Would you volunteer to die for the greater good (see details)?

Honestly, I’m too much of a coward to end my own life even if it did mean world peace. (All though I have to admit, I have very little faith that mankind would ever be able to achieve this and much less maintain it.) I guess I would just have to wait until I die or somebody decided to kill me.

Oh, and I wouldn’t be interested in immortality if things continued the way they are.

1. I would not do it immediately unless it would have direct, drastic consequences for people I care about. The rest of the world can wait. It depends on details, such as how world peace would be obtained (we can achieve peace in the wrong way, which would be worse than not at all), but in general I may give the world a few years, but not the 60+ years I still hope to live.

2. I do not want immortality. I can think of little worse than being unable to die while centuries fly past and you see death and decay interspersed with fleeting beauty. I would happily die earlier not to have immortality.

@kheredia – the ? is completely hypothetical, I too can’t even fathom what would give me faith in something like this, but as with all hypothetical questions, we must suspend all logic. Thanks for answering. Any chance you’d pay someone to off you when you least expected it? And am I to assume you’d turn down the immortality offer?

@dalepetrie I would probably hint a few people about the possibility of world peace if I died and let them do with it what they like.

The whole immortality thing is completely out of the question for me.. How boring and bitter it would be to live an eternity watching how mankind kills each other over power, envy, and money.

Foregoing logic and reality completely, which I am willing to do for you @dalepetrie, I would not die for the greater good. I simply value my own existence more than I would value doing good or causing a massive amount of positive impact. It’s not an issue of cowardice, I feel I would be confident with a gun in my hand regardless of the situation, it’s an issue of I have only one existence and nothing is going to take that away from me if I can have a say in it!

@dynamicduo- so would you then actively accept an offer of immortality, does your own self interest in existing extend to an ability to ignore the greater good and allow an eternity of suffering for others simply so you could never have to die? Or would you simply let nature take its course, enjoy life for what it was meant to be and then die knowing that at worst, you traded the lives and suffering of others for only an infinitesimally small period of time in the grand scheme of human existence?

World peace? Absolutely. No doubt about it.

Even if my death would cause a dozen people be able to live out good lives, I’d do it.

The difficulty, however, would be proving to me that my death actually WOULD do this.

well….i would do it but first i would explain to my loved ones, and i would find out if it was me dying right away or just my death would mean world peace, if it ment my death ingeneral then the plan is that when i die it would happen and id live my life. if i had to die right away for it i would prob take sometime to spend with my fam and friends, and travel a lil.

I would do it, but I’d definitely want a few more years with my children first. See them grown and settled before I left this world. Once I had that taken care of, I would off myself (or have someone else do me in) as soon as possible. Knowing that my children would live in a world of never-ending peace makes it a no brainer for me.

I would, of course, write letters to my family and friends explaining why I did it and asking for their forgiveness. I don’t think I’d tell anyone (except maybe my husband) in advance. I’d want to avoid long drawn-out goodbyes, and any counterarguments some might feel the need to present.

I would not want immortality unless everyone else had it too. It would be too sad to watch all of your loved ones die, be replaced with new loves – only to watch them die, too. This cycle would repeat over and over again. At some point, I imagine you’d have to withdraw from society so as to protect yourself from the pain. A very lonely existence I imagine.

I’d be dead long before you even finished asking your question @dalepetrie (and that would not be because I didn’t want to read the whole thing). Of course, my situation is a bit different: I’ve already lived a lifetime (55+ years) and am already prepared to die. Even if you were to restore my health and erase any knowledge of my disease, I would do it, without consideration to any immortality aspect. I just think of all the men and women who enlisted in the military during a war and knowingly put their lives in a very real risk just to preserve the freedoms they enjoyed, I would give my life in a heartbeat to not just ensure that end but to provide a world peace that would save countless more lives by ending nationalistic murder.
I’ll point out that by world peace I am expecting an end to internal conflict, such as civil wars or “ethnic cleansing” or anything else along those lines. But of course the reality and sustaining of such a peace would probably require an elimination of borders and an embracing of a pure form of socialism which in itself would require an abrupt and huge change in human nature (elimination of greed, etc) which unfortunately, makes this whole discussion nothing but a fairy tale.
Now you can come back and add conditions that ALL people in developed countries are willing to give up their iPhones and iPods and take five steps backwards as those in third world countries are willing to take five steps forward and and are willing to denounce any future opportunity to rape the earth and take advantage of others as so many in our country and others have done .....well now, were talking about a pipe dream, aren’t we?
Now my head hurts, so pass the fucking pipe so I can get stoned and enjoy the personal music selections on my iPod. See ya….Gary aka wtf

I don’t know that I’d be able to leave my kids motherless. If it was something like it Buffy season 5 where my blood was necessary to save the whole world, my kids included, then absolutely.

@dalepetrie

so would you then actively accept an offer of immortality
It would certainly be cool to live forever, but if I had no way of ending it, that would be a prison sentence. So if I could kill myself after a few thousand years, sure I would become immortal.

does your own self interest in existing extend to an ability to ignore the greater good and allow an eternity of suffering for others simply so you could never have to die?
I don’t really believe in “a greater good” though, and despite holding back rationality, some of it is bound to leak in to my thoughts here. I believe humans are what they are, what they choose to do is not only out of my control but even if I were able to cause world peace, the world would eventually become more at war over time. Or look at it this way: in our rational real world, humanity is already going to be in “an eternity of suffering” because I can’t actually cause world peace, thus whether I act or not in the fantasy world has no real outcome towards the way the world and humanity want to be as a whole. But when push comes to shove, I don’t care about the greater good one bit. I care about my good.

Or would you simply let nature take its course, enjoy life for what it was meant to be and then die knowing that at worst, you traded the lives and suffering of others for only an infinitesimally small period of time in the grand scheme of human existence?
We don’t really know what life is “meant to be” so that’s a bit of a red herring. What if we here in rational Earth figure out how to transfer one’s consciousness such that our bodies die but we can live for hundreds of years? Life is what we make of it, and if I were given the opportunity to make my life immortal, I would probably do that because it’s an improvement for myself and I can do a lot with that improvement. If the option was immortality or world peace, I would pick immortality. That way I have more time to have an impact on people I actually care about versus having an impact on the 6 billion plus other breathing organ sacks :)

No. Sorry but I have to be honest.

I would do it after I had some time to be with the ones I love and complete whatever was within reason on my bucket list. I should add that I would want to know what the definition is of world peace before I agree to it, to make sure it agrees with my definition.

Of course, everyone gets GAs just for being brave enough to think about it and provide an answer. To clarify as there still seems to be some confusion…I’m not articulating how world peace comes about or even trying to imagine what that would take (though @whatthefluther has the right idea), except to say that it would be real….and by peace I mean, people wouldn’t hurt each other anymore for personal gain, not anywhere on the planet. It would be the hippie dream…c’mon people now, smile on your brother…everybody get together try to love one another, right now. And yes, it would happen no matter when or how you died, so you could choose when to end your life (and all the strife in the world) whenever you wanted, or you could choose to let it all end when it ends, or as a third option, you could choose to live forever, knowing that it would never end. Again, all hypothetical.

My answer is probably that I would be too much of a coward to off myself, and what I would probably do is see my kid grow up, set my family up with a huge insurance policy and basically live life with reckless abandon, figuring if I die sooner than I would have, all the better. I’d also write letters to my family explaining why I wasn’t more careful in life.

so in your hypothetical, my death would bring lasting world peace no matter how or WHEN it happened? I don’t think I would off myself if world peace was going to happen upon my demise, no matter how long I lived. I DO love life and I especially love mine, so since the world peace thing is going to happen ANYway, I would opt to just enjoy the rest of my life knowing that my death would spark the peace I have worked so diligently for during my time here.
Living forever would seem more of a curse than a blessing to me.

I would not agree to this unless I was depressed. I would never believe any assurance that my death would bring about world peace.

If I were depressed, it would be easier, because I might already want to die. In fact, I might want to die because I couldn’t do anything that would matter in the world. This would be quite satisfactory to me, if I could eliminate any further doubts about myself while, at the same time, doing what I was supposed to do.

@daloon You just explained why I think there are suicide bombers, they are depressed and think why not? Especially on the off chance it might be for the greater good.

But then the original question guaranteed there will be world peace, no question.

@JLeslie That guarantee and three bucks will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Even when we are discussing hypotheticals.

@daloon – I’m saying that hypothetically you have 100% faith that this is true, not that you’ve been made an assurance. Whatever it would take to convince you of this is what would happen (even if you had to go insane to believe it). The point is, for whatever reason, you 100% believe 0 doubt whatsoever that your death brings about permanent world peace…

If it were absolutely determined beyond my mere perceptions that the circumstances described were inarguably the reality of the situation then I would make additional efforts to make certain I did not commit suicide (however one does such). Achieving world peace without suffering and hardship is not dissimilar to being awarded an olympic medal despite having not participated in the olympics; you may possess the award but it is meaningless and shall merely be taken for granted while within ones possession.
With this stated perhaps my speculations on the matter are simply derivatives of my ego; I shan’t deny that selfishness does play a significant role in my decision, but all the same, that is my verdict on the hypothetical situation that has been put forth.

@dalepetrie No can do. What does faith mean to a man without faith? I could never believe that my death would save others. It’s not something I could ever verify. Knowledge is only possible, as far as I’m concerned, while I’m alive. If world peace is waiting on my death, I’m not in any hurry to bring it about. It’ll only be another fifty years at the outside.

Like sarcasm said, you would have to prove it to me and that would be the hard part. I would be very, very skeptical if someone tried to convince me there would be an end to all war if I killed myself.

@benjaminlevi – you guys have to open your minds here. I’m not saying that it HAS to be someone told you and you believed them. I don’t know what mechanism or series of events or what not it would take for you to believe this, I don’t know what would make ME believe this, but again, maybe it’s some bad acid, maybe it’s clinical insanity, maybe you’re visited by God, whatever it would take…the part about you KNOWING that world peace would be a biproduct of your death is non-negotiable on this question, we don’t need to hypothesize as to how or why you know this, just hypothetically (which in and of itself means “don’t over-analyze, just suspend all disbelief and assume), IF that situation were to come about, doesn’t even matter if world peace actually would happen, just that you became 100% convinced…..not 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% but one fucking hundred percent convinced, period, end of discussion, IF by whatever means you can or even can not imagine, this occurred, what then would you do?

@benjaminlevi If i was delusional enough to think that my death was going to save the world I should kill me.

I’d probably make a quick list of things I want to do before I died and then definitely die. I’m into charities, volunteering and helping for the greater good so knowing that I could bring this change would be quite fascinating.
Although I would be hope that I could somehow watch down on the Earth!

Absolutely Yes, If this means someone is going to hand me the gun to do it and the World would be a better more peaceful place and for the Greater good and it would be better for my Family,Yes.