stupid leftists and their belief in *checks notes* the intrinsic value of human life
Reblog if you would burn down the statue of liberty to save a life
Hereās the thing, though. If you asked a conservativeĀ āWould you let the statue of liberty burn to save one life?ā theyād probably scoff and say no, itās a national landmark, a treasure, a piece of too much historical importance to let it be destroyed for the sake of one measly life.Ā
But if you asked,Ā āWould you let the statue of liberty burn in order to save your child? your spouse? someone you loved a great deal?ā the tune abruptly changes. At the very least, thereās a hesitation. Even if they deny it, Iām willing to bet that gun to their head, the answer would beĀ āyes.āĀ Ā
The basic problem here is that people have a hard time seeing outside their own sphere of influence, and empathizing beyond the few people who are right in front of them. Youāve got your immediate family, whom you love; your friends, your acquaintances, maybe to a certain degree the people who share a status with you (your religion, your race, etc.)ābut beyond that? People arenāt real. Theyāre theoretical.Ā
But a national monument? Thatās real. It stands for something. The value of a non-realized anonymous life that exists completely outside your sphere of influence is clearly worth less than something that represents freedom and prosperity to a whole nation, right?
People who think like this lack the compassion to realize that everyoneĀ is in someoneās immediate sphere of influenceāthat everyoneĀ is someoneās lover, or brother, or parent. Everyone means the world to someone. And itās the absolute height of selfishness to assume that their lives donāt have value just because they donāt mean the world to you.Ā
P.S. I would let the statue of liberty burn to save a pigeon.Ā
also, there is an extreme difference between what things or principles *i* personally am willing to die for, and what i would hazard others to die for. and this is a distinction i donāt think the conservative hard-right likes to face.
an example: so, as the nazis began war against france, the staff of the louvre began crating up and shipping out the artworks. it was vital to them (for many reasons) that the nazis not get their hands on the collections, and hitlerās desire for them was known, so they dispersed the objects to the four winds; one of the curators personally traveled with la gioconda, mona lisa herself, in an unmarked crate, moving at least five times from location to location to avoid detection.
they even removed and hid the nike of samothrace, āwinged victory,ā which is both delicate, having been pieced back together from fragments, and incredibly heavy, weighing over three metric tons.
the curators who hid these artworks risked death to ensure that they wouldnāt fall into nazi hands. and yes, they are just paintings, just statues. but when i think about the idea of hitler capturing and standing smugly beside the nike of samothrace, a statue widely beloved as a symbol of liberty, i completely understand why someone would risk their life to prevent that. if my life was all that stood between a fascist dictator and a masterpiece that inspired millions, i would be willing to risk it. my belief in the power and necessity of art would demand i do so.
if, however, a nazi held a gun to some kidās head (any kid!) and asked me which crate the mona lisa was in, they could have it in a heartbeat. no problem! i wouldnāt even have to think about it. being willing to risk my own life on principle doesnāt mean iām willing to see others endangered for those same principles.
and that is exactly where the conservative hard-right falls right the fuck down. they are, typically, entirely willing to watch others suffer for their own principles. they are perfectly okay with seeing children in cages because of their supposed belief in law and order. they are perfectly willing to let women die from pregnancy complications because of their anti-abortion beliefs. they are alright with poverty and disease on general principle because they hold the free-market sacrosanct. and i guess from their own example they would save the statue of liberty and let human beings burn instead.
but speaking as a leftist (iām more comfortable with socialist tbh), my principles are not abstract things that i hold aside from life, apart or above my place as a human being in a society. my beliefs arise from being a person amidst people. i donāt love art for artās sake alone, actually! i donāt love objects because they are objects: i love them because they are artifacts of our humanity, because they communicate and connect us, because they embody love and curiosity and fear and feeling. i love art because i love people. i want universal health care because i want to see people universally cared for. i want universal basic income because peopleās safety and dignity should not be determined by their economic productivity to an employer. i am anti-war and pro-choice for the same reason: i value peopleās lives but also their autonomy and right to self-determination. my beliefs are not abstractions. i could never value a type of economic system that i saw hurting people, no matter how much āgrowthā it produced. i could never love ālaw and orderā more than i love a child, any child, i saw trapped in a cage.
would i be willing to risk death, trying to save the statue of liberty? probably, yes. but there is no culture without people, and therefore i also believe there are no cultural treasures worth more than other peopleās lives. and as far as iām concerned the same goes for laws, or markets, or borders.
Well said!
This is an excellent ethical discussion.
The first time I came across this post, randomslasherās addition was life changing for me. I suddenly understood where the right was coming from, and I had never been angrier.
This is also why so many people on the right fail to see the hypocrisy of trying to make abortion illegal when they themselves have had abortions. They can tally up their own life circumstances and conclude that it would be difficult or impossible to continue a pregnancy, but theyāre completely mystified by the idea that women they donāt know are also human beings with complicated lives and limited spoon allocation.
This is also why they think āget a jobā is useful advice. In their heads they honestly do not understand why the NPCs who make up the majority of the human race canāt just flip a switch from āno jobā to ājob.ā When they say āget a jobā theyāre filing a glitch report with God and they honestly think thatās all it takes.
This is also why they tend to view demographics as individuals. They think that every single Muslim is just a different avatar for the same bit of programming.
Borrowed observation from @innuendostudiosā here, but: thereās also a fundamental difference in how progressives view social problems versus how conservatives view them. That is, progressives view them as problems to be solved, whereas conservatives do not believe you can solve anything.
Conservatives view social issues as universal constants that fundamentally are unable to be changed, like the weather. You can try to alter your own behavior to protect yourself (you can carry an umbrella), and you can commiserate about how bad the weather is, but you canāt stop it from raining. This is why conservatives blame victims of rape for dressing immodestly or for drinking or for going out at night: to them, those things are like going out without an umbrella when you know itās going to rain.Ā
āBut then why do conservatives try to stop things they dislike by making them illegal, like drug use or immigration or abortion?ā And the answer is: theyāre not.Ā They know perfectly well that those things will continue. No amount of studies showing that their methods are ineffective will matter to them because effectiveness is not the point.Ā The point is to punishĀ people for doing bad things, because punishing people is how you show your disapproval of their actions; if you donāt punish them, then youāre condoning their behavior.Ā
This is why they will never support rehabilitative prisons, even though they reduce crime. This is why they will never support free birth control for everyone, even though that would reduce abortions. This is why they will never support just giving homeless people houses, even though itās proven to be cheaper and more effective at stopping homelessness than halfway houses and shelters. Itās not about stopping evil, because you canāt; itās about saying definitively what is Bad and what is Good, and we as a society do that by punishing the people weāve decided are bad.Ā
This is why the conservative response toĀ āholy fuck, theyāre putting children in cages!ā is typically something along the lines ofĀ āitās their parentsā fault for trying to come here illegally; if they didnāt want to have their kids taken away, they shouldnāt have committed a crime.ā It doesnāt matter that entering the US unlawfully is a misdemeanor and child kidnapping isnāt typically a criminal sentence. It does not matterĀ that this has absolutely zero effect on people unlawfully entering the US. The point is that conservatives have decided that entering unlawfully is Bad, anything that is not punishing undocumented immigrants ā due process of asylum and removal defense claims, for example ā is supporting Badness, and kidnapping children is an appropriate punishment for being Bad.
