Ok, you are an officer of the law. you have in custody a terrorist. Said terrorist has put a bomb somewhere in the city. it will go off and kill many innocent people. the Terrorist will not talk. Do you torture him for information?
YES
In my eyes, terrorists, murderers and rapists have no rights. it does not matter how much pain you cause them, they have caused a lot more to innocent people. In the instance where torture will save innocent lives, it is, in my mind, perfectly alright. Those people are more important than the scum that sits before you with his mouth shut.
BUT
I have a question: What kind of mental effect does all of this have on the torturer? You are just a law enforcement agent doing your job. How do you feel after seeing someone writhing in pain. No matter how horrible they are, it has got to do something to you mentally and emotionally. I am pretty sure that I wouldn't be able to handle it.
I would like it very much if the people in my class would tell me what they think the effect is on the torturer. I'm very curious about this.
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3 comments:
I think it robs them of part of their humanity. I think if they did studies on it they would be similar to the residents who are forced to work in research labs and work with too little sleep, as part of the requirements of their residency. They become desensitized to their patients and it takes them years after leaving those situations to regain the appropriate and natural empathy they should have in the doctor/patient relationship. Until then, both they and their patients suffer the consequences of animal research - imagine applying it to humans would be comprable.
i agree i think it would affect them psychologically. a semi-related example being the stanford prison experiment led by Philip Zimbardo the participants got so psychologically into it that they had to stop the experiment because people were getting so affected by the power they had over their fellow humans. i feel that the same would probably eventually happen to anyone who used torture to get information from someone else. they would get caught up in the control they had over those in their power.
overall i don't think in the end it is any healthier to be the torturer than it is to be tortured.
Torture harms both the tortured and the torturer. And, though it may sometimes make us feel temporarily better to see evil persons suffer, torture -- in contrast, say, to life imprisonment or (though I reject it) the death penalty -- is never justified.
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