Is it moral?

[Link from Zelda]

A blood relative has led an outrageously evil lifestyle that revolves around hard drugs, domestic abuse, and parasitism for 20 years. Unfortunately other family members enabled this. At this point, due to his background and combination of physical and mental impairments, his life is ruined irretrievably, and his future holds nothing but destruction.

I want him to die for the following reasons:

1. I need his money. Due to my health status, I need the funds in his trust, and his share of the inheritance. I value the money a lot more than I value him. 

2. His instability and irresponsibility are a threat to my welfare. I'm not locked in a room with him, and I can completely avoid him if I want, but he places me in a position where I have to choose between exposure to the squalor of his lifestyle and the risks that come with it, or face a much higher cost of living by avoiding this exposure. 

3. His life qua human is over. 

Would it be moral to facilitate the inevitable by tempting him with fentanyl? The plan would be to place the drug in his living area in a manner that he would assume that one of his drug buddies left it there. There would be no deception about what the substance is, and it would be his choice to consume it or not. My hope would be that he would do so and die.

There are some definite "cons" to this course. Even though I don't like him at all in his present state, his death will sadden me. If I facilitate it somehow, it will be uncomfortable living with that. It would devastate my other family members, and if they knew I hatched this plan, I don't know what their reaction would be. He might figure out that the substance wasn't left behind by one of his friends. There is also the question of legal risk. 

I don't think I have it in me to do it. But is it moral?

 

 

[necrovore]

I say it isn't moral. I wouldn't want to be the type of person who would do such a thing, or to owe my money to having done such a thing.

[Boydstun]

The moral is what should be done or permissibly may be done given certain sorts of factors marked off as moral considerations. In Rand’s view, and in mine, rational process is what distinctively moral process comes to. What is the nature of rational process?

For the imagined scenario, if it is being asked whether the entertained action would be moral, within the Objectivist ethics, then I’d argue No. It would not be morally permissible on account of the virtues of Pride, Productivity, and Justice.

The last entails treating people as ends in themselves. Even if they are losing their powers for autonomy, homage to autonomous life-making they formerly had or had possible is within what may and should be respected by the rational agent in Rand’s sense of human rationality. Rand’s virtuous human buoys the best possible to humans.  Similarly, if a person said all their life that they wished their body to be cremated upon their death, it is against human rationality to instead bury the body upon their death, assuming cremation was indeed feasible, with the rationalization: “Well, it can’t matter to the deceased.” Respectful behavior for a life and autonomous person that had been or had been a potential in youth is within the ambit of Randian rationality and self-respect.

To focus on the getting of money by lottery, inheritance, or design of tort, is betrayal of the virtue of production and trade in the context of human existence and failure at holding productivity as the central organizing purpose of one’s life. Then too, as Rand had it, the getting of money is not the only rational human pursuit, and the pretension that her ethics entails such foolishness concerning values is a patent distortion of her thought (one she denounced expressly).

The virtue of Pride in the Objectivist system of ethics entails moral ambitiousness. The making of objectively grounded self-esteem has a precondition: “that radiant selfishness of soul which desires the best in all things, in values of matter and spirit.”

Edited April 16, 2023 by Boydstun

[StrictlyLogical]

17 hours ago, Link from Zelda said:

 

A blood relative has led an outrageously evil lifestyle that revolves around hard drugs, domestic abuse, and parasitism for 20 years.

 

If true, your situation is very sad, and your mental state quite frankly tragic.  On the other hand you sound like someone in high school who has decided to troll this site after having been briefly exposed to Rand.  In either case I will address the post in case someone may find it useful. 

17 hours ago, Link from Zelda said:

his life is ruined irretrievably, and his future holds nothing but destruction.

This is conjecture.  One cannot predict the future with certainty especially when individual free will is involved.  Although statistics do not paint a rosy picture, there are outliers who by whatever chance circumstance or act of sheer will or combination thereof are able to pull themselves out from the jaws of oblivion.  This is why Hope and Faith in oneself is paramount when all appears bleak.

17 hours ago, Link from Zelda said:

I want him to die for the following reasons:

God help you.  Such a want is monstrous when unwarranted.  He has not murdered and tortured millions… clearly you only believe you wish this because you do not believe he can change… I hope you don’t wish such a thing but instead which he will turn his life around.

As for whether your wish is justified by your so called reasons … I will address each in turn.

17 hours ago, Link from Zelda said:

1. I need his money. Due to my health status, I need the funds in his trust, and his share of the inheritance. I value the money a lot more than I value him. 

Need is no justification for such an evil want.  You cannot “need” in particular the property of anyone else.  You have fabricated an evil way out of your health predicament without due consideration to the multitude of good and mentally healthy venues: charity and hard work to name but two.  As for valuing money more than a human being this is a highly superficial and evil “accounting”.  Your humanity, dignity, independence, and respect for life are far more valuable to your spirit than any amount of money.   That you flirt with selling your soul is tragic.

17 hours ago, Link from Zelda said:

2. His instability and irresponsibility are a threat to my welfare. I'm not locked in a room with him, and I can completely avoid him if I want, but he places me in a position where I have to choose between exposure to the squalor of his lifestyle and the risks that come with it, or face a much higher cost of living by avoiding this exposure. 

You present contradictory narratives.  If you can completely avoid him, he does not “place” you anywhere.  You can choose to steer clear and avoid his bringing you down.  In which case avoiding exposure to him would not cause a higher cost of living… the mental cost and the loss in productivity in exposure by far have the greater effect on your ability to generate wealth and care for yourself. He is not your keeper and you should not elevate him to that status.

17 hours ago, Link from Zelda said:

3. His life qua human is over. 

Would it be moral to facilitate the inevitable by tempting him with fentanyl? The plan would be to place the drug in his living area in a manner that he would assume that one of his drug buddies left it there. There would be no deception about what the substance is, and it would be his choice to consume it or not. My hope would be that he would do so and die.

Again his life being over is factually wrong at this point and as to the future, pure speculation.

You couch your terms quite incorrectly.  When you plant a substance with intent and knowledge it will be consumed, you are committing murder.  Whether he thinks it is another drug left by his buddies or a vitamin pill or a mint he spilled the day before is irrelevant.  As for your use of the term “choice” once again this is in error, he did not choose to ingest the poison you planted he would be choosing to consume something else and unfortunately would be in error.

What you are proposing is murder by poison.

and apparently you hope to be successful.

Your paragraph about “cons” is quite funny but would be alarming if I were to believe anything in the OP

 

17 hours ago, Link from Zelda said:

There are some definite "cons" to this course. Even though I don't like him at all in his present state, his death will sadden me. If I facilitate it somehow, it will be uncomfortable living with that. It would devastate my other family members, and if they knew I hatched this plan, I don't know what their reaction would be. He might figure out that the substance wasn't left behind by one of his friends. There is also the question of legal risk. 

Uncomfortable living with murder?

Dont know how your family will react if they find out you are a murderer?

Your plan might not work… and you could get caught for attempted murder or for committing murder.

Is there a death penalty in your State?

 

Committing murder is just not good for you… and the reasons are legion.  it is not by any stretch conducive to flourishing… this is the biggest con and the main reason why

it is immoral for you to do so.

 

Edited April 16, 2023 by StrictlyLogical

[Eiuol]

17 hours ago, Link from Zelda said:

2. His instability and irresponsibility are a threat to my welfare. I'm not locked in a room with him, and I can completely avoid him if I want, but he places me in a position where I have to choose between exposure to the squalor of his lifestyle and the risks that come with it, or face a much higher cost of living by avoiding this exposure. 

The other reasons you gave are just reasons why you might be happy if he happened to die. But they are not reasons to nudge a person to death. (I don't know if it's murder necessarily if you are offering someone something that they know might kill them, and they take it anyway by their own choice. Still, you are pushing him there.) 

If somebody is a danger to your welfare, killing them would be self-defense most likely. But that's if you can't avoid the person, if you are essentially trapped, like in abusive relationships when the other partner would track you down, and you are frequently threatened, and they don't leave you alone. 

Except, you say that you can completely avoid them if you want. Doesn't sound like you are in an abusive situation like I described. Do you mean that you can go to your room and close your door, but you can't leave the house, because of financial or similar reasons? If so, there are legal ways to get out of that situation, if you can demonstrate the harm he does to you. If you mean you could live somewhere else, but choose not to despite having the means to do so, then I don't see why you don't just move out.

Using violence as self-defense is justified, if your retaliation is not entirely excessive. If your very life is at stake, killing the person could be justified. What you describe here though, it doesn't seem to reach that level. 

[Doug Morris]

20 hours ago, Link from Zelda said:

Would it be moral to facilitate the inevitable by tempting him with fentanyl? The plan would be to place the drug in his living area in a manner that he would assume that one of his drug buddies left it there. There would be no deception about what the substance is, and it would be his choice to consume it or not. My hope would be that he would do so and die.

If you mean that he would know it is fentanyl and what it can do to him, this may not quite be murder, but it comes pretty close.  (I mean morally; I'm not sure about the legalities.)  A very similar case would be actively helping someone to carry out their own choice of committing suicide, when you believe that choice to be irrational.  I think the other posters have done a good job of explaining what's wrong with such actions.

 

[Eiuol]

3 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

As for your use of the term “choice” once again this is in error, he did not choose to ingest the poison you planted he would be choosing to consume something else and unfortunately would be in error.

He literally said there would be no deception. Sounds like it would be something like a clearly marked tablet of fentanyl, just without indication of who it is from. The issue isn't deception as much as it is trying to involve oneself with the life of a person who is harmful, or evil. They are nobody, not even worth thinking about. If they are an active danger, that's one thing, but they usually can be ignored.

Edited April 16, 2023 by Eiuol

[tadmjones]

The issue is planning an action to hasten the end of a life. The OP thinks their life will be better after the death of the other individual and wants to orchestrate it, their only qualm is whether or not they will be let into Galt's Gulch Heaven.

[Link from Zelda]

21 hours ago, tadmjones said:

The issue is planning an action to hasten the end of a life. The OP thinks their life will be better after the death of the other individual and wants to orchestrate it, their only qualm is whether or not they will be let into Galt's Gulch Heaven.

Aren't a better life and Galt's Gulch Heaven the same thing?

[tadmjones]

11 minutes ago, Link from Zelda said:

Aren't a better life and Galt's Gulch Heaven the same thing?

No not in the way I meant it. One is an actual possibility and the other is fictitious double entendre.

There must exist alternative actions you could take to improve/change you life or circumstances causing a death can not be the only one, yes ?

[Link from Zelda]

On 4/16/2023 at 7:17 AM, StrictlyLogical said:

If true, your situation is very sad, and your mental state quite frankly tragic.  On the other hand you sound like someone in high school who has decided to troll this site after having been briefly exposed to Rand.  In either case I will address the post in case someone may find it useful. 

This is conjecture.  One cannot predict the future with certainty especially when individual free will is involved.  Although statistics do not paint a rosy picture, there are outliers who by whatever chance circumstance or act of sheer will or combination thereof are able to pull themselves out from the jaws of oblivion.  This is why Hope and Faith in oneself is paramount when all appears bleak.

God help you.  Such a want is monstrous when unwarranted.  He has not murdered and tortured millions… clearly you only believe you wish this because you do not believe he can change… I hope you don’t wish such a thing but instead which he will turn his life around.

As for whether your wish is justified by your so called reasons … I will address each in turn.

Need is no justification for such an evil want.  You cannot “need” in particular the property of anyone else.  You have fabricated an evil way out of your health predicament without due consideration to the multitude of good and mentally healthy venues: charity and hard work to name but two.  As for valuing money more than a human being this is a highly superficial and evil “accounting”.  Your humanity, dignity, independence, and respect for life are far more valuable to your spirit than any amount of money.   That you flirt with selling your soul is tragic.

You present contradictory narratives.  If you can completely avoid him, he does not “place” you anywhere.  You can choose to steer clear and avoid his bringing you down.  In which case avoiding exposure to him would not cause a higher cost of living… the mental cost and the loss in productivity in exposure by far have the greater effect on your ability to generate wealth and care for yourself. He is not your keeper and you should not elevate him to that status.

Again his life being over is factually wrong at this point and as to the future, pure speculation.

You couch your terms quite incorrectly.  When you plant a substance with intent and knowledge it will be consumed, you are committing murder.  Whether he thinks it is another drug left by his buddies or a vitamin pill or a mint he spilled the day before is irrelevant.  As for your use of the term “choice” once again this is in error, he did not choose to ingest the poison you planted he would be choosing to consume something else and unfortunately would be in error.

What you are proposing is murder by poison.

and apparently you hope to be successful.

Your paragraph about “cons” is quite funny but would be alarming if I were to believe anything in the OP

 

Uncomfortable living with murder?

Dont know how your family will react if they find out you are a murderer?

Your plan might not work… and you could get caught for attempted murder or for committing murder.

Is there a death penalty in your State?

 

Committing murder is just not good for you… and the reasons are legion.  it is not by any stretch conducive to flourishing… this is the biggest con and the main reason why

it is immoral for you to do so.

 

I don't have an evil bone in my body. I am a rational person in a difficult situation. I don't whine and complain and call for higher taxes on the rich. I stay positive and try to figure out the best way to handle it.

I won't disclose specifics here, only speak in generalizations. I am productive, but have a serious issue and entails high medical expenses and imminently threatens my ability to remain productive. I could become disabled at any time, and in that event, my income will decrease by a large percentage. While I do have the means to leave in the short term, I have little confidence in my ability so survive financially away from there in the long term.

The free living arrangement provided by my family is life a lifeboat to me, and the evil one is destroying it. Imaging some mentally ill drug addict from a tent city in Portland moved in with you and invited all his friends, and you couldn't remove them. A psychotic drug addict is drilling holes in the floor of my lifeboat for kicks.

He already overdosed on fentanyl last year, but his drug buddy found him in time, and I was disappointed that he didn't die. I believe I'm right to feel this way. He may not be a mass murderer, but he's a huge detriment to me.

Reason #1 why I want him to die, because I need his money, is clearly NOT a justification to carry out the plan. I only acknowledge it here because I must be very careful not to do it with this as my primary motive, and rationalize it as an act of self-defense.

Reason #2, because he is making my miserable, endangering me, destroying my resources and potentially shortening my lifespan, MIGHT be a valid reason to sanction the plan as a legitimate act of self-defense. This is the premise I must vet very carefully before considering taking any action. I'm truly unsure.

Reason #3, because his life qua human is over, is also not a valid reason to carry out the plan. It is simply a reason not to feel to sad about his passing, whenever and however it happens. I'm confident in my conclusion here. It's not a matter of whether I wish this to be the case. It is fact. He has gone too far in the wrong direction to fix his life. His mind is destroyed.

 

 

[Link from Zelda]

4 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

No not in the way I meant it. One is an actual possibility and the other is fictitious double entendre.

There must exist alternative actions you could take to improve/change you life or circumstances causing a death can not be the only one, yes ?

If life is the standard of morality, then isn't an act that makes me better off in the long term moral? The question is whether the plan, and having the character to carry it out, will actually make me better off in the long term.

[tadmjones]

If life is the standard, how would causing an 'unsolicited' death further a moral cause?

Edited April 17, 2023 by tadmjones
add causing

[Easy Truth]

On 4/15/2023 at 2:19 PM, Link from Zelda said:

A blood relative has led an outrageously evil lifestyle that revolves around hard drugs, domestic abuse, and parasitism for 20 years. Unfortunately other family members enabled this. At this point, due to his background and combination of physical and mental impairments, his life is ruined irretrievably, and his future holds nothing but destruction.

I want him to die for the following reasons:

1. I need his money. Due to my health status, I need the funds in his trust, and his share of the inheritance. I value the money a lot more than I value him. 

2. His instability and irresponsibility are a threat to my welfare. I'm not locked in a room with him, and I can completely avoid him if I want, but he places me in a position where I have to choose between exposure to the squalor of his lifestyle and the risks that come with it, or face a much higher cost of living by avoiding this exposure. 

3. His life qua human is over. 

Would it be moral to facilitate the inevitable by tempting him with fentanyl? The plan would be to place the drug in his living area in a manner that he would assume that one of his drug buddies left it there. There would be no deception about what the substance is, and it would be his choice to consume it or not. My hope would be that he would do so and die.

There are some definite "cons" to this course. Even though I don't like him at all in his present state, his death will sadden me. If I facilitate it somehow, it will be uncomfortable living with that. It would devastate my other family members, and if they knew I hatched this plan, I don't know what their reaction would be. He might figure out that the substance wasn't left behind by one of his friends. There is also the question of legal risk. 

I don't think I have it in me to do it. But is it moral?

There are several angles of this that I focus on.

1. Issues based on property ownership i.e. That which belongs to him.

     -His life

     -His inheritance

     One question would be has he initiated force against you/your property? It seems that you assume that what belongs to him, belongs to you based on some moral principle. If so, what is it? I don't have a right to change someone's life for the better.

2. Threat to your welfare. Why can't you avoid him? Is that your doing or his doing? Does he hold a gun to your head to stay? If he does, yes it would be moral as a self-defense measure to retaliate. But again, has he initiated the situation and prevented you from having a different life?

3. His life qua human is over ... obviously not. That is another's opinion. Kind of a dangerous authoritarian perspective.

The issue of tempting an addict in Objectivist circles is a little cloudy. I have seen Objectivists that will claim addiction does not exist and that one has free will no matter what. I would argue that addiction does exist and that some are vulnerable. A threat/tempting them is not the same as a threat to a non-addict.

But he also does have free will. He could change at some point even if not highly probable, there is a chance.

The other issue is the positions against "the golden rule" that I have seen in the forum. I could use the golden rule as a perspective as in "Would I like to be killed if I were in his situation"? If I were, I would prefer it if someone could break through my thought process and I would also argue that it is possible. Otherwise, I would kill myself.

There are many that are socialists or authoritarian in some way that I would like to get rid of them. But I don't want to live in a world where the freedom to kill because of "inconvenience" is the norm. I prefer it is illegal, and to be considered "wrong"/immoral. Therefore I would not want to do it and I would encourage another NOT to do it.

 

[DavidOdden]

There are 4 basic choices: murder, assisting suicide, eviction, and leaving. You don’t propose murder as a solution (good choice), but do entertain the possibility of assisting suicide. You say that there would be no deception about what the substance is, and it would be his choice to consume it, but you do also intend to deceive him, by leaving the drugs in such a way that he would assume that one of his drug buddies left it there – why not honestly give it to him and say “Here is some fentanyl, I hope you take it and die”? That would be actually honest. Another less honest approach would be to lace some food with the drug and encourage him to eat the food, omitting a relevant detail. In both scenarios, you cause death, but it was his choice to eat it.

I expect that your first reaction to this alternative is “But that’s murder!”, which is true, but so is your alternative plan, at least in a number of states. Of course we know that laws are typically messed up and not objective so maybe this is a morally-permissible act that is wrongly prohibited. Since this is an investigation of morality, I don’t actually know whether you could consider poisoning to be a morally permissible means of solving a problem (as opposed to bludgeoning, which I assume is off the table). If you would also preclude poisoning, then why, morally speaking? The only thing that I could come up with is the taint of dishonesty, and it seems to me this concern should also rule out the plan to surreptitiously leave poison in the hopes that he will kill himself with it. Without endorsing that plan, I cannot see how any other poisoning plan isn’t morally defective from the perspective of the virtue of honesty.

If you agree that your original plan is dishonest, therefore immoral, it seems to me that you either have to shift to one of the two eviction plans, or to excuse immorality based on some exception to morality that needs to be discussed in more detail.

[whYNOT]

On 4/17/2023 at 7:05 PM, Link from Zelda said:

If life is the standard of morality, then isn't an act that makes me better off in the long term moral? The question is whether the plan, and having the character to carry it out, will actually make me better off in the long term.

Excuse me. A misinterpretation that persists here. 

"Life", per se, isn't the "standard of value" --and I see the moral errors that would lead from that reading--it is "man's life" (qua man) which is.

It means one effortfully lives up to the moral values and virtues that define "man".

And the sacrifice of another person's physical or spiritual life - even/especially for one's 'benefit' - is not one of those...

(confusion arises from Rand's contrasting explanation of an animal's/plant's (etc) physical life, being its own "standard of value"; i.e.: its own continued living can be its only standard of value, of good and the bad when it dies.

It of course has no volitional choice in the matter of virtues).