(This one's been sitting around for a few years as you can tell by the less-than-timely references. But in other ways it's a bit terrifying in its relentless prescience).
Little appreciated but well-known in rarified circles: it's necessary in certain public roles to do a Bad Thing so that a Worse Thing doesn't befall.
Plus, you don't always know all the crucial details beforehand.
Could the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary have known that before the morning was over, she'd be in a hyper-public role herself, undertaking the last act of her life, which would have immediate, international significance?
She and a school psychologist did not survive their attempt to change the course of events that day. It was a Bad Thing for them to so endanger themselves, but an almost universally recognized Worse Thing not to.
It's not always this clear-cut.
Let's say you're a mom. Also, you hear things. Also, you're living in a non-Western country and you're pretty sure a Major Power is going to launch a drone strike on your home, since you're harboring someone on their Very Bad Person list. Up to this point it's been impossible to ask this person to leave (due to their reputation, their organization's methods of dealing with what they see as disloyalty, etc.) and if the information weren't coming from what you know is a reliable source, you might ignore it and it might be indefinitely possible to see the Major Power as the only culpable party in a string of continual wrongs (as might they, seeing that their Very Bad Person list is mainly made up of politically motivated killers).
But as the drone missiles increasingly rained down on your nation and you saw that your associate, the High Value Target, seemed less and less interested in your children as anything but shields or martyrs, you started to see a pattern at work. Your associate and his ilk have become alarmingly skilled at providing the tactical organization, and the hatred, and it has fallen to you and yours to provide the cannon fodder.
You've got four beautiful children and you're starting the disbelieve the hype.
Suddenly a moral impasse is looming before you. The drone strike is imminent and it's going to be at night. For complex reasons you can't relocate your kids immediately. What you can do is: act against the reason they're in danger.
But what if he's right? Play into the hands of the Great Satan? Seriously?
Except it's not about scoring a politico-religious victory here. It's about whether your kids ever grow up.
But virtuous women do not contradict the will of their men.
Uh huh. Tell that to Indira Ghandi, Benazir Bhuto, and the elementary school principal, and who's that lady in charge of Germany? (No one's killed her yet. I wonder what her secret is.)
So it comes down to some form of kill or be killed, with the fate of your children in the balance.
Are you going to do it?
Hm...
Some folks wouldn't give this much thought. A set of fleshy relays just trips in their brain and they attach rational thoughts to the process later: "It's wrong to kill, period" or "it's wrong to threaten my children, period."
I couldn't honestly say which direction I'd go in, and afterward I'd have a hard time living with myself, no matter what.
"'Tis better to give than receive" ... 'Tis better in some cases to do neither, which was a choice up to a certain point: perhaps the point at which the Sandy Hook shooter murdered his mother, or perhaps before that.
Perhaps a long while before that. So who's on the receiving end of your amoral rage?
Could the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary have known that before the morning was over, she'd be in a hyper-public role herself, undertaking the last act of her life, which would have immediate, international significance?
She and a school psychologist did not survive their attempt to change the course of events that day. It was a Bad Thing for them to so endanger themselves, but an almost universally recognized Worse Thing not to.
It's not always this clear-cut.
Let's say you're a mom. Also, you hear things. Also, you're living in a non-Western country and you're pretty sure a Major Power is going to launch a drone strike on your home, since you're harboring someone on their Very Bad Person list. Up to this point it's been impossible to ask this person to leave (due to their reputation, their organization's methods of dealing with what they see as disloyalty, etc.) and if the information weren't coming from what you know is a reliable source, you might ignore it and it might be indefinitely possible to see the Major Power as the only culpable party in a string of continual wrongs (as might they, seeing that their Very Bad Person list is mainly made up of politically motivated killers).
But as the drone missiles increasingly rained down on your nation and you saw that your associate, the High Value Target, seemed less and less interested in your children as anything but shields or martyrs, you started to see a pattern at work. Your associate and his ilk have become alarmingly skilled at providing the tactical organization, and the hatred, and it has fallen to you and yours to provide the cannon fodder.
You've got four beautiful children and you're starting the disbelieve the hype.
Suddenly a moral impasse is looming before you. The drone strike is imminent and it's going to be at night. For complex reasons you can't relocate your kids immediately. What you can do is: act against the reason they're in danger.
But what if he's right? Play into the hands of the Great Satan? Seriously?
Except it's not about scoring a politico-religious victory here. It's about whether your kids ever grow up.
But virtuous women do not contradict the will of their men.
Uh huh. Tell that to Indira Ghandi, Benazir Bhuto, and the elementary school principal, and who's that lady in charge of Germany? (No one's killed her yet. I wonder what her secret is.)
So it comes down to some form of kill or be killed, with the fate of your children in the balance.
Are you going to do it?
Hm...
Some folks wouldn't give this much thought. A set of fleshy relays just trips in their brain and they attach rational thoughts to the process later: "It's wrong to kill, period" or "it's wrong to threaten my children, period."
I couldn't honestly say which direction I'd go in, and afterward I'd have a hard time living with myself, no matter what.
"'Tis better to give than receive" ... 'Tis better in some cases to do neither, which was a choice up to a certain point: perhaps the point at which the Sandy Hook shooter murdered his mother, or perhaps before that.
Perhaps a long while before that. So who's on the receiving end of your amoral rage?
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