Freedom of will versus the prevention of atrocities

[kajarainbow]

If you had a method of making people nice, or at least making them not do the really terrible things that happen everyday (carnage and suffering around the world), is it morally acceptable to preemptively use it on everyone and sundry? Is it okay to use it only on proven offenders?

Does the inviolability of their psyches outweigh making the human race far better off?

Comments

[relee.livejournal.com]

Well the trick is, who decides what "better off" means? Everyone has different values, different ideas of 'right' and 'wrong'. None of them are universal. To say that you have the right to make people unable to war and torture, means that someone else has the right to make you a godfearing christian; their view of 'better'.

That said, if you had the power to change the world and didn't use it, eventually someone else would, for their own nefarious purposes.



Here's an interesting thought, though. What if the power to alter human conciousness was given to a democratic body, like the Canadian government, and they voted on what to change. Would that then be good, being the gestalt values of a people?

[kajarainbow.livejournal.com]

Good questions. This is the kind of discussion I wanted. I think that ultimately if it was down to me, I wouldn't choose to remake humanity into an ideal. I'd eliminate the worst violence/torture tendencies, put in a guard against doing further meddling, and leave it at that.

I wouldn't trust a democratic body to meddle with my consciousness. Hmm. How many people would've voted to eliminate queer, trans, atheist, etc. people by making them not those things?

[relee.livejournal.com]

Well, you might know that we have gay marriage in Canada. It was decided by the courts, not parliament. Parliament decided to have a vote on if they should clarify the laws so that gay folks can't wed. Out of 300+ people on the Canadian Parliament, over 100 voted to oppress the gays. But not enough to overturn the law.


(On the other hand those bone-heads passed a law that forces blank media manufacturers to pay a levy to the copyright board since blank CDs are only used for storing pirated music. >.< )


How about this; should a person be able to do it to themself? Should a person be able to do it to their children? Should a person be able to do it to their legal dependants? What about if it's only used on prisoners or people who break the law? What about if it's only temporary, or restricted to an area, like pacification gas or an obedience field?

What if it's voulentary but 'reccomended' and people pressure you into it by exclusion?