Are We Ready for a 'Morality Pill'?

Source

Last October, in Foshan, China, a 2-year-old girl was run over by a van. The driver did not stop. Over the next seven minutes, more than a dozen people walked or bicycled past the injured child. A second truck ran over her. Eventually, a woman pulled her to the side, and her mother arrived. The child died in a hospital. The entire scene was captured on video and caused an uproar when it was shown by a television station and posted online. A similar event occurred in London in 2004, as have others, far from the lens of a video camera.

Yet people can, and often do, behave in very different ways.

A news search for the words "hero saves" will routinely turn up stories of bystanders braving oncoming trains, swift currents and raging fires to save strangers from harm. Acts of extreme kindness, responsibility and compassion are, like their opposites, nearly universal.

Why are some people prepared to risk their lives to help a stranger when others won't even stop to dial an emergency number?

I agree some people are just ignorant and could care less about anyone in the world other than themselves, but I think there are many more good people in the world.

I just think way to many good people move aside for a more dominate and powerful ignorant person and kind of allow them to take control. I think as a more docile person, you just move out of the weay and let someone else take on the worries of more responsibility.

As for a pill to produce a 'nicer' population...

We tried to do a similar thing with something called religion, but that has not seemed to work, in fact it kind of did the opposite. So anyone that opposes religion should also oppose this pill? Well not necessarily, religion is disliked because it affects others in a detrimental way, this pill if it worked would only be for the benefit of mankind.

I would say everyone could take it on occasion.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

I have no answer for you pred.

My choices in situations depend mainly on if my children are with me or not. Their safety tends to override other concerns if I think that that safety is threatened.

Otherwise, I don't know what the difference is. But people know it when they see it.

Let me give you an example. I'm walking down the street downtown, and from inside a coffee shop a man sitting down - from another culture even - turned all the way around to look at me, just as he was starting to go into convulsions. No one did anything to help him, though two guys did pull out their phones to film the guy starting to convulse.

As soon as his eyes caught mine, I started to hurry inside the coffee shop - which was elevated and about a hundred feet away from where I was. He was quite a bit bigger than I am, but I did manage to stop him from really badly hurting himself and stayed with him until the paramedics got there and told them that he had managed to hit his head on the way down.

This was rush hour downtown right in the middle of downtown.

Why out of all the people closer to him, the person across from him, all the people on the street....why'd he crane around to look at me? Somehow he knew that I'd help him. This isn't the only time something like that has happened to me, but it was one of the most indiscreet.

What if there are only sheep in the crowd? What if the person like me in the crowd isn't willing to do something when people turn to them? I can't tell you why, but I can tell you that the crowd does take a cue from certain individuals in the vicinity because I appear to be one of them. I don't know why people think that I should be able to tell them what to do, but they do. People will literally stop dead and ask me what to do and follow what I'm doing.

Can you bottle leadership? I doubt it. Can you bottle morality? No. It is a set of actions, a fundamental set of internal choices and not something specifically governed by some chemical process.

Originally posted by predator0187
Source

Last October, in Foshan, China, a 2-year-old girl was run over by a van. The driver did not stop. Over the next seven minutes, more than a dozen people walked or bicycled past the injured child. A second truck ran over her. Eventually, a woman pulled her to the side, and her mother arrived. The child died in a hospital. The entire scene was captured on video and caused an uproar when it was shown by a television station and posted online. A similar event occurred in London in 2004, as have others, far from the lens of a video camera.

Yet people can, and often do, behave in very different ways.

A news search for the words "hero saves" will routinely turn up stories of bystanders braving oncoming trains, swift currents and raging fires to save strangers from harm. Acts of extreme kindness, responsibility and compassion are, like their opposites, nearly universal.

Why are some people prepared to risk their lives to help a stranger when others won't even stop to dial an emergency number?

I agree some people are just ignorant and could care less about anyone in the world other than themselves, but I think there are many more good people in the world.

I just think way to many good people move aside for a more dominate and powerful ignorant person and kind of allow them to take control. I think as a more docile person, you just move out of the weay and let someone else take on the worries of more responsibility.

As for a pill to produce a 'nicer' population...

We tried to do a similar thing with something called religion, but that has not seemed to work, in fact it kind of did the opposite.

So anyone that opposes religion should also oppose this pill? Well not necessarily, religion is disliked because it affects others in a detrimental way, this pill if it worked would only be for the benefit of mankind.

I would say everyone could take it on occasion.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

Yes I have some thoughts - We don't need a pill we just need to do the right thing by each other.
Pill idea is novel but I see it allegorically if that is the right word.
But in the spirit of your pill idea - what ingrediants would it contain and what are the side affects?

Last winter I was driving home from work and the roads were very icy... I stop at a roundabout and a girl on a motorbike stops next to me waiting to move out...

When there is a gap in traffic we both accelerated at the same time, as we are turning right I see her slipping and falls right in the middle of the roundabout.

My first reactions was 1) emergency lights 2) stop 3) alert incoming traffic 4) go to the girl, she was almost unconscious and had trouble talking back

Within less than a minute 2 girls that got out of a car came to help, then me and 2 blokes carried the motorbike to one side of the road, I got back in my car and went home as the girl seem to be ok and by that time there was plenty of ppl there to help her... and I was blocking a main road.

I have always been like that.... to me, when someone is in harms way you do whatever you can to help.

But I also think people just lack the initiative to assist in these situations, a lot of people in my situation probably would have not helped because maybe they thought stopping on a roundabout might be too dangerous and others might have just thought: "she'll be alright"

No, I dont need a morality pill, I'd die on an overdose of morality, haha.

no, i don't like where this is headed... morality only can come straight from the heart... just imagine in the future if we all gave our kids morality pills so they'd do the right thing... what they do when they didn't have the pill? would they even be able to tell what was right or wrong?

its just like "a clockwork orange," you can't mess with people's free will. if they want to make people more moral they have to get people to realize they should be more moral by showing and telling them so they really understand it, not artificially taking the easy way out

www.mirror.co.uk...

Now, how would you act if you knew you had a constant audience for your internal dialogue?

Originally posted by Aeons
www.mirror.co.uk...

Now, how would you act if you knew you had a constant audience for your internal dialogue?

edit on 2012/1/31 by Aeons because: (no reason given)

It's all gone silent
Good point

I suspect it isn't as bad as one would think. Look how people act when they know cameras are on them. Even on those stupid shows where they put them in people's houses.

Doesn't take people long to decide that they don't care about the surveillance.

Originally posted by Aeons
I suspect it isn't as bad as one would think. Look how people act when they know cameras are on them. Even on those stupid shows where they put them in people's houses.

Doesn't take people long to decide that they don't care about the surveillance.

Yes bio metrics etc Cameras that read peoples body language - The fabled thought Police
So much survleillance - who is scared of who

I think I'll pull the female card.

It doesn't matter how much data you have - you still won't grok me.

reply to post by Aeons


Yes the mystery that is woman a riddle non could ever solve
not thught police nor wise men for millenia they furrow their brows and sratch their weary heads and give up