Morality and Torture

Occasionally I like to write about something that actually matters. So if you opened this up hoping for my usual nonsensical musings, well best to turn around 'cause things are about to get real.

So this semester I'm taking political science 383, for those of you that don't have the course list memorized that is Crimes against Humanity. This course has been really great, probably one of my favourites. The prof, Dr. Adam Jones, is awesome and he somehow manages to make a super depressing topic interesting.

Anyway last week I had to submit my research paper, we had to pick a specific crime against humanity and write 2500 words about it, I chose torture. Now I'm going to be honest, the only reason I chose to research torture was because it was the only one I could actually find books on. So two weeks ago I sat down at my desk with a stack of books about torture not sure what I was going discover. What I ended up discovering was an incredible ethical dilemma, the likes of which I had never been confronted with.

I started out with the feeling, like I'm sure most of us have, that torture is wrong. And by the end of the paper my feelings against torture are much stronger. It's unthinkable that it still goes on, not just because of the obvious pain and trauma inflicted on the person, but because of the whole host of other problems associated with it.

Now at this point it seems like this is a pretty one-dimensional problem, but let me present you with the other side of the argument. The other side, the advocates of torture in specific circumstance, relies heavily on a fictional scenario entitled "The Ticking Bomb." Essentially the scenario is set up that there is a bomb placed somewhere in the city, we have the person guilty of placing the bomb in our custody, and the only way to get him to admit where the bomb is placed is by using torture. The way this scenario is presented it feels like you have no choice, right? It seems like torture would be justified in order to save hundreds, or thousands of people. But I wouldn't choose torture.

Why wouldn't I choose torture? There are many reasons such as the fact that torture doesn't work like that, I mean you can't just flick a switch and make someone confess it usually takes weeks of continual torture to see results, also the problems with how exactly we know the person in custody is guilty, and if he is actually a terrorist he'd probably have training to resist torture, or he could just lie. So besides all those problems one in particular got me thinking. Basically the logistics of the circumstance creates a greater moral dilemma than previously thought. Think about it. At what point is torture justified? Does it have to be over one thousand people saved? One hundred? Just one? How many lives does it take to compromise your morals? And if at some point you're willing to compromise your morals, did you ever really have them? Heavy stuff I know.

Before I wrote the paper I probably would've at some point compromised, only because the situation is designed for it, but after researching it for myself and realizing the ineffectiveness of torture, I can now say that there is never a justification for torture. But taking this same idea of compromising morals you can open up a whole can of worms. Like being a pacifist is all good, but at what point do you pick up a gun and fight back. It reminds me of Batman, like he could easily just kill the Joker, but he doesn't, even though it would probably save a lot of lives. That's true morality. Not that I'm suggesting that because people have breaking points we're all immoral, I just would like in some cases for people to recognize their flawed morality. What pisses me off in the world is the hypocrisy that stems from a lot of these situations. One of my least favourite organizations, PETA, is incredibly guilty of this. They protest pounds for putting animals down, but then they proceed to do the same thing. Or they attack science labs that use animals for research, but when they need the medicine that was developed through animal research, like insulin, they have no problem using it.

So somewhere in this blog I kinda got off topic. All I was really trying to say was that nothing in this world is black-and-white. You can't take things for their face-value. And sometimes it's okay to over-think stuff. I mean we have to confront the limits of our morality to grow. If I hadn't done research and thought about the "Ticking Bomb" scenario in depth then I would still have the wishy-washy opinion of torture I held two weeks ago. I mean we're all human, we all have breaking points, except Batman.

Why am I Passing?

 

So this picture is the notes I have taken from my last two Latin American history classes. Needless to say, I'm not sure if I'm devoting all of my attention to the course. In my defense October 28th was "movie day" so taking notes wasn't all that necessary.

Looking through my notebook I'm reflecting on my career as a university student. All the times I've dozed off in class, all the times I didn't do the readings, and all the classes I've just missed, and I'm forced to wonder why am I passing? You'd think I'd have made some irreversible mistake by now, like I'm not paying attention and the prof changes the due date of the paper, or I try to study my notes and all I learn is that I'm awesome at drawing dragons. But here I am in my third year and I've yet to ever miss or fail any exam/paper.

The only explanation I can come up with is simply I am the luckiest university student in the world. That somehow I've managed to listen at key moments in the lectures and am able to magically throw words onto a page that makes up a coherent paper. For example, my poli-sci midterm. It was a take-home exam, I had to write two short essays. Not only is poli-sci one of my weaker subjects, but I had so many other papers to write I polished off the midterm in an afternoon. I wasn't confident in the least, I figured if I passed it would be awesome. But I get it back and what?! 85 on the first essay and 90 on the second. There must have been some mistake. 

I'm not writing this to let you all know I'm going to buckle down and be the best student I can be from now on, and I certainly am not bragging about how I get awesome grades without trying. Because in all honesty when I am writing a paper I do usually put a fair amount of effort into it, I just never feel it deserves as high of mark that it usually gets. And it's true, if I really concentrated in class or started working on my papers weeks in advance, then I'd probably get better grades or at the very least feel that I deserve my grades. But guess what? I'm going to continue doing exactly what I have been because, let's face it, it's working. Even right now in my peripheral vision I can see a stack of books I should be reading for my paper that I should be writing. But will I start it? Maybe, we'll see how I'm feeling tomorrow.