re: Moral outrage is a perfectly legitimate reason to kill people...
What didn't you understand about Thou Shalt Not Kill?
Humans are so clever, so easily lured into rationalizations, exceptions, excuses, wishful thinking, self-congratulatory mythology. Humanitarian conquest. The Just War Doctrine. The Preventive War Doctrine. The White Man's Burden.
So, any useful morality, has to be very, very simple. So simple, a 5-year-old can understand it. So simple, no amount of hair-splitting legalisms can do an end-around. So simple, it can stand in the howling tornado of our rage and humiliation, when we are scared and hurt. Our chimpanzee brain (or perhaps it's the lizard brain) will be constantly urging us to solve problems by killing the Others (not of our tribe), and by beating into submission any opposition (within the tribe). We are hard-wired, for Tribalism and Dominance Heirarchies. The behaviorists and ecologists have found the empirical proof of Original Sin. Any loophole in our Good Rules, will be creatively stretched, till you can drive a battleship through it. Any useful morality must have no loopholes.
Thou Shalt Not Kill. It's very, very simple. Do you accept that rule, as the basis of morality, the First Rule governing conduct? Do you worship Jesus or Kali? |
