First journal of Glover
In the part 2, Glover discussed moral status during the wartime. He specifically focused on the moral psychology of close combat and long-range killing.
In close combat, warriors need to overcome the moral resources to kill. They need to escape from normative moral identity and abandon their sympathy to kill. The culture of war erodes soldiers’ moral identity from every aspect. For example, fighting in a remote and unfamiliar battlefield might give rise to the loss of moral landmarks. (American soldiers in Vietnam) The new recruits need to go through a series of training, which would make them ready to fight and kill. In the mean time their sympathy have been selectively weakened, and their moral identities would be …show more content…
Those who made the decision are far away from the battlefield. Therefore, it’s hard for them to feel sympathy. Their moral identity often neutralized by different means. For example, they would come up with argument that justifies their wrong action. In the case of blockade, they would argue that people dead from starving was a by-product of pressuring German’s military supplies. The death of civilians was never intended. Also, since the decision is made through lots of people, people felt that their individual responsibility had been diluted. They generally did not feel guilty when they were processing and enacting the killing. The distant killing become more severe when bombs were used in wars. In the Second World War, bombing campaign had 3 phases. First stage was selective bombing of military targets only. This phase involved unintended area bombing. The second stage had shifted to area bombing or intentional area bombing. And the last phase was substantial area bombing. From unintentional killing to last phase, the mistakes became larger and larger and finally lead to atomic bomb in Japan. The erosion of moral identity took place gradually through time. It’s analogy to a classical sale strategy: foot in the door. It is a compliance tactic that involves getting a person to agree to a large request by first setting them up by having that person agree to a modest request. In the last phase, people who decided to use atomics bomb showed no hesitation partially because of this effect. They had been through similar decision (from phase 1 to phase3) and these precedent cases made them more likely to consent. Also the momentum of finishing and displaying the atomic program are incentives to those scientists. They were concentrating only on developing the bomb and did not have a thorough understand of the foreseeable deadly effect of the bomb. The lack of individual responsibility is the cause of
In the part 2, Glover discussed moral status during the wartime. He specifically focused on the moral psychology of close combat and long-range killing.
In close combat, warriors need to overcome the moral resources to kill. They need to escape from normative moral identity and abandon their sympathy to kill. The culture of war erodes soldiers’ moral identity from every aspect. For example, fighting in a remote and unfamiliar battlefield might give rise to the loss of moral landmarks. (American soldiers in Vietnam) The new recruits need to go through a series of training, which would make them ready to fight and kill. In the mean time their sympathy have been selectively weakened, and their moral identities would be …show more content…
Those who made the decision are far away from the battlefield. Therefore, it’s hard for them to feel sympathy. Their moral identity often neutralized by different means. For example, they would come up with argument that justifies their wrong action. In the case of blockade, they would argue that people dead from starving was a by-product of pressuring German’s military supplies. The death of civilians was never intended. Also, since the decision is made through lots of people, people felt that their individual responsibility had been diluted. They generally did not feel guilty when they were processing and enacting the killing. The distant killing become more severe when bombs were used in wars. In the Second World War, bombing campaign had 3 phases. First stage was selective bombing of military targets only. This phase involved unintended area bombing. The second stage had shifted to area bombing or intentional area bombing. And the last phase was substantial area bombing. From unintentional killing to last phase, the mistakes became larger and larger and finally lead to atomic bomb in Japan. The erosion of moral identity took place gradually through time. It’s analogy to a classical sale strategy: foot in the door. It is a compliance tactic that involves getting a person to agree to a large request by first setting them up by having that person agree to a modest request. In the last phase, people who decided to use atomics bomb showed no hesitation partially because of this effect. They had been through similar decision (from phase 1 to phase3) and these precedent cases made them more likely to consent. Also the momentum of finishing and displaying the atomic program are incentives to those scientists. They were concentrating only on developing the bomb and did not have a thorough understand of the foreseeable deadly effect of the bomb. The lack of individual responsibility is the cause of