Is Killing Wrong?
Feels good to be on a hiatus. Sometimes, it’s good to have consequences built around you such that you don’t have to become a slave to your goals. You are free to choose the path as and when you desire, and slowly and gradually, you start weighing your desires by so-called “absolute truth.” What does achieving a particular goal add to your life? You boil down this question further, what do you define by addition? Is it material value, moral values, achievements, or is it just sustaining the image you hold of yourself? In totality, how much does an action add reality to your life? When talking about real, we talk about absolute, and when we talk about absolute, we talk about basics. When we talk about basics, dehumanization(thinking in an efficient and optimum manner) of our thoughts becomes a necessity.
Ultimately, we are just an entity in this universe, succumbing to some rules which we never created in the first place, slaves of our biological instincts and rejected by nature if we tend to create chaos. Ordered living is the price that is too costly to maintain; the amount of entropy we are giving away to support our structure is mind-boggling. In other words, more or less, you can’t get away with the eternal chaos which is going to grasp in the end. For us living things, death is the final form of any chaos. As defined in many religious texts, death is an act of giving back to mother earth, an act of gratitude, a so-called eternal thank you note. Therefore, when it comes to thinking in absolute terms, there’s no way to deny the truthfulness of Nihilism. Our existence, contributions, and sustenance are nothing more than mere selfishness, and we are nothing compared to the grandeur of the universe. Therefore, “Is Killing Someone Wrong?” and I would say, “IT DOES NOT MATTER.” This so-called essay would hold no further meaning if you were concerned with our current progress with questioning our existing framework.
Thinking Post Nihilism
Nihilism is a very recent school of thought compared to all the other schools of thought that are currently practically applied in our current society. Platos, Socrates, Kant, Pythagoras, and various other philosophers whose views have been extended in our society are very old compared to the recent nature of Nihilism. So, one can say that, yes, we aren’t capable of grasping our mind around the nothingness of our existence, but that’s only one side of a coin.
You exist, and that‘s a fact in itself. You have a limited amount of energy that you can expend in this world. Nihilism only evaluates your existence, but it doesn’t command your presence. Even though your value is almost zero in absolute terms, that’s not the whole definition of yourself. This statement in itself is sufficient to cease the concept of Nihilism. Your material value doesn’t define the range of action. If your action is in no manner capable of affecting the universe, the universe is the last thing to be bothered about. Take the analogy of a brick wall, you with your own hands, are not capable of breaking down a wall of brick. No matter how hard you hit, the wall is not going to break, and therefore your duty shouldn’t be in regards to the wall. However, a bulldozer can quickly demolish a wall. If you hold the responsibility of the bulldozer, you have the responsibility of the wall as well. Your actions change according to the duties. Even a bulldozer can’t dismantle the Earth. Nihilism says that there’s no upper ceiling in the responsibilities you can uphold, but to reach that magnitude, you need to wield tools, and tools can only be built by resources you hold accessible. It’s the same as dreaming of going beyond the walls when your room itself is chaos. You are capable of bringing orders to the room. Dreaming of going beyond the walls requires you to be a master of charge within the room. Inflating our duties with greed is as absurdist one could get.
If You Can’t Clean Up Your Own Room, who the hell are you to give advice to the world? — Jordan Peterson
The Need for Institutions
Finding order is problematic as it could get within this universe. The closest star from the Sun is approximately four light-years away. It’s safe to establish that creating any manner of chaos requires no effort in comparison to order. As a living being, one does not think to expend their energy in nothingness. Although everything eventually goes into a void, the impact of that is far beyond our reach. The probability of you leaving this earth to experience the grandeur of this solar system is almost zero, and even if you come in those tiny few, you don’t think about the nothingness. Instead, you think about the vast responsibilities you have on your shoulder.
Therefore, in a nutshell, any living being always strives to expend their energy to create the maximum order. Ant builds colonies, fishes swim in swarms to fight predators, lions hold territories, and human beings develop societies. Regardless of its scale, any institution is at that place to provide order to the resources you expend. Fueled by your social construct, any institution exists because it provides you with a structure, stepping stones, and foundation to create something more ordered and complex than anything which already exists.
Finally, coming to our question is killing wrong? The answer is no. An individual of an institution, you are required to abide by the rules of an institution. To increase the complexity of a system to expand the range and responsibilities is the fundamental objective of any institution. Therefore, incorporating an element of chaos pushes that system backward. Death is chaos. Reduction of any mechanism which could bring order is unwanted. Hence, it’s safe to conclude that any institution will deem killing to be an undesirable action, making the act in itself unjust.
Science of Everything
Survival of the fittest. Any species would try its best to reach the top of the hierarchy. No further explanation is required if you believe in Darwinism.
Game Theory is a popular theory used in competitive markets to optimize the outcome of so-called players. Game Theory proves that going on a war with a country might seem profitable in the short run, but in the long run, peace is the only option in every one would be at a much beneficial state. Peace avoids the gamble of victory or loss. You can’t deny any war, irrespective of its scale would gain you some material profit in the best case. However, we don’t evaluate our lives in terms of material profits. Assessing the emotional and psychological condition tells that any war puts a much deeper dent than the material profit it gains in the long run.
Science is self-explanatory in itself and doesn’t require any further illustration. One could, however, ask whether science is the right metric to weigh our moral and ethical values. None of us can deny that science is a very recent school of thought, and most institutions aren’t built on science as a foundation. The repeated experimentation of a hypothesis until it matches with observation and replication of the experiment leads to the same observations. Both form a crucial prerequisite for classifying any methodology as science, and I think that’s the best arrangement we could ever come with to create robust, foolproof ideologies. Science has a very long way to go, but till now, it also highlights that we are nothing more than a chemical and a biological makeup. The question that arises is whether our actions affect our makeup or is it the other way round, or is it all in feedback.
A Fact in Itself
Why is this question important? Isn’t it a widely accepted social construct, and we have conveniently adjusted our moral compass around it. Think about it, any generic person on this planet rewards themselves for acting according to a standard moral compass. We have all came to a common ground in many terms when we develop our moral compass, “Equal values of human lives” is one of the widely accepted standards among us. But accepting anything as a standard that is not a “fact in itself” will undoubtedly lead to many undesirable consequences. First of all, what is meant by “fact in itself.”
In my view, anything which can be proven logically without the aid of any other statement(proven or unproven) can be said that it’s a fact in itself. For example, addition is a fact in itself. You don’t require anything fundamental to prove that “2+2 =4”, and therefore you get this repeated theme of addition everywhere. You might argue on the representation of the sentence, but the essence remains intact irrespective of the situation at large. Establishing something as a fact in itself or being a derived fact provides an armor that could be by and large used anywhere without hesitation. Moreover, the universe's actions revolve around the fact.
Even though many schools of thought have justified equality of lives, the act of not killing is not a fact in itself. The statement in itself has many logical fallacies per se. Is your consciousness less valuable than the lives of everyone else? If killing is not justified, then why does greed tends to break through our moral fabric and proceeds to commit the heinous crimes of murder just for personal gain? Why do psychopaths exist? Justification of treating lives as equal does have some loopholes, which have been exploited for ages. Why do we need to assign an authority as a state who will decide to kill someone? Why is killing by the state justified? How does a state not knowing the personal situation of being has more power when making decisions than their close ones? Indeed, your closed ones will develop a bias and justify your stance. However, why should you abide by the state's ethics when there’s ceases to exist any absolute or robust metric to compare two compasses. The only answer which I could think about when it comes to wide acceptance of a metric is the convenience it provides to an individual. Even though the existence of a state as an agent might lead to a lot of intervention in an individual’s freedom, it also takes a significant part of duty from you, keeping it to itself.
There are many paradoxes and dilemmas in accepting any moral and ethical framework, and none of the frameworks are up to the mark. The current COVID situation is an excellent example of when states, governments, and organizations fail to work just because of personal greed and because we know jack shit about the robustness of our moral fabric. We have no idea how thin the cloth is, but I am not going to traverse in that direction.
Nothing to Read Any Further
A personal note to the readers, I am diverging more from insights to more logical and fact-based blogging. It all started as a mere exercise to express to the world, but the expression is only one shade. I understand that my impulsive writing will not achieve anything in the long run and will fail one day or another. I appreciate that many people agreed and even applauded my train of thought, but being through ups and downs, I have realized that self-help is only going to help you stand in this world and put you in a luxurious position. Self-help won’t provide you anything more than living a very comfortable life. That’s where the notion of exploration kicks in. I have been going through a lot of material in recent times. There is a lot of knowledge in this world that is worth sharing, criticizing, and following. Since I am comfortable, it’s time to get out of the comfort zone and explore new scientific ideas and science, dissecting them through my lens. Neither am I a Rhodes Scholar and nor do I have any degree in fixing this world. The best I can do is apply the knowledge that I have gained till now and use it to compare newer ideas and use more contemporary ideas to point out fallacies in my understanding.
When you are in a comfortable position, you can explore something new, and when not, no matter how hard you try, you will barely be able to stand on two legs. Ironic.
