To be clear, I’m not suggesting we do what I’m about to propose, I just think it’s an interesting ethical/moral thought experiment.

If we could find a lot of people who want to unalive themselves, and say to them: there’s been a disaster and there are a lot of people who are stuck (e.g. a mine collapse, or 9/11 or something like that) and it’s a dangerous situation for rescue workers to go into, since you don’t care if you die we’re gonna send you in… would it be an ethical or moral thing to do? To ask or make people who don’t care if they live or not, to go into a situation that there’s a known high risk that they won’t survive?

(Also, I not asking wether it is a good idea to send such people in or wether it would be effective — I’m only interested in the ethics/morality of such an idea)

  • cattywampas@lemmy.world
    4·
    1 day ago

    First of all you can say “kill” and “suicidal” on the internet, the thought police won’t come for you.

    Second, J. Bruce Ismay got done pretty dirty by the newspapers of the time as he’d had a falling out with media magnate William Randolph Hearst and was the highest-ranking White Star Line employee to survive. The movie then reinforced this in his portrayal. He actually helped a lot of people during the sinking before getting into a boat himself, which the official inquiries attested to:

    “Mr. Ismay, after rendering assistance to many passengers, found ‘C’ collapsible, the last boat on the starboard side, actually being lowered. No other people were there at the time. There was room for him and he jumped in. Had he not jumped in he would merely have added one more life — namely, his own — to the number of those lost.”