Akkadian Statuette and the Obligation of Power

[Zal Iterr]

…or “with great power comes great responsibility” –Uncle Ben or Voltaire

One of my readers asked, of Leshada:

he healed Cathy, but has he given a thought to those in the Hospital who are also ill? He may rightly decide that it's too risky, or that he has no obligation to them, but might another person have decided that every life is precious and worth saving?

If you have the power to save lives, are you obliged to do so?  And what personal cost limits that obligation?

This is a great question, and one I don’t pretend to have good answers for.  Still, one of the reasons I made the costs so high for Leshada -- bleeding out as well as risk of discovery and subsequent loss of liberty – as to alleviate this question.  Going around and healing people, or finding lost children could easily kill him, and stop any potential benefits he could bring to others in his future.

There is no doubt that his decision to take these risks, first for the little boy (Nathan) and then for his girlfriend (Cathy) were largely emotional in nature.  Hopefully his choices would make sense to readers; but there are complex philosophical debates touching on this.  It’s a question for just about any significant super-powered character.  Some authors ignore it completely, others feature the attempt to help others as the major plot element.

In one story, a non-hero character feels so strongly about helping children that he first blackmails the hero to force him to conduct risky rescues, and them betrays him when the hero would not dedicate his life to the cause (The Gift by Volentrin).

One way to analyze this issue is to realize that one doesn’t need magic to save a life.  Contributing just a few dollars to an organization like UNICEF will save a child’s life.  There is an interesting and in many ways uncomfortable book by Unger: Living High and Letting Die that argues that the only moral choice is to contribute everything you can earn, short of meeting you basic necessities, to such a cause.

I think the essay “Luck, Duty and Benevolence” by Robinson (http://intuac.com/userport/john/writing/luckduty.html) is an interesting survey of various positions on this question.

[John Brewer]

For the first question, that of how much should Leshada do if
anything. I think that one has to set certian parameters on the
solution space. So lets look at some of the parameters that apply
here:

1) How much could one 'healer' reasonably? He most likely couldn't
save more than one or two people a week. So who gets saved and who
gets to decide? How soon would the answers to those questions get
taken out of his hands.
2) How long would he be allowed to do this before he became a prized
possession of some government agency or someone rich enough to have
him taken? He may be ableto fight back, but what about his lovers and
family. someone is always going to be able to find a pressure point.
3) Is it better for some to suffer and die today, if that means more
are saved later. Given point 2, wouldn't it be better until they had a
somewhat larger group of magic users to be able to not only protect
each other but to also help more people without certain choices being
taken from them?
4) How much obligation does he have when the healing is at an obvious
risk to his health? yes, people do strange things like risk their
lives to help others, even if it means injury or death. Is this an
obligation. Firefighters and police get paid to do dangerous jobs.
Does that mean that everyone is obligated to run into a burning
building to save someone? Training issues aside, not everone is cut
out for that kind of job. Is it worth getting stress related health
issues just to do a job? Does someone elses live count more than yours?

[John Brewer]

The article you linked to is interesting, however, like most of these
things a lot is taken out of the political and economic context in
which it exists. The simple statement that you can save a childs life
for only $200 dollars is taken out of its context and is meaningless.
You can feed a child pretty cheaply, but to what end? So they can be
raped and murdered as they grow older? Maybe shot in some war between
factions? Given AIDS or other diseases by roving bands of terroristic
thugs? Not to mention the amount of graft and out right theft of food
and supplies that happen jsut so that a little can get in to help. How
much aid has be sent in either money, goods and food over the last
fifty years without significant change in the basic social issues that
cause the problems in the first place. I would say it has gotten a lot
worse instead. Most countries have withdrawn their traditional
colonial support of governments that have been taken over by radical
faction and the countires have been torn apart.

Even in the US, you could give every man, woman and child $100 a day
and you wouldn't significantly change the outcomes of the majority of
the peoples lives. It wouldn't become utopia overnight. You would have
just as many pending every dollar on drink, drugs, sex and other
vices. One has ot face the facts that there are some things and some
people that you just can not change. No matter how you try, they are
going to take a path of least resistance no matter how destructive it
is for them.

It isn't that their aren't a lot fo people that could be helped.
However, you have to make a fundimental social shift in the entire
world in order to be able to amke headway in actual saving those
children for something other than prolonged pain and
suffering.Fundimental cahnges that aren't just going to happen if you
take for the rich and give to the poor.

There is hope however. Technology makes the world samller and smaller
the farther we go. If we don't manage to kill each other off, at some
point, shift will happen. Just think, the person across the street
from Bin Laden has tweeting about the raid when it was happening.
Technology can and most likely will be the great equalilzer.

[Zal Iterr]

On Tuesday, October 18, 2011 12:25:17 AM UTC-4, John Brewer wrote:

The article you linked to is interesting, however, like most of these
things a lot is taken out of the political and economic context in
which it exists. The simple statement that you can save a childs life
for only $200 dollars is taken out of its context and is meaningless.
You can feed a child pretty cheaply, but to what end? So they can be
raped and murdered as they grow older? Maybe shot in some war between
factions? Given AIDS or other diseases by roving bands of terroristic
thugs? Not to mention the amount of graft and out right theft of food
and supplies that happen jsut so that a little can get in to help. How
much aid has be sent in either money, goods and food over the last
fifty years without significant change in the basic social issues that
cause the problems in the first place. I would say it has gotten a lot
worse instead. Most countries have withdrawn their traditional
colonial support of governments that have been taken over by radical
faction and the countires have been torn apart.

All true.  However, if you assume that for the short term, sweeping social change is not going to happen,

and in the meantime, people really do die of preventable causes such as hunger, which you and I can in fact prevent,

do I have an obligation to help?  There are ways to investigate the efficiency of charitable organizations.

No, not 100% of my aid will go to the hungry children, but neither is it true that all organizations waste their funds.

(See, for example, http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/charities.asp).

I am not discounting your arguments; I have thought the same myself.  And yet emotionally,

most of us would not hesitate to help someone we know, even if such aid would still leave them at risk

from dying in the future, from other causes.  However, our emotional reaction to appeals for such aid

often encounter resistance.  There are many psychological experiments to measure this.

[John Brewer]

Yes, we would all jump in to help someone we care for, even if it only
delays their death but under what circumstances. We would donate a
kidney to help them live another ten or fifteen years, but do you
continue to fund the junkie that will only spend it on more drugs?

The only thing that we encourage by sending food for them to make it
to adulthood, is that they have more children that they bring into the
same situation. I wouldn't mind helping to feed them, if indeed, there
was some end or change in sight. Unfortuanately, it just seems to be
getting slowly worse. Even in the jewel of Afirca, South Africa, if
you get too far from the big richer cities, things quickly break down.
Rape, murder and robbery become common. People want to spend billions
of dollars in AIDs drugs to help the victims, but no one is doing much
to stop them from producing more victims. To keep them alive only to
have them subjected to rape and murder and those that live get AIDs?
Doesn't seem to be a good cause.

I understand and sympathize with the desire to help the children, but
it has to be help to end all of it. We are treating the symptoms and
not the disease.

After 60 years of the UN/first world pouring money money into Africa
and the situation is worse now than ever. Maybe they can't be helped
until enough of them are willing to help each other and not just help
themselves to whatever they can take.

Don't get me wrong, I still donate money, I just can't see that it
does anything not matter how good the charity.

[Zal Iterr]

You are right about South Africa, unfortunately.  But you can't paint everything with one brush.

Look for instance, at Benin.  The infant mortality has been dropping, and average life expectancy increasing.

Still very high crime, but a fairly large involvement by the local population and authorities

in addressing health issues.

My point is that the happy medium is somewhere in between throwing money blindly at the problem;

and waiting until all systemic and political problems are corrected.

But as I mentioned before, I am far from confident that I fully understand the problem.

I am not even certain that a consequentialist analysis (which I take you to advocate)

is the right one, or at least the only one to use here.

I am happy that I can massage my fictional heroes to face simpler choices.

-- zaliterr

Hyperactive Alex, Jennifer, The Blackout, Trinity Ranch, Akkadian Statuette, Epigraphy

stories: SOL BTFH

forum: Google Group