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Last thought, many societies and cultures (not just western) who have had harsh punishments for various crimes (physical punishment) believed that imprisonment was crueler. Better to beat, brand, even kill a man, than lock them away. It wasn't really about saving money, it was considered inhumane. When you consider the state of our prisons in the United States before the Quakers got involved in Pennsylvania...you can see why. And even the first penitentiary was horrifically cruel (though unintentionally so).
I'd like to throw in that I think we should give people the open-ended option to kill themselves(or let themselves be executed, whichever) when we give out a sentence of life in prison. That way there really is no such question of what is more cruel - they get to decide for themselves, and both options leave society secure assuming prison safety standards are met.
On to the responses, though:
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That pretty much sums up how I feel. That's not to say that anyone deserves to be made a victim, because they don't; however when you do something that can be dangerous, you've accepted the potential danger as a possible repercussion and are therefore (in my personal opinion) a little less worthy of sympathy than someone else who did not get to make a choice.
No offense, but I find this to be contradictory. You state that no one deserves to be a victim, but at the same time you say their actions make the end result worthy of less sympathy somehow. So you don't think they deserve it any more or less, but less sympathy. To me, when you say you have less sympathy because someone does X which has increased chance of Y, it implies that the person is more deserving of it. Otherwise, why would you have less sympathy for them?
They're clearly made a choice with a higher chance of Y, and it is at least partly of their own doing, but how does that automatically lead to less sympathy simply because they made that choice? People make stupid choices all the time, that doesn't mean we should have less sympathy for what they go through. If you disagree with that, I'd be curious as to why specifically you think they deserve less sympathy.
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It's not bad necessarily, but it does carry with it an inherent level of risk and/or danger. I don't know the statistics on it, but it seems to me that more people die while buying drugs than jumping out of a perfectly good airplane with nothing but a backpack.
In this particular case, you have a situation where there are countless, countless people who buy drugs every day and never get murdered like this guy did. Sure, there's an increased likelihood whenever you deal in a black market environment, but I think it's simply wrong to suggest that someone basically "asked for it" in such a case. If it was a 50/50 chance of being murdered, ok maybe. 20 percent chance even, maybe. It's simply not THAT common, especially considering most dealers just want to make more money rather than put themselves at more risk like this guy did by murdering someone, and he got busted for it.
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I'm not using the word "innocent" in that manner, no. Lack of innocence, in this context, for me means someone who received harm that he or she could reasonably expect and/or know was possible.
So perhaps a question might arise, do we know that this individual knows what we know regarding the dangers of drug use, and buying drugs? What it emphasized enough during his being raised?
Regardless I would also present the point above about the inherent dangers of buying them.
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Correct, that is how I feel. We have rules so that society can function properly and to the greater benefit of everyone. When you decide that framework doesn't apply to you, your culpability rises, if only a little (like in this case). I guess what you fail to recognize or I failed to convey is that I do feel badly for the son, but not as badly as if he weren't breaking the law at the time.
I would pose the same question to you as I posed to Devyn above - why feel less badly for him over this simply because he made a choice that likely led to the result?
And not only that, but let me just say: The guy was killed. He was not slapped in the face for his stupid action. He was not thrown a lawsuit at him for his actions. He was murdered. Some things are simply too rotten to happen to anyone who has done no real wrong, period. I think I could understand where you're coming from IF the person in question did something wrong, rotten, or evil. But this guy, perhaps for selfish reasons but nothing that by itself harms others, simply wanted to put a substance into his body. Period. He obviously wasn't out to hurt anyone, except maybe himself. That is neither wrong nor evil.
Certainly the guy put himself at greater risk. But to suggest that less sympathy might be afforded it also to suggest that the person in question is somehow more deserving of the result because of the actions they chose.
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This is obviously where you and I differ most. I would argue that you aren't taking a very holistic view of the drug problem if you take one's "getting away with" not visibly or noticably harming anyone in a particular instance. The hypothetical you pose actually pretty much carries its own refutation: you substituted your own judgment for that of the orderly system in place. While the hypo is clearly designed to convey the triviality you unwarrentedly feel is the same in a drug transaction, the principal remains the same: you don't know better than the law and if you substitute your judgement for its, you surrender to a certain measure of culpability, however infinitessimal. You and I can argue all day about the size of that increase in culpability, but it's there.
First off, I'm not talking about a particular instance. I am saying that if there is even a chance that a person can go about a careful, decision-making process and take drugs without harming anyone around them, then it's hard to say it's inherently bad. It would be by their design and judgement to ensure that they harm no one else with their habit, and that leads to the idea that it CAN be done by more than just a few people.
Yes, you take some RESPONSIBILITY for your actions by disobeying the law, no question about it. But that should not automatically lead to less sympathy, as I said above.
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First of all, the gamblers analogy is a straw man, as I would not defend such people for a minute. Furthermore, the mere fact that something is legal and can cause harm doesn't invalidate what I've said. As a matter of fact, legal and illegal has little to do with it in the big picture. It has more to do with the reasonableness of one's own actions and who pays the consequences for unreasonable ones. It just so happens that I beleive that pretty much any illegal act is unreasonable, but that doesn't mean any legal act is reasonable.
I feel like inserting all the arguments from the other thread at this point, but I shall resist!
The gambling analogy is intended to convey one important point, as above: if people can reasonably go about a decision-making process and prevent other people from being harmed by their habits, such as the more common case with gambling, then it is only logical to believe that others can go through that same process and duplicate the results.
I understand completely how important laws are in maintaining a healthy society. There are countless laws on the books within our society that make perfect sense to follow, and should be followed more often than not. But how that leads to assigning automatic credit to every law's worthiness of being followed without even examining the logic behind it is beyond me.
I'd be curious what doesn't fall under your "pretty much" in regard to any illegal act being unreasonable.
