The Clockwork Orange Dilemma

[KrIsP!]

I've read A Clockwork Orange recently and in the book is asks the question of whether or not it is right to take away someone's freedom to consciously do wrong. I'm not asking what should be considered wrong, but rather if it is morally right to take away that freedom from a minority to benefit the rest of society.

What do you think? Personally, I cannot agree with mass lobotomies but then I think that what the prison system is is a tool to condition people to not do what is against the law. It has been proven to be ineffective in some cases but we stick to it, so shouldn't a simple way to force people to do what is, by law, considered right be fine?

In a Clockwork Orange, the main character is made to experience bouts of physical pain when acts of violence occur near him to the point where he simply is unable to commit them. As a human I feel it is wrong to take away choice as it is what makes us humans, but as a law abiding citizen I feel like it only seeks to do good and benefit me as well as many others. I cannot agree with it, but I cannot completely form an argument against it.

What about you?

 

[GofG]

The problem is not in the forcing, but in the defining of wrong. Neurological engineering of this manner has the potential to be societally permanent, in that if we do not carefully define wrong, we may quickly end up losing our ability to change ethical views on the societal level.

but if you believe that absolutely correct moral beliefs exist, for instance if you are Christian, and you believe that you can accurately describe those morals in a way a neuroscientist could program, then it would simply be maximizing your expected utility to force those morals on everyone in the prison system.

 

[Orboknown]

I've read A Clockwork Orange recently and in the book is asks the question of whether or not it is right to take away someone's freedom to consciously do wrong. I'm not asking what should be considered wrong, but rather if it is morally right to take away that freedom from a minority to benefit the rest of society.

What do you think? Personally, I cannot agree with mass lobotomies but then I think that what the prison system is is a tool to condition people to not do what is against the law. It has been proven to be ineffective in some cases but we stick to it, so shouldn't a simple way to force people to do what is, by law, considered right be fine?

In a Clockwork Orange, the main character is made to experience bouts of physical pain when acts of violence occur near him to the point where he simply is unable to commit them. As a human I feel it is wrong to take away choice as it is what makes us humans, but as a law abiding citizen I feel like it only seeks to do good and benefit me as well as many others. I cannot agree with it, but I cannot completely form an argument against it.

What about you?

I tend to agree. You shouldn't take away their choice to do something.
The part about physical pain when commiting violence..
they do that with alcoholics. Put them on medicine that makes them throw up when mixed with alcohol, eventually they learn not to drink. Not saying its correct, but it is effective.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

Altering people's minds is tantamount to killing someone, or removing parts of who they are. Lawfully, killing is wrong in order to keep peace and order, and morally, killing is generally wrong because it destroys a future. In the viewpoint of the former, it is absolutely logical to do so, whereas in the view point of the latter it robs people of a person's locus, where what people consider us to be lays dormant, the mind. In other words, if the world believed humans are amoral, they wouldn't mind performing such efficient operations to effectively "kill" people without actually destroying life. If one believes in morals, it would be harder to justify inhibiting people of their options (I don't mean free will, this applies to determinism as well) for the reasons why we find just about all things in social situations as wrong suggest anything impeding on anyone else's mind is wrong, and thus would be inconsistent.

 

[_Keno_]

I havent read that book, but from what I can see, there isn't really much discussion to this question other than opinions and moral relativism.

So, if I could enforce my own morals on the entire world, would I? Absolutely....but only for a few generations.

At least until the ****hole our world currently is has time to fix itself.

Is my own morality perfect? I like to think it is, just as all people do. But no, I dont know enough about the world to see things from all angles, and I certainly never will. But IMO its probably better than the current world.

Altering people's minds is tantamount to killing someone.

Ah, but is it also tantamount to creating someone new? Perhaps a "better" person?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

GofG has a point there – "perfect" morals are not really present in our world. Hell, even "thou shalt not kill" could hardly be considered an absolute; if, for example, you knew that you had the choice between killing one person or watching that person kill hundreds of thousands, the morally correct choice may very well be "kill him". Now imagine your state-sponsored "Reprogramming" would stop you from doing that. Whoops, there goes lower Manhattan because you physically couldn't pull the trigger on Junior McVeigh.

I think the problems of "are you really good if you can't choose to be evil" are overstated, but the problems of changing, fluid moralities and cultures is crucial here.

 

[KrIsP!]

Altering people's minds is tantamount to killing someone

Ah, but is it also tantamount to creating someone new? Perhaps a "better" person?

This is exactly what it boils down to, is it destroying or recreating a better human. Personally, I see it as destroying. Taking away that ability is taking away a part of them as a human and forcing them to live a certain way which is one step away from creating a bland world, but for the sake of this argument let's say that the 'cure' will only be given to those who would be given a sentence of life in prison or worse.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

Yeah, but it is hard to justify destroying one human to "make" another, if you look at it from the moral perspective, because regardless if it is making a "better" one, it still destroys to create. Again, if you aren't concerned with morals and just want an efficient society, messing with minds with evil intentions is the best idea, and if we become a society who thinks in such a manner, I'd be surprised if we don't start perfecting the technology purely for that purpose. In the long run it'd save tons of money, time, and lives.

 

[Vermanubis]

I absolutely agree. Despite my leanings as a Christian, I believe that one's beliefs should be hard-won through a competition, rather than by prescription. The purpose of morality is the meaning provided by contrast, and if you do not willfully choose to subscribe to a moral system, then it's not truly moral. Action without intention is vacuous in all agreeable respects of existential purpose.