A subject of morality

[Dande_Lion]

It's understandable that Person B would want Person A to suffer.

But I'm not positive if I think it's moral for Person B to cause Person A to suffer.

I think Person B ought to do everything in his power to stop Person A from following their wrong behavior, from hurting Persons D and E, but I don't think that extends to causing Person A to suffer. If stopping them from their hurtful behavior causes them to suffer, I do think Person B is free to enjoy that, but just causing Person A pain without preventing him from hurting other people is not ethical. On the other hand, I do think Person B is free to feel satisfaction when Person A's behavior causes Person A to suffer.  

[Dathu]

Sanguvixen

Dathu

As far as the ABC's go, I don't agree with vengence.

As far as morals go, I prefer for my morals to stem from logic and the "Golden Rule."

Is there not a diffrence between vengance and punishment? Or is there?

People are imprisoned for doing wrong. In a way that can be considered vengance when the person victimized pursues the case so that the wrongdoer is punished...do you agree with that?

If a person murders...they should be locked up shouldn't they?

If a person steals...they should be punished shouldn't they?

So how is doing those things in the same concept any different than Person B wanting and making Person A suffer for thier wrongdoing?

There is a difference between vengance and punishment. However, I don't agree with all forms of punishment either. The purpose of punishment and prison (locking people up) is to prevent them from committing the same crime or any crime again. This is to protect the innocent from further harm of anykind. Prison, as it is starting to become considering they have TV, free food, and outdoor sports, is more detainment than punishment. People aren't sent to prison to suffer. They are sent there to keep them from hurting people. If they feel that inprisonment is suffering it is unintentional. It is not the intention of justice to inflict suffering. Justice is protection at minimal cost. When punishment is unjust, it becomes vengance. Vengance changes from person to person. Because vengance is based off opinion it is illogical. Justice is based off logic. I could go one, but this is getting long.

I'm not saying that I've never wanted revenge, I have. But I don't try to get revenge anymore because I feel it illogical. Insted I demand justice. I may not get it, but I still believe in it. And no matter how cruel some have been to me, I've never wished them to suffer. I've only hoped that they see the error in they ways, and that some form of justcie is acted upon them, with or without my help. That's it. biggrin  

[GEt CrUnK iTs BiLlY!]

I believe that it is right to try to find a way to make Person A leave you alone. For example, to fix this problem, instead of making Person A suffer as well, Person B should have done something nice to Person A like taking him to a movie or simply helping him in a time of need.  

[EbilTae-Suk]

Wow.. that made me think for once.

I think its at least NATURAL for person B to want to make person A suffer, but as to doing it.. I don't really know. I suppose in my case, if I was person B, Person A would go through hell because I don't tolerate things like that, but I don't know if I would say it was morally right for my to actually do so.

I believe that some times people will do things that they feel are wrong because the urge to do them and the reasons to do them outweigh the morallity of the situation.

If that makes sense.

For instance, I may feel its wrong to make people suffer, but it someone causes me enough pain, I don't care, I'm going to harm them back.

Of course there may be better ways for person B to handle the situation, but since theres no real situation or scenario, its hard to tell when possible alternatives there may be.  

[caustic 0_0]

I dunno what happened in the situation. The situation probably would affect my opinion some on how out of line B was or was not in whatever they did. But anyways, in a personal situation I know you can move on without really forgiving. My childhood was pretty shitty for various reasons, mainly with my father at fault despite how cliche this story will probably sound xD I know what happened still affects me like anything traumatizing in your childhood will. But I know what happened to cause his actions, I know he was suffering because of his actions and other things, and although I know other people in my family including me suffered a lot because of him- everything is kind of okay now. I still have some personal issues with it at times, memories and all, but I get along with him better now than I do with my mom. I would never try to guilt him with it but I can't say everything's forgiven either. There just isn't anger there anymore.
You can't fix everything perfectly but you can't beat yourself up with it forever either.

I wouldn't pass judgement as moral or immoral, because I haven't lived person B's situation. In general for me, I would be dealing with it personally and not feel the need for forcing some kind of suffering. That doesn't really help but I can understand how B might feel sort of justified in that situation. It depends on what B did.  

[Sanguvixen]

So...I guess from what has been written so far it would be important to know what person A had done, because the decides wether or not it is justifiable.

So in that sense do you all seem to agree that wether or not it is justfiable what person B feels and wants, depends upon the severity of person A's actions that instigated person B to feel as they do?

Or...in a less confusing way to put it: Does the level of severity of person A's actions determine how morally right it is for B to want A to suffer?

 

[CatonaHotSnRoof]

Person B's feeling and wanting Person A to suffer is understandable... but that doesn't make it right.

I don't think that no matter how horrible Person A has been to Person B that Person B should want Person A to suffer for it. Revenge, in my opinion, is an animalistic emotion, one that we should work to rid ourselves of.

Although, I admit, I haven't rid myself of revenge... It is hard.  

[Sanguvixen]

CatonaHotSnRoof

Person B's feeling and wanting Person A to suffer is understandable... but that doesn't make it right.

I don't think that no matter how horrible Person A has been to Person B that Person B should want Person A to suffer for it. Revenge, in my opinion, is an animalistic emotion, one that we should work to rid ourselves of.

Although, I admit, I haven't rid myself of revenge... It is hard.

Revenge is a hard temptation to turn away. It is the monster that you want to open the door to even though you know you shouldn't.

 

[Xanthir]

If you don't have a magical sky daddy telling you right from wrong, you have to base your morality on something. You can turn to instinct (worked so far!), but that's not very consistent or fair. In the end, you have to turn to science to produce a morality for you. In specific, game theory.

Game theory shows us *why* the 'golden rule' is correct. The Prisoner's Dilemna is a classic illustration of how cooperation and trust result in better outcomes for everyone. Sociological experiments confirm other predictions of game theory. While the real world may be far too complex to actually apply mathematics to your decisions, it does offer general advice on how to operate.

Based on this, the answer to your question is "It depends." It has been proven that deterrence works. There was a very nice study where people were split into groups and given a certain amount of money. Each round, the people could choose to put any amount of money into a group pool. This amount would then increase slightly and be distributed equally to everyone in the group, regardless of how much they actually contributed. Some groups had the ability to punish people. They could make other people lose money, but it took twice the amount of their own money to do so, making punishment generally quite unattractive (you lose more than the guy you're punishing, and overall the amount of money for the group decreases by a lot).

The results were fairly unsurprising. In groups without the ability to punish, contribution levels quickly dropped. It just wasn't worth investing if most of your money was going to go to freeloaders. On the other hand, it wasn't worth investing if you could get free money from the idiots who were!

In groups with the ability to punish, though, the exact opposite happened. Low contributors were quickly punished. When this happened, everyone's contribution increased. Everyone invested more, and so earned more. The total amount of investment actually went up each round, rather than down as it did in the no-punishment groups.


This study has been done more than once. When play money is used, where 'winning' has no real significance, you do *not* see these sorts of results. It just plain doesn't matter to people. However, as soon as you make it real money, you immediately see the difference between the punish and the no-punish groups. When people actually have something on the line, something that they value, punishing them really hurts.

Overall, punishment *does* work as deterrence.


PS: I don't know if it's been done, but I think it would be interesting to conduct this study again, but make it so that you don't know how much each person contributes. All you know is the amount that you put in, and the total amount put in. This way you *have* to establish trust. Now that we've gotten such clear results from the simpler study, I think some more complex studies into trust and punishment would be very valuable.