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honorman
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137

Posted 9/17/2003 9:52 AM (GMT -6)

DLW has made the statement that it is always wrong to take advantage of a tragedy. Why? If the relative of a victim writes a book and gets rich off the book, isn't that taking advantage of the situation? If a person is shot and killed and a politican calls for and gets bill outlawing types of guns, isn't that taking advantage of the tragedy? Tragedy, many times it seems, is taken advantage of for the positive.

DLW
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457

Posted 9/17/2003 9:56 AM (GMT -6)

quote:
Originally posted by honorman

DLW has made the statement that it is always wrong to take advantage of a tragedy. Why? If the relative of a victim writes a book and gets rich off the book, isn't that taking advantage of the situation? If a person is shot and killed and a politican calls for and gets bill outlawing types of guns, isn't that taking advantage of the tragedy? Tragedy, many times it seems, is taken advantage of for the positive.

I'm hoping others will also reply.

Book richness probably depends on what they do with the money. I'm skeptical of that one being terribly plausible so I'd like concrete examples.

I think calls for outlawing guns after a tragedy are emotional responses that fail to seek to evaluate whether or not such an action would truly prevent the tragedy. But after a tragedy, we are all easily manipulated into doing stuff if it may affect the chance of such a thing happening again.

Tragedies make us manipulable and so we need leaders who won't take advantage of that.

dlw

Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes."

honorman
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137

Posted 9/17/2003 10:23 AM (GMT -6)

My point was simply this, almost ANY type of response in the public realm could be seen as manipulating the tragedy in question. I do not have a problem with using a tragedy to further a cause that is good for society. Christians, for instance, do it all the time with starvation in the world. How do they get people to give? By using pictures of starving children. That is exploiting a child's tragedy for a good.

Tigress
Registered Member

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1252

Posted 9/17/2003 10:35 AM (GMT -6)

I guess it's only bad if you're using the tragedy for personal gain, like to win an election or to make money for yourself. But, yes, if it's to further a cause that wants to prevent that type of tragedy from happening again in the future, how is that bad?

Pictures of the atomic bomb landing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and pictures of the after-affects can be very helpful in persuading people not to do that again. Pictures of the Nazi holocaust can be helpful to prove that it indeed happened and should be prevented from happening again. Pictures of unborn babies are certainly not evil in and of themselves. They simply show the truth of what an unborn baby is. Etc.

Now if someone were to use these and other types of tragedies to make themselves look better or to get money out of people for themselves, that's wrong.

Tigress

"Name a shrub after me. Preferably one that's prickly and difficult to eradicate."

-Captain Jack Aubrey
"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World"

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