Morality vs Survival

Macha

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Anyways, your point calls up another literature (forgot what), where the elderly would willingly head into the forest alone in times of famine and such, so the whole can survive, so, as others have said, might be better to explain things and get options/opinions first, before actually acting on it. As that's leadership
It get better. The elder will commit seppuku and let the young eat them to survive.
 

TheEldritchGod

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I find this fascinating.

If we were to look at this from a story perspective, it breaks down into two camps.

People who think humans are stupid and some strong man will need to make the hard choices, and those who think you should level with people and ask them to come up with a solution, or make the sacrifices.

Here's the two factors to consider from a psychological POV. How long has the group been together, therefore, how well do they get along?

How large the group?

The Dunbar empathy limit is the main factor here. If your group has formed a social unit, then people are only capable of giving a shit about so many people. 1 death a tragedy, 1 million a statistic. But at what point does it flip?

The DEL.

It a bad situation like a zombie apocalypse, I would require the group to split when it reached 100 to 150. I'd prefer 25 to be max size, but a cushion is needed. Not just so the group doesn't all die because of one idiot, but because it is easier to sell everyone out, the larger the group.

As it progressed, I'd move to 25 man cells to a 10 man minimum, with the cells allowed to expand to 75 before mandating a split. Splitting being considered at 50.

The more cells, the more people can move around due to personality conflicts.

There would be a military structure with a elected civilian representative. All things survival are on the command structure, with everything else up to the elected civilian.

However, above that would be me.

I would make another organization along the lines of a commisar. They would be rotated among groups on a regular basis so they don't get comfortable. They would be the ones to make sure that people don't get stupid.

Because people will get stupid.

Drama, power struggles, some idiot thinking we can go mad max. Red pill idiots wanting to go all alpha, or left leaning morons wanting to go communist.

Society works best with a mix and a willingness to change to conditions. Yes, I'm arrogant enough to think I know better than most. Usually I'm right. I think in my case I was a dopamine addict and know the signs of power madness. I think I could keep it in check. That would be your biggest problem.

Power is addictive and addiction leads to corruption. If your leader gets addicted to power, yer screwed. Don't care how good he is, addiction always corrupts.
What really sours me from the moral high horse characters is the fact that there is almost always an asspull enabling them to continue with their unfeasible approach. If there were consequences to their seemingly impossible choices then it wouldn't be so bad, but almost none of the authors want to have those ugly consequences of having an mc making illogical decisions based on their morals and feelings. They either somehow always pull through and achieve what they wish the reality to be, or they are never subjected to situations where they must make hard choices in the first place just so they can go on along with how they have been, it just feels so nonsensical. Those who face consequences, and learn from them, is quite rare. That's why i tend to stay away from such goody moral high horse characters in most settings. So few of them are done well that, i just don't even wanna bother trying...
I've seen a bunch like this. HOTD is like that. Japanese has no problem letting their MCs fail.
 

UberNuber

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I know I would not kill children
I think I would not kill elders

I think I would put my life on the line to protect the children who were strangers
I know I would put my life on the line for the elders I know.

In this hypothetical situation, would I probably die, and I think I would be fine with that.

Thankfully this hypothetical situation would never happen, but there is one thing I would like to point out.

Most post-apocalyptic and zombie-apocalypses webnovels portray the magical strength of one single man turning the tide and delivering the people to safety. Human are not tigers. We are social creatures who conquered Earth because we worked together in our tribes and killed the predators that ate our ancestor species through our entire evolutionary line.

Fictional webnovels are what they are, and could there be a fictional world where cultivation resources would be best suited to go to one single person? sure in a fictional world that is possible.

But if you found yourself in a post-apocalpytic world you would be insane to think that would be the order of things. By pushing out the 'weak' I think you'd find that you've destroyed the community that you'd need to survive. This is because we are not tigers, or machines, we are humans.
 

Kidd_Wadsworth

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In considering who to kick out, remember that not everyone eats the same amount of food. Often elderly people eat very little. If the community was starving more people might actually survive if you threw out a big teenage male.

I say this to remind you that value statements like: 1) who contributes most, or even 2) who eats the most, can lead to gross errors in judgement. I truly believe that the community would be more likely to survive it if kept all of its people and discarded none.
 

Love4NovelGuy

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This is exactly the correct way of thinking in this sort of situation.

There's another factor to consider. Do you know how the French Revolution, in which Ropspier was killing everybody, finally ended? To paraphrase the situation, he essentially walked into congress and told the ruling body of the nation that there were traitors among them who must loose their heads, and did not specify who he was going to target. This got every single person in the congress thinking "he might be talking about me," and therefore everyone in the congress more or less unanimously decided Ropspier should loose his head instead.

That's just how it works. If a leader proves he does not value the lives of his followers first and foremost above everything else, they will not have the trust of their followers. In fact, their followers may soon decide that the only way for them to live is if their leader dies, and they will conspire to make that happen.

Therefore, when human nature is accounted for, this so-called "naive" way of thinking in which you refuse to sacrifice anybody is actually the most optimal way to operate in a group even using the cold logic of pragmatism.
I believe extreme in either direction wouldn’t help at all. Too much kindness is being a pushover, and too much cruelty is a short-term tyrant.

But I won’t say a redundant balance is needed either.

After all, there is no perfect leader. One is limited by their experiences and imagination. If such a crisis did occur, it would be natural that the person leading would make mistakes. They weren’t trained leaders in the first place.

The only thing one can do is believe in your own experiences, and take in advice based on what you believe in. Lay out the ground rules and bottom lines, then sort things out without being too influenced by the desires of every individual.

A leader needs to have at least the skeleton of a plan for survival anyway. Just build off of that.

Just do your absolute best. At least if you still fail and die, it wouldn’t be filled with regrets.
 

Alfir

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better than not having justification at all.
It makes me curious. Then how would you reach acceptance? Won't you drown and go insane with all the guilt weighing on you?
 

ElijahRyne

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I've read/watch many survival stories where the protagonist is unwilling to sacrifice anyone even for the greater good. Being the hero/heroine they are, I took it as face value.

But sometimes it got me thinking whether moral really is more important than survivability in urgent events. Like, for example, there is a community of survivors in an apocalyptic world. Let's say that the people inside ranged from small children until elderly. Then, this group can't find any more source of food and they must lessen the people in the community. Is it wrong for me to agree that the elderly is quite a reasonable option to be kicked out. It's a different story if they contribute to the community in some way, but for the sake of argument, let's say this elderly is just an incapable old person.

We're not going to bring the topic whether this person is a good person or not. The elderly is a simple elderly who require special attention, special protection, more food, and can't do any work. Of course, as an elderly, they are also unable to create any more descendants even if they survive until the end of the apocalypse.

Is it wrong for me to agree with the side characters if they decided to kick this person out for the sake of the community? Sometimes I feel like the protagonists are kind of selfish for wanting to put their holy moral first than the survivability of the rest of the community. It's more reasonable to do this rather than sending out a completely able person just because they have a higher chance of surviving outside. Even if they kick this able person out, the elderly will meet the same end, which is death, only with a different method.

I've been thinking about this recently and it makes me worry about my morality. This is only one of my wondering thoughts and there are many instances that my personal opinion makes me question my morality in my daily life.

Of course, I know what's good and what's bad, but compared to what's logical or not, I couldn't help but agree with logic.

What about the rest of you? Moral or logic?
Oftentimes in situations like this, people voluntarily offer themselves as rations assuming they are about to die of natural causes. Be that by a collective agreement, or through individual action. There is often no need for murder either. Look up the Donner Party. When the people you care for are suffering there is little you won’t do. The best thing to see how people in this situation react is to do the research. The most human part of our nature is to care for the surrounding group. There is never a good argument for eugenics…
 
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K_Jira

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It makes me curious. Then how would you reach acceptance? Won't you drown and go insane with all the guilt weighing on you?
I admit, Self-justification can only go so far. Eventually, we will face the reality of what our decision make. So far, I only know that people self-justified themselves when they think they are truly right or when they know that they are wrong but doesn't want to admit it. For the former, I don't know if they are weighed by guilt at all. As for the latter, it will take time and maybe an external influence for them to finally be willing to accept that they are wrong. Often times, it's not easy for someone to admit that they are wrong. It's similar to try blaming unfortunate things happening in one's life to fate, maybe even someone or something else.
Oftentimes in situations like this, people voluntarily offer themselves as rations assuming they are about to die of natural causes. Be that by a collective agreement, or through individual action. There is often no need for murder either. Look up the Donner Party. When the people you care for are suffering there is little you won’t do. The best thing to see how people in this situation react is to do the research. The most human part of our nature is to care for the surrounding group. There is never a good argument for eugenics…
On the same sense, when push comes to shove, people will be willing to sacrifice someone else they don't know much, or don't know at all, for their loved ones. Even in terms of sentiment and affection, a person has different degrees of it towards different people in their lives who they will prioritize more in case of emergency.
 

ElijahRyne

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On the same sense, when push comes to shove, people will be willing to sacrifice someone else they don't know much, or don't know at all, for their loved ones. Even in terms of sentiment and affection, a person has different degrees of it towards different people in their lives who they will prioritize more in case of emergency.
Only if it seems like they have a better choice, but most people know that when sacrifices are made against someone’s will, then anyone could be next. What results is either a complete denouncing of what happened, or a downward spiral of madness. I might be remembering wrong, but I believe it wasn’t uncommon for shipwrecked crews to result in cannibalism. The ones that did the best agreed that when someone dies they sacrifice themselves to the group. And if someone kills someone else for food without that person’s permission, then they would be killed next. Though this could just be bad memory. Nevertheless when a small group has so little food that they must resort to cannibalism then the group will eventually die if they are not rescued. As for a large scale famine like what happened in Ukrainian a 100 years ago, well that becomes more dog eats dog.
 

Jemini

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I believe extreme in either direction wouldn’t help at all. Too much kindness is being a pushover, and too much cruelty is a short-term tyrant.

But I won’t say a redundant balance is needed either.

After all, there is no perfect leader. One is limited by their experiences and imagination. If such a crisis did occur, it would be natural that the person leading would make mistakes. They weren’t trained leaders in the first place.

The only thing one can do is believe in your own experiences, and take in advice based on what you believe in. Lay out the ground rules and bottom lines, then sort things out without being too influenced by the desires of every individual.

A leader needs to have at least the skeleton of a plan for survival anyway. Just build off of that.

Just do your absolute best. At least if you still fail and die, it wouldn’t be filled with regrets.

I'm not saying don't punish criminals and don't stand up to fight against outside threats. I'm saying that if grandma is sick, try to keep grandma alive and do everything within reason to do that, even if it's not the optimal thing in the moment for the group.

There's a reason why the US marines have a policy of never leaving a man behind and will even retrieve the corpses of their dead comrades, and why this policy still persists to this day. It is because the US military made the cold logic decision that what they will gain in terms of troop moral for implementing this idealistic policy will far outweigh any loss of effectiveness produced in having the troops go out of their way to keep their comrades alive under unfavorable circumstances.

This policy also makes it so the marines are more willing to go into dangerous missions and risky situations, knowing their entire command structure values their life and has their back.
 

StrongArm

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I'm not saying don't punish criminals and don't stand up to fight against outside threats. I'm saying that if grandma is sick, try to keep grandma alive and do everything within reason to do that, even if it's not the optimal thing in the moment for the group.

There's a reason why the US marines have a policy of never leaving a man behind and will even retrieve the corpses of their dead comrades, and why this policy still persists to this day. It is because the US military made the cold logic decision that what they will gain in terms of troop moral for implementing this idealistic policy will far outweigh any loss of effectiveness produced in having the troops go out of their way to keep their comrades alive under unfavorable circumstances.

This policy also makes it so the marines are more willing to go into dangerous missions and risky situations, knowing their entire command structure values their life and has their back.
You have been watching too many movies.
We are not as idealistic as you believe. Ever hear of a rear guard?
A rear guard is the group you leave behind to die so a larger group can make a retreat.
We have used this tactic of sacrifice many times in our long history of war.
 
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