I think some of you are missing a very important point here.
The word "Murder" has no moral connotations one way or another. It is simply the intentional killing of another human in an unlawful fashion (if defined legally) or in a wanton fashion (if defined historically). Saying that law is the arbitrator of morality under that definition is immaterial - that's what the word means. If you want to split semantic hairs about morality and killing people, please debate words such as "euthanasia" or something. Trying to split hairs with murder is like trying to split hairs with "perjury" - it has an established and easily quantifiable meaning that yes, is intrinsically tied to legality.

In answer to the question of the thread: "What is the difference between murder and shadowrunners being paid to kill people?"
Answer: There is no difference.

Everybody Loves Hypnotoad, the BTL.

Duh, even bad guys can act in self defense. There is a teen (an alleged gang banger) who shot up a car with an AK and killed a star football player without a criminal record and no evidence he personally threatened the teen with with deadly force. Everyone was all upset.

And if I was on the jury he'd never get convicted because: Said star football player got in the car at a party with a bunch of buddies from a street gang who said they were going to "fire someone up" (or words the that effect) and were carrying guns. Said star football was in the car (or the rest of the caravan full of his armed gang banger buddies) when one of his gang banger buddies shot the teen's younger brother (14 iirc) several times. The teen responded to this by running into the house. Car with the football player and his gang banger buddies was still outside (apparently high fiving about their glorious deed) when the teen came out with a loaded rifle. Apparently someone (in the caravan of cars that had just shot his brother) presented a pistol. Shooting ensued. Several people got shot, one (said star football player) died.

Life is hard. And that isn't murder. You show up with a bunch of killers to a firefight (even when your plans called for just target practice on living people) and get shot that's just the breaks. And if the teen was really a gang banger I don't care. You have an absolute right to defend yourself and your family against unprovoked assault by using force to resist it, up to and including deadly force.

If you are breaking into someone else's property or stealing someone else's stuff and someone who is legally allowed to interfere does so it's murder if you kill them. No matter what argument you make, you are not allowed to use violence against other people while carrying out a crime. (I can think of some bizarre and twisted situations in which one could make the claim, but they are following a chain of events in which you are no longer actively committing the crime.)

I'd just like to say I play in a game with Chrysalis, and while my character has actually killed more people than hers, I think, her character scares the life out of mine.

She does a marvelous job of playing a completely psychotic maniac. We go out and do bad things to good people, and all, my character is amoral, and like, willing to turn a blind eye and the like, but she stuffs them in bowling bags, and cuts them up into small pieces so they are easier to hide...

Man. I'd be the one poisoning them after seducing, she'd need to shoot them 60 times with an assault rifle, then get out the knife and bowling bag, and perhaps check their commlink to see if they had friends that need killing too!

OK since nobody asked... I'll ask: Why is Demolition Man a horror movie?

Gerald Bull
Mivtza Za'am Ha'el (Operation Wrath of God)
Anna Politkovskaya
Alexander Litvinenko
Fathi Shqaqi
Johan Heyns
Dulcie September

If we're claiming "murder" to be "unlawful killing" then we need a word for "unjust killing" that carries the same kind of weight. Currently the second meaning is what many people mean when they say "murder" and from that arises the semantics argument.

Then again, to accept the idea of "unjust killings" you have to accept a more or less objective concept of "justice".

Exactly.
And that's a discussion for somewhere other than Dumpshock.

Ah, I see. We're having an argument in which one party must "win." Not my intention and no strawman was intended. You stated:


I think it was reasonable to interpret that as you saying that these "murders for the greater good" happen every day. If you are now saying that they don't, then I'm happy with that. It is closer to agreement with my own position that such cases are extremely exceptional if they exist at all.



There's nothing inconsistent in my post and nor am I cherry-picking. I said that it was difficult for me to define what would constitute "greater good" in these circumstances and that obtaining universal agreement on a definition would not be possible. But I did list a number of motives that I felt we could rule out: personal revenge, personal profit, to gain respect, for example. I asked you if you disputed any of these as not falling under the category of greater good. If you do, then I'd really like to hear why you feel they constitute greater good. And if you don't, as I assume, then I was interested in some of these murders that fall outside these reasons. You've amended your statement from these happening "every day" but you're still implying that they're pretty common.



I've given (second time now), a working definition in that we can rule a lot of justifications for murder out. Sufficient for you to either provide examples or dispute the definition. But please don't consider it necessary to "attack" my statements. I am interested in discussing it without it becoming an exercise is proving the other wrong. When that happens, it becomes hard to be critical of oneself for fear of the other party taking it as an advantage.



No. It is not an attempt to make you rescind your argument to make you look unsure of your position. Where do you get this stuff from what I wrote? I commented on your reference to "muslim extremists" not because there are no such people, but because there are about a billion muslims on this planet who are not suicide bombers out to destroy the US. The mainstream media in the UK, and even more so in the USA, really strongly create an image in people's minds of "muslim extremists" to the extent that its becoming one of, if not the first, mental image people have when they hear the word muslim. It's grossly unfair and naturally I address it by emphasizing its lack of validity. One billion muslims? And how many terrorist incidents involving how many people? The repeated referencing to incidents in Iraq as "terrorist" when it's an occupied country in a state of episodic civil war further drives home this misrepresentation as having to do with being muslim when it is to do with the chaos within the country. You can bet that Shia or Sunni militias would not, if the US withdraw, all suddenly head over to the US to perpetrate bombings there, but that is the image that is presented in the media when people are told they're fighting terrorist forces. A deliberate and incorrect linking of the strife in Iraq with memories of 9/11 in order to shore up support for US activity there. This is why I commented on your reference to "muslim extremists" - because powerful parties deliberately foster such an association and it needs countering because it is detrimental to the rest of us.



Then you are arguing that there is no such things as murder for a greater good in which case you are agreeing with my statement that murders for the actual (minimally subjective) greater good are bizarre exceptions normally encountered only in RPGs and movies. You are saying that many muderers consider their actions to be for the greater good. That's fine - it doesn't contradict what I'm saying. There is no argument, though I doubt many people kill, thinking to themselves - "this is for the greater good." Most people who kill aren't thinking at that level at all.



See again, you're stating this but I refer you to my previous comment. Extra-judicial killings are forbidden without exception under international law (and the USA's), so you're certainly not in a position to off-handedly say these things "happen on a regular basis" and the incidents that I am aware of, whether substantiated or not, certainly don't fall under the subject of greater good. - they only fall under the heading of seeking political or military advantage.



Maybe I don't need to. You are talking at cross-purposes to what I have said and there's no need for us to have an actual argument about this.

Regards,

-K.

Interesting. Some of those I was already familiar with, a few I was not. I appreciate you picking up the challenge of finding examples. What I was referring to was actual instances of murder for the greater good rather than where the perpetrator simply believes they are performing the killing for the greater good. I know that many in this thread are arguing that there is no such thing as an objective "greater good" but that's a separate argument. I don't think any of the above are supportable as actually being for the greater good and the Israeli assassinations make me especially sick.

In order to agree that a person was killed for "the greater good," we'd all have to agree what "greater good" we were talking about. That conversation's a bit beyond the scope of Dumpshock and what people expect here, I believe.

Well it's difficult to define, but I've already drawn up a rough list of things that I feel don't qualify - revenge for personal slights, profit, political advantage, dislike of someone for their ethnicity or personal beliefs. Whilst undoubtedly some people would consider a killing they perpetrated under one of these to be for the greater good, I'd be very interested if anyone here thought so. If they do, then we can discuss why and if no-one does, then we can cast open the doors to any murders we're aware of that fall outside of these motives and have a look at what we think of them.

-K.

Yes killing is bad, even if it's an objective "Greater Good", it's still bad. Yet it in some cases, it can be better than another bad solution.

But to switch the focus back to Shadowrun, I think it'll depend on the GM and players. If they play in a cinematographic way and don't have any problem with action movies, killing a horde of bad guys won't be a bad thing... as long as it's done with style. If they play in a black and white morality setting, killing bad guys won't be a problem either, because they don't have any family or when they do they beat their wives and fuck their children. But in a setting with shades of gray, there probably won't be any real "bad guy" and killing someone will have much more meaning.

Agreed. I don't know what the typical Shadowrun player is like (presuming it's even possible to use the term), but my players have all been through enough in life that I think they (and I) now find it difficult to relate to the action movie no consequences mindset. Consequently, I'm having to set my game up as quite heroic. Killing people for money is just not going to go down well. I'm thinking that when D&D 4th comes out, I might shift the group to that because the clearer morality I can set up in a fantasy setting is just going to sit better with the group. In Shadowrun, even the Vampires and Ghouls are people too.

All of the terms that are being bandied about (murder, killing, lawful, good) are constructs of our language, and have meaning only in some much as someone is willing to invest them with meaning.

Human beings are living creatures that have evolved from numerous other living creatures, most of whom did not have the necessary physical attributes to enable them to create environments that allowed such things as language, society and most of all, social conscience. Even within those that can be demonstrated to have rudimentary language and society, such as the great apes, when an ape kills another ape for food, or territory, or breeding rights, they do not hamper themselves with terms such as murder, morality or the greater good. They do what they do because they have a natural instinct to survive, and anything that is an obstacle to that instinct can be removed or avoided without concern.

Human society has itself evolved due to those instincts, as gathering in groups, and displaying some altruistic behaviours, can be shown to increase both group and individual survivability, and hence provide positive reinforcement toward development of language, creation of laws and enforcement of standards for behaviour. Don't let that fool you into thinking that human beings are naturally moral. As it was with our ancestors, an individual human is selfish and amoral, and is conditioned by societal and peer pressure to invest the above altruistic behaviours and language terms with a meaning that acts as a deterrent for selfish behaviour.

As such this is an impossible discussion - killing is regarded as bad because the prevailing social conditioning in most countries prohibits it in order to encourage us to work together for the benefit of the group and the individual. In a society where this social conditioning is absent or reversed, a human being would not regard killing another human being as 'bad' and notions of whether killing someone is 'murder' would not exist (as has been pointed out, the word murder only has context and meaning within a codified set of rules in which there can be 'unlawful killing').

The 'greater good' is a fallacy unless defined within the context of a society in which the individual right to life can be removed in order to benefit the group as a whole, and such a society would be prone to abuse by those whose responsibility it is to decide what constitutes a 'benefit to the group'. For example, I am pretty sure Saddam Hussein felt removal of his opponents fell under the category of a 'benefit to the group', as did the numerous leaders of the Christian Crusades, and various people on both sides of the Palestine/Israel and Protestant/Catholic issues in the Middle East and Ireland. There is no such thing as a universal 'greater good' to which all societies proscribe, and there will never be such a thing until a single world government and society is formed, a feat that unfortunately I feel is beyond the capacity of the human species. Perhaps our evolutionary descendents will lose the territorial instinct and desire for acquisition that drives humanity forward, but unless individual human survivability is enhanced by a single society I think it unlikely.

Bringing this back to Shadowrun, the setting material appears to indicate that whilst the legal framework still exists to prohibit killing, the societal pressure against killing another human is more relaxed within a number of the nation states (and corporate states) than it is in modern day societies. I would say that this would lessen the value of the individual right to life, and lead to a more casual attitude to killing amongst the general populace. However, within the various states that make up the Shadowrun world, killing another human being whilst in the commission of an illegal act is likely to be viewed as murder whichever way you look at it.

Essay over, please resume your normal transmissions....

Right, and I think your rough list is better than most that we might stumble across in an medium as casual as a gaming forum...but the fact remains pinning it down precisely, and getting everyone (or even a majority) to agree on it, is going to be tough or impossible (especially given the attention span of your average forumite).

There are those who feel even killing in self defense and the defense of the helpless is wrong, that killing for meat is murder, those who think killing anyone who's set foot on your property is fine, those who think "fighting words" should still be on the books as legal precedent for assault, and everything and everyone in between, right here in this forum, I'd bet.

Everyone has their own idea of what exactly "murder" means, and their own emotional baggage that's drawn up when the word is used.


Oh, even a "shades of gray" game can have guys who are dark enough that players don't have to wallow in guilt over having had to kill them by the dozen. I still like to refer to my own chosen method as the "Frank Miller School of GMing," wherein my players can be whatever kind of bastard they want to, because I've got the whole Sixth World to play with to come up with guys worse than them.

There's plenty of stuff in Shadowrun that's still "bad guy" enough that even the most well developed, thought out, and maturely-run character can mow 'em down with great big jolly handfulls of dice, and not lose a wink of sleep over it.

Okay, I agree with you there though the law does crack me up on what it considers acceptable and unacceptable behavior (thank you judicial precedent).

But let's look at this through the lens of Shadowrun. Corporations, who are considered extra-territorial nation-states, and organized criminal groups (the two largest employers of shadowrunners) aren't covered by what we would consider to be the protections of civil and criminal law as dictated by a government. From my understanding of the setting and Corporate Shadowfiles, popping a corp guard while on corporate property wouldn't be considered "murder" in a UCAS court, just like, say, a spy killing a guard in the Swedish embassy while stealing document wouldn't be considered murder. That's an act of war, depending on who hired the spy.

But that begs the question... if a shadowrunner, for some reason, is taken alive by corp security and handed over to the local government, what would the local government charge them with? Disturbing the peace?

Why would they hand him over to the local government?

Exactly, since they're extra-territorial, it would be like committing a crime in France, getting arrested and then handed to Germany...
IF it happened, I'd say the local government would have to say "well, you're free to go, you've done nothing wrong in our jurisdiction."

Murder is just killing without social sanctioning. So if the Shadowrunners go and mow down a bunch of innocents and kill a group of security guards that's murder. However if they also kill a sadistic and abusive security cheif on corporate property in self defense that's still murder because they, being outside of mainstream society, are inherently not sanctioned by it.

Now, if we were playing a game set in the Pacific War and your platoon of Japanese Imperial Army dudes went and massacred a bunch of Chinese peasants then that wouldn't be murder because within the social context of the Japanese Imperial Army and the militaristic Japanese government as a whole such an act would be sanctioned. However, if such an event took place in a RPG but we were instead playing the role of Chinese peasants or American ex pats in China we'd probably consider such an action murder since we'd be outside of the Japanese Imperial Army's social system.

So the difference between murder and not murder is just whether or not society approves of the action.

That's what I figured. Thanks!

It's why "extraterritorial" corps shouldn't piss off the government (local and national) where they have facilities by playing the "we are extraterritorial and laugh at your laws" card very often. 'One hand washes the other.'

Sorry, I thought your request for examples was directed more toward 'intelligence agencies do this all the time' line.

Hmm, straight forward assassination for the greater good? How about the assassination of Admiral Yamamoto? Or the various Nazi war criminals whose killings the Mossad got their taste for assassination from?

And to bring this out in SR, if you take your distopia that strong:

A high up in the corp has committed some horrible crime. Due to the corps extra-national status he will not be brought to any kind of justice. THe victims/family/interested citizens pay some runners to read him a list of his crime and shoot him in the head (or maybe just shoot him in the head, straight up).

Eh... you can make a reasonable case for Yamamoto. Mossad's Nazi revenge assassinations are pretty much the exact opposite of killing for the greater good, though.

Was Yamamoto not an active member of the military of an enemy nation? That makes him a legitimate target, by the laws of war. Now, leaders like to try not to have other leaders killed, but it's more a professional courtesy than a legal or ethical thing.




Yeah, vigilantes for hire. Assuming that the victims/whoever are not selling a line of bull, it's still murder, but maybe the sort of murder a person could more or less live with having done. Particularly if Mr Johnson was going to commit more horrible crimes which the runners prevented. Of course, it could also be that the "grieving widow" is a rival exec who framed the target because he was going to uncover her nefarious plans...

No, but you have addressed my query over intelligence agencies carrying out assassinations. I didn't quite get where you were going with the list. I'd be strongly inclined to add Dr. David Kelly to your list, though unsurprisingly I have no solid proof.



I would definitely dispute your example of Admiral Yamamoto as it's very definitely not the greater good but the good of one faction in a war. I know a number of people in this thread are arguing that there is no such thing as a greater good, only subjective morality, but I'm offering up my own sort-of definition and holding to that. The debate as to whether there can be anything other than a subjective take on greater good is a separate one. The execution of various Nazi leaders... well they were captured. If they were a rallying point for a Nazi resistance you could make an argument for their execution being an attempt to prevent further harm / end the fighting. I don't think that was the case then, though. You could make an argument that their execution served a purpose of discouraging others from following in their footsteps. I don't think it would be realistic in my experience of human nature, but it would be an interesting and valid argument.

As to the general point several are making about "the greater good" only existing in people's minds and that murderers can believe they are killing someone for this reason and so it's equally valid... that does not prevent me from having an opinion on what the greater good is and judging their actions by my criteria. And I would hope that most of us here have similar high criteria for what would count as killing for the greater good. It is not necessary to establish whether a murderer thought their actions were justified - I am interested if we as a group consider any murders to be for the greater good.

It is also incorrect to say that everything is subjective and that it is impossible to dispute someone else's values. If it can be shown that someone's values are inconsistent with themselves, that their value system contains contradictions, then it is valid to say they are incorrect. In these case, we merely point out that the person is effectively critiquing themselves and sidestep the issue of subjectivity. In specific cases of murder for the greater good, it may well be possible to do this.



My opinion of this... Firstly it is definitely still "murder." If the benefit is pure revenge and it is derived by the victims / families, then it is hard to justify this as something done for good. You could make a case of it being necessary for the victims to be able to live normal lives, etc, but I don't think it's supportable. If it were the case that the killing was done to prevent further such crimes, then you have a much stronger case for justifying it. If it's setting an example to discourage others... more dubious but a possible argument.

Whether the PC's can claim the same moral escape clauses as the families that hire them is doubtful, however. They've presumably taken the job for reasons of money.

EDIT: b1ffov3rfl0w beat me to it on some of the justifications for the murder.