I saw this quote on reddit today:
Most people are generally good to other people. The limiting factor is who they consider ‘people’. Doctors who comitted what are now known as barabaric acts – lobotomy, for example – genuinely thought they were doing good, because at the time all the common morals to their social/class group said so. Doctors who experimented on the bodies of minorities saw nothing wrong, because the results of these experiments were for the good of people. ‘Real’ people, that is.
It’s kind of a mind-blown moment for me as it makes so much sense. Ever since becoming ill and disabled and finding out how the disabled and unemployed are treated, I have been baffled as to how so many people who consider themselves good, kind people, passionately advocate for making the lives of the disabled more difficult. Wanting to cut or stop disability benefits, make them harder to get, complaining about how much we cost the health service, pushing us down priority lists - remember during covid when the disabled who became sick were usually left to die while the able bodied were treated? And this was justified and considered appropriate? At least in the UK. So many other things. But this is it. We simply aren’t really considered people any more, we’re now just seen as parasites. Really humanity hasn’t progressed on from being animals, we’re treated the same way many animals treat a sick or injured pack member, trying to push them out of the group and get rid of them so they don’t drag the rest of the pack down by being a burden.
this is why its important to not live life according to morals but material reality. this hit me when watching one of my favourite youtubers as a child. they were playing a game where you had to choose between a car running over young people vs old people, pets vs humans etc. (fucked up concept to begin with). thats when i realized that its morally right for old people to die and young to live, for animals to die so humans live, for disabled to die so able bodied live, for adults to die so the kids live etc. but the material reality and in the grand scheme of things nobody has to get ran over at all.
despite the flaws of many socialist states you rarely saw many atrocities because people were not guided by morals but by the reality that they could provide for anyone. coming from a post socialist state i cant help but notice how little i was confronted about these useless enigmas but then was bombarded with them after coming in contact with westerners.
nowadays westerners are debating about how its ”moral” to abort disabled kids and have euthanasia for the elderly before they will ever debate providing for all.
If euthanasia was a thing in the UK, I wouldn’t even object to the hatred and lack of care for the disabled. What infuriates me is that society doesn’t want to care for me, I have to fight endless battles for a tiny pittance that isn’t enough to live on without topping it up by begging, NHS staff have told me I’m a burden on the NHS and costing it too much money, they won’t provide basic things I need like transport or a carer, society endlessly tells me I’m unwanted, YET they won’t legalise assisted suicide. I want this service and I’m not allowed to access it, yet the state is allowed to stop my benefits and starve me to death, how does this make sense?
And I know someone will come with an argument about how we mustn’t have assisted suicide because people will be forced into it against their will, but i am past caring. They already kill us by neglect so why not just make it quicker and painless?
I have 29 pages of hand-written notes for one month of an injury, over 100 calls, about as many back and forth emails.
They really do try to drown us in minutia, and it is exhausting. But those are the politicians, boards, majority shareholders (and to a minor extent those whose retirement invests in these systems, but ignorant they work against self and others).
Capitalism is evil AF. It may still be as exhausting under socialism, but only because of limited multiple resources. We can either curse the darkness or start lighting lanterns.
I saw the same trolley game play out in hunter x hunter. The solution is to not to play. The question as posed is wrong. And so is the utilitarian framework. It simply doesn’t work in extreme conditions. The solution is beyond the scope of the utilitarian framework so valid solution is reject the backward ideology.
This doesn’t make any sense. This is like blaming the Soviet Union for centrally planning the distribution of limited food, crying “murderers!”
That analogy doesn’t work because we don’t live in a resource scarce society. Our society is resource rich but they’re allocated toward things that are harmful or unproductive.
A criterion was “extreme conditions.”
If they only allocated food to those who could work and chose to starve those who couldn’t then it would be the same.