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I wanted to begin an exploration on this question. During the Battle of Okinawa in WWII there was a village of Japanese who ran to a high cliff and jumped off committing mass suicide because they thought the invading Americans would be brutal to them.
My main thoughts are that there is always a chance a few survive who would be able to pass on their genes and to simply give up and commit suicide en masse will rob these future progeny of their chance to exist.
Also there is the psychological damage the few survivors would suffer, the psychological damage all the victims would suffer before death, actualized or imagined, and also the advantage of dying surrounded by loved ones instead of taking the chance and being separated in dangerous conditions.
Is group suicide to avoid capture in a war ethical or not?
Future progeny are entirely hypothetical. Psychological damage is inevitable in war. These have nothing to do with the ethics of suicide, especially when death (by enemy hand) is the imagined alternative.
The question of whether group suicide is ethical can only be framed in a discussion of religion, or a discussion of whether the free-will of the individuals in the suicidal group has been violated. I am sure there is some peer pressure to follow the group actions and this may pose ethical concerns, depending on the exact situation.
One of the more difficult things for readers of history to grasp is the total difference that different cultures can have in thought. Ethics and other "moral" imperatives are not absolutes, but are culture based. Attempting to overlay the values of one culture upon another can create paradoxes and problems.
The cultures of the sub-continent of India practiced infanticide and spousal immolation for centuries. This kept the population in check and culture relatively stable. The British influenced the culture to abandon those practices, which led to massive overpopulation, poverty, and disease. You can argue both sides of the debate - were the Brits more ethical, or the Indians? The sheer mass of suffering was less in the old culture, even though it was cruel in many ways.
Some cultures hold the cultural ideal in much higher esteem than the value of any one individual. Masses of death, and masses of suffering are irrelevant to them.
I don't see any moral problems with suicide aside from the way that your suicide would affect others. On a fundamental level, it is a matter of personal autonomy. Your claim to life belongs to you, and if you no longer desire to live, you have a right to end your life.
Future progeny, as noted above, have no claims against your life, because they don't exist. Others may have "junior claims" to your life and continued existence, but the "senior claim" rests with you.
I don't say any of this lightly, since I have had to deal with the aftereffects of someone's suicide, but I came to understand that people generally don't kill themselves on a whim or out of pique. Suicide is the endpoint of a lot of suffering and anguish (or a lot of anticipated future anguish), and it's not my place to demand that someone continue to exist in a state of suffering just for my sake.
I wanted to begin an exploration on this question. During the Battle of Okinawa in WWII there was a village of Japanese who ran to a high cliff and jumped off committing mass suicide because they thought the invading Americans would be brutal to them.
My main thoughts are that there is always a chance a few survive who would be able to pass on their genes and to simply give up and commit suicide en masse will rob these future progeny of their chance to exist.
Also there is the psychological damage the few survivors would suffer, the psychological damage all the victims would suffer before death, actualized or imagined, and also the advantage of dying surrounded by loved ones instead of taking the chance and being separated in dangerous conditions.
Is group suicide to avoid capture in a war ethical or not?
By Japanese ethics at the time, yes. When one looks at these things it must be in the context of the culture and time they were committed. One must also understand that they were measuring their expectations of treatment by Americans by their own brutal treatment of prisoners, not upon any knowledge of how Americans actually treated POWs. The brutality of treatment of POWs by the Japanese is not believed to be equaled by any other military (of national origin) in modern history.
I agree that they expected to be treated much the same as they treated other at least on the islands they controlled. There was much less suicide in Japan where the people had not witnessed it and in fact where pretty use to be treated badly by their own. Jappanese soldier ceretain knew quite brital treatemnt from their NCOs and above.
Ethics and values are dependant on cultural norms. Coming from a strong warrior heritage as the Japanese I surmise they felt it was dishonorable to be captured alive once defeated and that death by any means was honorable. However they could have just been freaked out that they might have been tortured. I think your whole future progeny tangent is a stretch.
Like Churchill stated in his famous speech in 1940 "...we shall never surrender...."
I wanted to begin an exploration on this question. During the Battle of Okinawa in WWII there was a village of Japanese who ran to a high cliff and jumped off committing mass suicide because they thought the invading Americans would be brutal to them.
My main thoughts are that there is always a chance a few survive who would be able to pass on their genes and to simply give up and commit suicide en masse will rob these future progeny of their chance to exist.
Also there is the psychological damage the few survivors would suffer, the psychological damage all the victims would suffer before death, actualized or imagined, and also the advantage of dying surrounded by loved ones instead of taking the chance and being separated in dangerous conditions.
Is group suicide to avoid capture in a war ethical or not?
Just an example of what American soldiers and sailors did during the war, I'm going to tell you a story that my Great Uncle told me, perhaps it will put the fear that the Okanawans felt.
My Uncle served on a light cruiser during the war. He as 16 when he joined, and everyone hated the Japanese.
We were watching a war movie one day, I believe I was about 10 or 12. Suddenly, the movie switched to a scene where the ship came alongside a downed Japanese airman, and the sailors helped him on board, and took him prisoner.
My Uncle began to laugh, and I asked him what was so funny. He looked at me, as serious as could be and said, "Michael, when we found live Japanese pilots that had been shot down, we took a M1 rifle, shot them in the leg, and watched the sharks tear them to pieces."
Now if I heard stories like that, and I was a Japanese citizen, I might be slightly worried myself.
Does that excuse mass suicide during the war, I don't know. It would have to be one of the situations you'd have to find yourself in. For instance, if a group of wild crazed people who were eating others had you and your family cornered, and you had no way out, would you allow your family to be eaten alive, or would you quickly end it for them?
Were the people who jumped out of the WTC committing a overtly evil act? They had no hope of rescue, and were doomed to die anyway.
If we are talking about some religious sense of right and wrong, could God have simply not blasted air with his nostrils and saved the people from certain death?
I wanted to begin an exploration on this question. During the Battle of Okinawa in WWII there was a village of Japanese who ran to a high cliff and jumped off committing mass suicide because they thought the invading Americans would be brutal to them.
My main thoughts are that there is always a chance a few survive who would be able to pass on their genes and to simply give up and commit suicide en masse will rob these future progeny of their chance to exist.
Also there is the psychological damage the few survivors would suffer, the psychological damage all the victims would suffer before death, actualized or imagined, and also the advantage of dying surrounded by loved ones instead of taking the chance and being separated in dangerous conditions.
Is group suicide to avoid capture in a war ethical or not?
I don't see how it would be unethical to commit suicide rather than endure torture. The only issue I can see would be if some of the villagers were forced into it against their will.
This is just me, but I would think it more pertinent to continue killing your enemies until one of them killed you.
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