A boy sets out alone on a raft on the ocean and now needs to be rescued. Should you save him? This video purports to review the thinking of four different moral philosophers through the ages; Aristotle, Mill, Kant and Nietzsche.
Note that none of these “moral” thinkers base their conclusions on the Judeo-Christian tradition that underlies Western Society. I disagree with the reasoning of them all. Watch
30 seconds in.
You choose poorly, kid. Deal. Your problem is not my crisis.
If saving the kid makes me look fat…
FUGGEDABOUTIT!
I say send in the Great White Sharks to rescue him.
Could happen.
How does anyone know the kid is out there. Did someone see him? Why didn’t they save him. If they couldn’t, why didn’t they tell some authority (that we all pay for) to save him? The whole idea of this exercise is ridiculous.
…one of the best lines I ever heard concerning rescue came from,improbably, Charlton Heston’s “The Ten Commandments” (see link below). Hundreds of men are pushing a statue into place as old women smear grease on the ground. One, Yoshabel (Moses’ mom, but he still thinks he’s an Egyptian pince and doesn’t know this) gets caught by a garment. The other woman runs to the guard and begs him to stop but he refuses on the grounds that its very hard to restart (due to inertia) and that’s why they use old ones “because if they die, their death is no loss”. Joshua, a builder, sees this and knowing they will kill him, nevertheless stikes a guard, knocking him into the path of the stone so it MUST stop. They vow to crush the woman anyway but her friwnd runs abd gets Moses, who interrogates Joshua.
“Do you know that it is death to strikr an Egyptian?”, Moses asks.
“I do”, Joshua replied.
“But you did it anyway. Why?”
“To save the old woman”, Joshua replied.
“And who is she to you?”, Moses asks.
“An old woman”, came the answer.
Moses looks a long moment at him, then commands they release him, and he then frees her himself.
…as a Jewish man of abiding faith, Joshua valued the life of an old woman even above his own.
And that’s how I see it.
All lives are a creation of the Lord. The Lord values us all the same. If it is possible to save a life even at risk of your own, then it is an obligation to at least try.
That is not an obligation we own any state or country, any county or city, or even to any other person.
We owe it to God.
…when I stand before the Lord, it will be with the knowledge that whatever sins I may have accrued, the blood of another human being is not on my hands. A sin of omission is as bad as a sin of commission, and to let a person die when it is within your means to prevent it is as bad as a murder.
And all that aside, that’s someone’s son or daughter, mother or father, brother or sister, niece or nephew. That is a person who loves and is loved, who matters to someone somewhere.
I would not be able to sleep at night if I could not tell that person’s family, and the Lord who made them, that I had done my best to save them.
…and that goes for sinner or saint, policeman or criminal, judge or defendant.
It is not my place to judge the worth of a person. It is only my place to save them, give them a chance to come to the Lord if they haven’t done so already. God wants us ALL back, even the worst of us, if only they seek Him before the end.
I am not God and so will not stand in His place.
I have always and shall ever error on the side of life.
I can justify helping a person live that was going to die than letting a person die who might have lived. Where there’s life, there’s hope.
In the grave, there’s no hope but Mount Hope.
https://youtu.be/ttZ-GWbq_pI
…all of this applies only to peacetime. War makes its own demands and has its own rules in the Bible.
But even there, corpsmen and doctors try to save as many as they can, even while under fire.
“If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.”
1 Corinthians 3:17
“19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s”
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
…and the entire parable of The Good Samaritan, for starters (Luke 10:25-37)
Ancient philosophers can come at it any way they want. I follow a Jewish Carpenter myself, and ever shall, no matter how much my feet may stumble along the way.
“But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord”
Joshua 24:15
I would have rented a boat and sent Barack Obama and Eric Adams to save him. Poor kid would drown, because they’d both cut and run.
Doug Wakeman AT 11:14 PM
“How does anyone know the kid is out there. Did someone see him?”
He’s MY kid, so you can never be sure.
I haven’t figured out what to tell him about his cat, tho.
Overthinking this whole thing: who is the kid on the raft? If he’s a good kid, save him. If he’d been a criminal, let him drown.
Should have put Descartes in there too. It would be a moot point because the kid would drown before he even convinced himself that he existed.
The first time yes…everyone makes mistakes. If he does something akin to that again then no. Stupidity is supposed to be painful…and occasionally fatal. It’s how the gene pool gets filtered.
Puerile bullshit stem to stern. The child is an idiot and shouldn’t be allowed to breed. He’s nothing but a welfare rat.
I’d steal the rich guy’s boat and save the kid. Then I’d sell him to Nietzsche.
@SNS – THAT is the heart of His Word / Torah – Spoken, written and in the Flesh
Love YAHWEH and your neighbor as yourself
No greater love is there than a man lay down his life for his friends
יברכך יהוה וישמרך
Am I my brother’s keeper?
Holy shit—
If you don’t know the young guy, you try and save him.
If you know he’s a liberal….fuck him.
w/ SNS on this one … you do what you can do to save a human life (hell, I’d even do what I could do to save a dumb animal) … aren’t human beings worth saving, if we can?
am I my brother’s keeper? what would Jesus do? … doesn’t that mean anything anymore?
I’ve posted about being at a county rodeo and a bull jumped the rail and was in the stands. Women and kids headed for the tall grass and every teenage boy and man jumped the bull without thinking anyone about hazard to their own life or limb. It’s just what is expected in that community. Yea, there are a few sissies, but they wouldn’t be at the show anyway.
I had a couple down the street say they sleep better knowing my neighbor across the street live here. What she didn’t factor in is that given the BLM flag and all of the rest of the horseshit they have supported that make it far more likely that everyone is in far greater danger…. I’m not so sure I would do anything except maybe call 911 if they were in need.
Put a puppy on the raft with the dipshit kid so everyone will try to save the boy and his dog.
– Capnocytophaga
some things are out of our control. some people can’t be helped.
some will help their fellow man selflessly. some will succeed/fail. some will die trying. others will just watch and record it.
this is a poor scenario to begin with. it needs to be closer to home for people to care enough to try. for those that help or try, what matters is what they do afterwards. was it about you or the person you helped or tried help?
the whole logistics of one person setting off to to find this kid adrift in the sea is ridiculous and not realistic. unless you have the money, it would take a team of people and various vehicles to find him.
as for those that like to donate…a fool and his money…The Jerk (1979) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bGVT4-1DBU
I have always been dependent upon the kindness of strangers …
Had I had the wherewithal to go and save the kid, sure. If not, well, sorry, kid.
Save the kid.
God is in charge of what happens after that.
I don’t want to compound the situation and force others to risk their lives to rescue me, but if I’m the only one who can save the kid than I have to try to come to his aid, no matter what the kid’s salvation means to me.
At least that’s what my moral compass tells me to do.
Situational ethics and existentialism are not compatible with whether any person’s life matters. All lives matter to God but not to existentalist’s or people who believe in situational ethics. Equity rules as to whether to save or not save that kid depending on the situation or his race, skin color, socioeconomic status, political affiliation, sexual orientation etc. Just do the right thing and save the kid and let God take care of the rest of it, it’s that simple.
unfortunate this part of the sea is littered with pirates and the accompanying warships. any personal attempts to save the child only burden the situation, its a warzone. it becomes more troublesome decision when the child is your own. And even more puzzling why it makes a difference. the natural man is an enemy to god.
now if momma got involved, i dont think dad could come home without the kid, war or no war. i do love the extremely effective fractal path of life. it is a constant reminder of just how small we are in a big way.
Pick him up and send him back to his parents. Stop donating old clothes to NGOs that sell them by the pound to wholesalers who ship them to poor countries and flood the market, giving sons of tailors no future.
Do they even have tailors in Sub-Saharan Africa?
Don’t send sns. By the time he gets done talking the kid would die of old age.
Of course try and save the kid, making sure to not becoming someone that also needs to be saved. If you don’t have the means to keep yourself safe, try and find someone who does.