Inherent worth of life

Again, not to derail something else...

What is the inherent value in life? Why is it wrong to kill?

"It just is and you should just know that inside." Doesn't seem like a fair answer to me.

Life is miraculous when barren or familiar; cheap when abundant or distant (yet still miraculous considering the odds). If somebody tries to kill you, try not to kill them when they fail, but make sure you're not the one who dies--your friends and family too . . . maybe even your co-worker in some cases.

For every two people that die, four are born. As the world advances, the growing population harms it.

I think it was Marx or some other communist who likened a single life to an entire universe--which is true because nobody can see the universe exactly like somebody else . . . which is why Stalin killed 40 million people (fine example of misunderstanding The Bible).

Really, everything is just energy taking different forms.

In some cultures, the death of somebody close leaves a sort of aching void while other cultures rejoice at the passing of their loved one to another life.

Today I ate several plants that were killed to be my food. I also consumed the remains of a couple animals too. My humanocentric perception of life and consciousness comforts me that they will not be missed.

rugadd wrote: Again, not to derail something else...

What is the inherent value in life? Why is it wrong to kill?

"It just is and you should just know that inside." Doesn't seem like a fair answer to me.

You're right, that would be a pretty flimsy reason. Furthermore, having a respect for the inherent value in all Life doesn't necessarily mean that it is "wrong" to kill. This goes beyond morality ...

'Inherent' value can be read as Life valuing itself. Do you not value living ? By turning attention to the experience of being alive oneself, by extension, one can understand the value that another living thing may feel in the experience of it from within the frame of consciousness it is (whether it is conscious of it or not, ironically ...)

Thereby, one may surmise that if you're not going to eat it - or - if it's not going to kill you, then it is simply respect for Life, one's own life as a part of Life at large, not to kill ...

... or, go ahead and see how that works out. :whistle:

We would best not get too idealistic about that : killing, eating, competition for resources - death - that is all part of the process of Life self-organising and self-sustaining. Individual organisms' lives notwithstanding ...

Sometimes I wonder if a bacteria is like the fin of a shark poking out of the ocean in the scope of physical manifestation/consciousness.

Dr. Manhattan: Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.

Laurie Juspeczyk: But... if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!

Dr. Manhattan: Yes. Anybody in the world... But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take our breath away. Come... dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes... and let's go home.

- The Watchmen

"Crows make no mistakes" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN9zXPMsNLw

perhaps its not so much the inherent value of life as it is the slippery slope of thinking one life is of more worth than another. Because that then becomes subjective to morals, perception and ego.

and we all know where that leads.

Hypothetical: A train is about to run into five people, killing them. After weighing the options, you discover the only way to divert the course of that train would be to hurl a person standing next to you onto some kind of switch to do so, killing them in the process. You could sacrifice yourself, but three of the five depend on you for survival. What do you do?

Sidewalker wrote: Hypothetical: A train is about to run into five people, killing them. After weighing the options, you discover the only way to divert the course of that train would be to hurl a person standing next to you onto some kind of switch to do so, killing them in the process. You could sacrifice yourself, but three of the five depend on you for survival. What do you do?

why do only 3 of the five who are going to be killed depend on you for survival?

The reason I find inherent value in all life isn't "Just because" or because it's "Miraculous", as I, personally, don't believe in miracles as such. The reason that I love life (in specific, human life) is because humans are incredible beings, each one so full of possibilities.

One man or woman has the potential to topple empires, build nations, invent the newest technology, anything at all. Each and every single human life has a plethora of new ideas to share with people and make us, as a whole, more wise (or at the very least, have a good conversation with them).

I'm consistently humbled by the pure value that exists in humanity. Each human being has lived a thousand experiences and could live a million more. To take away that possibility from them would not only be a disservice to them, but be a disservice to the world at large. A single human being is the very strongest in the Force, when referring to it in the way I do.

If you refer to all life, including animal life, I'm content in admitting that I simply don't know as well as I ought. One could make the argument that they're simply part of the force, but if you don't subscribe to that notion, than I would say, hey, maybe there IS no inherent value there. I can't speak about that confidently until I have a proper position on it.

Hope that clears something up on the subject!