Thread: Am I Evil?

That title attracted your attention, didn’t it?

Anyway, the thrust of the post is that I was discussing (arguing) a philosophical question around a camp fire the other night while a little inebriated. At the time it made sense to me. The argument went along the lines of the response to the question “Would you kill a person to save others from dying?”. I said “No, I wouldn't corrupt my soul by carrying out a wrong act (evil act); that the purity (relative purity) of my soul was paramount, regardless of the lives at stake”. I suggested that one’s ultimate ideal should be to one’s soul; and relatively speaking, one’s physical life was nothing in comparison.

That brought up questions of what is right and wrong; and should MY judgement of it determine if I saved lives or not.

I said my idea of what is right and wrong was right; because I said so.
That is a statement one might make round a campfire at 11 o’clock at night while holding the first Rum one has had in 20 years.
I said there’s nothing wrong with knowing with certainty (enough to stake your soul on it) what was right and wrong.

The other person, said he thought my idea was “evil” and “dangerous” and I was “disturbing”; that the idea that I would put MY morals, ethics, ideas, beliefs above human life was wrong.

I boiled the idea down a bit; personalised it and swapped the number of the ‘others’ you were saving from thousands, to hundreds, to tens to 1. Would you kill one of your children to save another if the other option was all of you dying; or just your children; both of them.

Would you do it for five kids?
Other family?
Friends?
Strangers?
Millions of people?

Am I wrong? If it’s a given you have a spirit and it’s eternal should you sacrifice it to save a life or lives?
Or am I just a dictator without a dictatorship?