Does the narrative of DS9 let Kira off too easy for being a terrorist who murdered civilians?

So you think that the entirety of ethics is capable of only one interpretation? Every single issue? That's ridiculous. Not all ethical issues are capable of being solved through "rational deduction," as doing so requires applying values to things; in order to make it all rationally deductive, you would need a rationally deductive method for determining the relative values of valuing things differently (i.e. the benefit of focusing on issue A vs the benefit of focusing on issue B). Actually applying that original principle is too difficult, and it's too easy to just make shortcuts that seem acceptable to the person making them. As far as I picked up on ethics from my classes in undergrad, the bottom line was that, even if you agree on one issue, the next could cause a split in views; and if you take a step back, there would also be people who weren't part of that first agreement. There's no single derivable (and therefore prescriptive) ethical set of rules.

Again, please get the grammar correct. If you can't do that, then that really suggests that you haven't ever read anything by anyone on these topics, which would mean something like the prime directive would be at issue here regarding spoilers about ethics.

And you bring up the concept of murder. Do you know the details of what murder is? There's very strong argument (upheld basically because of militaries not being charged with murder for the lives they end) that there is no disregard for humanoid* life, because the actions are taken to prevent a larger number of deaths at the hands of the oppressive regime being attacked. If civilians are being killed, then I'd like to cite you to a post of mine that I had all nicely typed out before I accidentally hit F5 and obliterated it....... its TLDR would have been something like this: the strongest wall a soldier can hide behind is one made of the civilians of his nation.

That is, there's nothing wrong with causing the deaths of the civilians who live in and amongst military personnel, as an arrangement like that can easily be seen as a tactic used by such militaries to deter conflict with enemies. If a military installation has some significant number of civilians in it, and it is attacked successfully, the attacked civilization can parade around news that the enemies killed civilians, in some underhanded attack on their people. I distinctly remember some Star Trek episode or film in which this precise issue came up, when the crew was considering whether it was appropriate for them to attack an _____ (enemy) base that they knew was filled with both military personnel and civilians. The issue applies the other way as well: Galaxy class starships can carry very large loads of civilians, as either a transport or as their home. This has the same effect, causing enemies of the Federation to be faced with a moral dilemma whenever they are faced with the potential of combat with one. Deliberate or not, there is a tactical advantage to letting civilians shack up inside your fort.

And to reiterate, I am not >>actively argu[ing] for the murder of innocent children under circumstances that favored it I'm saying that any of those casualties are the result of careful moral calculations considering a picture bigger than you have ever been willing to consider in this thread. A picture that includes lives of people being affected on the day-to-day basis by an oppressive regime, constantly under threat of being suddenly dragged off and murdered. Allowing such a condition to continue shows more malice than spilling a much smaller amount of blood to end that condition.

(*IRL human, but we're in startrek context here so i'm broadening that to include other species/yadda yadda)

/r/DaystromInstitute Thread