EXPLORATIONS IN BADNESS AND ANTIBADNESS:
The Ethical Inquiries
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(1) YOUR FRIENDS ARE DRUNK. YOU YOURSELF HAVE HAD YOUR DRIVERS' LICENSE SUSPENDED FOR DRUNK DRIVING, YET TONIGHT YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE SOBER. YOUR FRIENDS WANT YOU TO DRIVE THEM HOME AND VIOLATE YOUR SUSPENSION. IF YOU DO NOT DRIVE THEM, THEY WILL DRIVE THEIR DRUNKEN SELVES HOME, RISKING LIFE AND LIMB. ETHICALLY, WHAT DO YOU DO?
To drive or not to drive? Let your drunk friends take their chances, or risk yourself and your liberties to take them home safe?
Obviously it would be smarter to subdue your friends in some fashion: steal their car keys, steal their rotor arm, steal their tires...
Of course if none of these are feasible you should drive your friends home, as carefully and with as low a profile as possible.
(2) DEFINE ETHICS:
Ethics are the concepts assoviated with the determination of right from wrong. Nice, one-sentence answer.
(3) THE MILITARY HAS RELEASED IMAGES OF MALE PRISONERS BEING ABUSED BY U.S. SOLDIERS IN IRAQ. IT HAS NOT, HOWEVER, RELEASED IMAGES OF FEMALE PRISONERS BEING ABUSED. THE MILITARY'S EXPLANATION FOR THIS IS THAT RELEASE OF THE PHOTOS WOULD PUT THEIR SOLDIERS IN INCREASED DANGER. REALLY?
The military says it thinks that releasing the photos would further endanger their soldiers, unnecessarily. That is true, but how worse can it get? The more ethical way to censor these pictures is if the victims or representatives thereof ask them to be suppressed.
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