Burning Ethics
Like many of you, I like to think of myself as an ethical person, or perhaps, one who at least strives to be ethical. But sometimes it isn’t clear at all what the right thing to do is. For instance, let’s say you think that a dangerous pack of octogenarians are practicing witchcraft. And let’s say the government—even though you have evidence of witchcraft—is moving too slowly on this matter.
Would you go through the legal channels, or would you drag the witches out of their house and burn them?
3 comments
D.K. you raise a very good point.
From this story it apears that certain parts of the World are Four Hundred years behind the West. Incidently Obama’s father lives in Kenya with his two wives. Now……ultra-Orthodox Jews are very similar to Kenyans. They believe in the Old Testament verse, “A witch, you shall not let live”. I believe that even today they do not accept Evolution and believe in the miracles at the Red Sea. I think there is only one option. We must Expel them from Israel to somewhere else. The State is no place for these people. We cannot expect Jerusalem to be home to these religous Jews who believe in some higher power.
The only other option is to outlaw Kaganian Law and modest dress for females must be strictly prohibited in the Israeli Democracy.
Much of Africa is still a dark, dark place. I don’t know whether it’s the result of colonialism, or in spite of it. Ordinarily, I’m for non-interference, but I’ve been thinking these past few years that perhaps the industrialized nations should go in, depose the dictatorships and try to improve conditions. Although, we’d probably fuck that up, as well …
From the article: “They say they found an exercise book at a local primary school that contained the minutes of a “witches’ meeting” which detailed who was going to be bewitched next.”
Wow. They have exercise books and they actually bother keeping minutes at the meeting? My company has a larger budget I bet, and has neither exercise policy nor decent accounting of the many tedious meetings, much less actually lay out plans for the near future with proper documentation.
Witches are certainly becoming better organized than those silly books in the Paganism section at Borders or their teenage practitioners would indicate. I wonder if they had Blackberrys.
Oh, Abe want a Jewish angle…
Okay, the level of organization they are accused of without any evidence otherwise of proper practice would be indicative of them being Conservative, not Orthodox. The actually getting around to burning the witches part though does show an uncharacteristic motivation to actually finish a previously agreed upon project which is rather inexplicable.
Lastly for Jeff Eyges, you’re probably right on the money both that we need to go in and clean up our collective cradle because the thing is good and full of messy diapers, but that we’d also find a way to screw it up.
On the other hand, the post-colonial impulse born of guilt that Africans are somehow different than everyone else is nonsense. These are our relatives, our fellow humans, and they deserve every bit the same chances to destroy themselves through more technologically advanced and sociologically sophisticated methods just like us in the west.
Besides, they’ve got the largest slice of usable equatorial land and launching from the equator to space is the most cost efficient thing. If there’s anyplace a future starfleet is going to put their main spaceport, it’s there.
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