The Case of Jojo

According to Utilitarianism, it would be moral to kill one person as long as it benefited enough people so that the happiness caused by the person’s death is greater than that caused by the person’s sustained life. Utilitarianism also does not care about the reason there would be more happiness, whether it is because of dictatorial actions (e.g. Saddam Hussein) or helpless rationale (e.g. Jojo). Many people in the class had the instinctive reaction that killing Jojo was morally wrong even though utilitarianism said it wasn’t. People seemed to shared Mill’s retort of the moral fiber argument: that killing someone, regardless of reason, redyced the moral character of our society as a whole.

I guess I feel like I’m in the minority here by our class discussion the other day. My gut reaction was that the thing to do was to kill Jojo. Damn, that sounds worse as I read it back. But still, it’s what I would do. And I would tend to agree that not only would I do it (rational decision) but that I should do it as well (moral decision). My reason for feeling this way is that if Jojo is impacting society in a way as to decrease productivity and to decrease overall happiness on such a global scale, then society is basically rendered useless. In fact, I would use Mill’s moral fiber argument to prove the converse. Our moral fiber is based on the theory that everyone is striving to be efficient and productive and that if someone threatens that efficiency or productivity, they will be punished. This is what encourages most of humanity to go through most of the steps of social progression and feel that they have an opportunity to succeed. Jojo’s presence without punishment goes against that basic social contract. Thus, the moral action is to kill Jojo.

Damn, it still feels awful to type that.

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