I like basing my morality on black and white concepts. Fundamentally, I believe that principals must be universal. Naturally, this means they tend to appear simplistic.
For example, is it wrong to kill?
Most answers are, well it depends. Is it self defense, is it state sanctioned, is it abortion, is it for food,
So, the answer we see is yes. Yes, killing is acceptable.
Then come caveats and nuances. Is it acceptable to kill someone?
Well, how do we define a person? Obviously, sperm and eggs aren't people. Is a fertilized egg a person? Is a comatose patient? Or does one become a person upon birth, and cease to be one upon death?
Does a person lose their personhood when they impinge on other people's personhoods? A murderer, a rapist, a pedophile, are they people?
So again I find that it is generally agreed that killing people, in some situations is okay.
Therefore it is acceptable to kill a person.
Is it acceptable to murder?
What is murder? An unjust killing?
Who's justice? When? Where?
Society generally feels that murder is unacceptable. The killings must be just.
Take abortion. Anti-Abortion people tend to believe that the fetus is a human, and deserving of life, and most of their arguments focus on trying to illustrate the horror of a murder.
Pro-Abortion people tend to focus on the mother, while dehumanizing the fetus. Many of their arguments focus on the horror of being forced into caring for an unwanted child, or the trauma of bearing a rapists child.
Because these two groups don't agree on the philosophical point of what a person is, that strife will exist.
The point I'm trying to highlight is that many, many of the arguments I see, left or right, authoritarian or anti-authoritarian, often devolve into people arguing about symptoms of belief, things that result from belief, rather than actually digging into the differences to see who's position is defensible.
Anyway, I'm Johnny, and because I believe principals should be resolute, I fundamentally believe killing people is okay.
