NECESSITY of killing?

[deborahhbbrd]

No: HPFGUIDX 141898

Subject: Re: NECESSITY of killing?

a_svirn says, after a lot of snipping:

<I am not saying that world wouldn't be a better place without 
hitlers or torkvemadas, but I don't think it's fair to confuse 
necessity and morality. If you are prepared to kill for the Greater 
Good's sake you will kill whenever you deem it necessary; if you are 
in a flutter about the state of your soul you won't. It's my sincere 
belief, however, that you can't have it both ways.>

Deborah would like to agree, as she does with most of a_svirn's post,
but ...

Hitler and Co. are useful examples; let's look at the other side. And
here some of my memory is in senile remission, but the facts are
look-uppable.

Dam-busters. Bombs that bounce on water, and in so doing get into the
right place to breach German dam walls and flood Nazi installations in
the valley. There was a book; also I think a movie. But before there
was anything, there was a designer of the bouncing bombs.

This is History Channel stuff, but it convinces me. The designer – the
bouncing-bomb boffin – treated the design problem as an exercise in
logic and applied science. He applied his mind to the problem, and
designed what he'd been asked for. And the squadron took off into the
unknown. The bombs worked; but so did the Luftwaffe, and after the
raid some aircraft were badly damaged and some had dead or injured
crew members, and some never returned. And suddenly it wasn't a logic
puzzle any more, and he was deeply traumatised at his own role in
killing those young men he'd known and admired; his own role in death
which had become real to him in a way he'd never expected. He gave up
weapons design at that point.

So, we have a man, acting under orders and most certainly for the
Greater Good at that time, who didn't give his soul a thought until
the killing for which he was responsible actually happened. And then,
having collided with reality and mortality, he bailed out.

Surely it is somewhat likely that, say, Regulus Black might have had a
similar epiphany? But the bunch he was working for wouldn't have
allowed him to simply withdraw. The Bomb Boffin could, presumably
because his side in the conflict really was the Greater Good. But
Regulus couldn't. A wise colleague of mine used to say: "What's a mind
for if you can't change it?", and that implies that we are always in
sole control of our lives, our minds, our actions. What Dark Lord is
going to sit back and let that happen? Dark Lords are control freaks
of note, and they will not let people have things both ways any more
than they will let them have individual consciences. This could have
implications for Snape, of course;  he too could have felt genuine
remorse after and as a result of his Death Eating activities, once
they had stopped being abstractions. And what point might that have
been? Guesses, guesses ... yours at least as good as mine!

Deborah, humming Lilli Marlene and wishing she wasn't