes get all big and black - she's all turned on from the sudden rush of power.

The fact is that Warren brings it on himself. You go about doing the shit that he does you're bound to push people's buttons really hard, and one of those people will be able to make you pay.

Buffy playing the perfect mid-western suburban mother last night was nauseating. Isn't this the same universe as Angel in which only last week we had Cordelia explaining that not all demons are evil? Look at Spike's floppy friend!

They're turning Willow into something like the Blair Witch which is fun to watch but wobbly on the logic. I would like to see them do something a little more sophisticated with her character rather than the lame and predictable 'angry woman = evil witch'. I'm not holding out much hope though.

[zuleika.livejournal.com]

Hiya! i just came across your livejournal! you prob don't remember me, i used to live with orlock and Jane! you appeared in my kitchen once with a cute teddy bear! anyway i'm adding you to my friends list hope you don't mind :)

[thorfinn]

All fine. Have added you back.