Humanity always tried to fix its standards according to different lifestyles. So, abiding by a specific lifestyle imposes certain conditions on humans. In this paper, I will be tackling the topic of torture and how modern civilizations cannot cope with such an idea so disastrous and humiliating to mankind. Justifying the act of torture cannot resemble but an annoying image of humanity. In what’s below, I will argue with and against the practice of torture and will come to a conclusion that no matter what, torture will always reflect negatively on the society as the only way of justifying it is through perfect knowledge of the consequences that no one knows but God. I also considered the scenario of ticket- time bomb because it is considered to be the heaviest argument that justifies torture. So, let’s see how torture isn’t justified.
One night, I went into my house and saw a man, on TV, beating a defenceless tied person. The man was actually beating the guy and enjoying the extreme pain he’s suffering from. He even cut the guy’s feet with a butcher’s knife. My whole family was watching the movie. My dad seemed to enjoy the movie. My brother was just shouting for the man and encouraging him to beat the guy further. My mom had no reaction towards what’s happening. And still my sister who looked really annoyed and demanded to change the channel over and over. This gives rise to the question of whether torture should be accepted or not. And does accepting torture imply that it is justified?
The movie, called “Hostel”, turned out to be talking about a group of Man hunters. It talks about three men in Amsterdam who were encouraged by a stranger, who showed them images of hot women, to visit Hostel known as “Paradise of Sex on Earth”. As they reach Slovakia, and Hostel in particular, they meet gorgeous girls. However, they come to realize that they have been sold to brutal Man Hunters when it was pretty late. They have fallen victims to a kidnapping company which sells people to wealthy men so that they can torture and even murder them. The movie shows explicitly horrible scenes of torture and people suffering extreme pain. Watching such a movie opens up the conversation to a pondering debate of why some people have it in their interests to torture others or seeing them being tortured. In the movie, wealthy people paid millions of dollars to buy a person that they can control, torture and murder. Is it worth it? And are their actions morally justified?
From this comes the definition of torture as the act of causing harm, psychologically or physically, to others intentionally for a certain purpose. Some people refer to torture as “the dark side of mankind” as human beings will to cause extreme pain to other human beings. When it comes to the question of justifying it, one must rely on the purpose as well as the consequences. Some people aim behind torturing at satisfying their desires and achieving the pleasure of controlling others and having the Manpower on others. In fact, these people hope to regain superiority over others due to psychological problems they’re going through and breakdowns in their lives. So, torture is nothing but a means of retrieving dominance. Believe it or not such people achieve satisfaction from merciless actions of humiliation. In this situation, torturers behave indifferently towards the victims in which case the torture is not justified. In some other situations, people’s objective behind torture is to save other people’s lives in which case the justification of torture becomes debateable and argued upon.
Some people see that the acceptance of torture is directly related to human nature because it might be that it is in human’s reflex that he or she accepts or rejects torture. But the question remains whether it is justified or not?
Well, torture sometimes is categorized as means of punishment. For example, when someone is imprisoned, he is punished for the aim of protecting people outside the jail from his/her will to commit further harm to the community as a whole. So, this applies for the case of torture which is nothing but a method of punishment as suggested. One can defend this argument of accepting torture by saying that terrorists and criminals deserve such a severe and harsh punishment for the horrible disasters and misery they’ve caused. Here comes the theory of proportionality that the degree of punishment is directly dependent on the amount of sufferings that terrorists imposed. It is unfair that the criminal is punished in a weight that is smaller and incomparable to the agony he/she caused to others. For example, Gordon Stewart Northcott, a serial killer, whose case caught attention during the period 1928-1932 in Los Angeles, murdered more than 20 young children on a chicken ranch in a town known today as Mira Loma in Riverside Country in California. The murderer Gordon Northcott got arrested, imprisoned for two years, and then executed. I think that he deserved to be extremely tortured as he murdered innocent children for no reason and caused them extreme pain. In addition, he caused misery for all the murdered children’s parents. So, Gordon deserved greater punishment (i.e. extreme torture) because such a person with no mercy should be equally treated with no mercy. In this case, torturing such a person is reasonable and thus justified. In opposition, one may argue that people have mercy and sympathy whatever the circumstances are. For this reason, one must agree that all forms of cruel and odd punishments must be abandoned and forbidden. This is justified by the fact that if all people will to torture other people who caused them harm, the world would be a disaster and humanity would turn to a catastrophe as everyone is running for his/her life. So, punishments must have some limits, such as life imprisonment and capital punishment, no more. Moreover, the theory of proportionality is relative. Everyone has his own way of weighing sufferings versus punishments. From here, one comes to a conclusion that torture, as means of punishment and under the theory of proportionality, is not justified and that the arguments of defending torture fail.
Some people argue for torture and say: “Torture is justified if it saves lives.” Why shall people not justify torture if it defends their rights, protects their lives and preserves their dignities? For example, a direct reaction for a policeman who sees that a man is shooting at innocent people is to shoot him. In this case, the policeman’s purpose is to protect innocent lives and the consequences of his shooting is saving many innocent lives that the shooter would have killed. The policeman doesn’t give any weigh to the shooter’s dignity and tortured him because the shooter himself doesn’t take others’ lives and rights of living into consideration. Another interesting example in this case is the ticking-time bomb where thousands of lives could be saved. Defenders of torture often rely on this argument to justify torture. Well, if you suspect a person who knows the place and the time that a bomb is going to explode causing the death of thousands and even millions of people, you should torture that person until he tells you all the information about the bomb so that you can prevent the explosion from taking place. The consequences of torture in this scenario is saving lives and protecting thousands of people. So, torturing the person is considered ethical in the ticking-time bomb instance. Many philosophers agree that torture is always illegal but consider the case of ticking-time bomb as an exception and even a low probability of it occurring must justify torture. People, therefore, must accept torturing a person and saving millions of lives in return.
Let us emphasize on this scenario as it is considered to be the strongest and heaviest argument for justifying torture. Thus, the consequent ideas will rely on the ticking-time bomb concern.
Imagine you have a prison filled with detainees. One of them, person Y, has had a long history of associations with recent bombings. A bomb is suspected of being placed in the middle of a city centre bustling with thousands of civilians. The government scared of history repeating itself, summons terrorist Y. She puts him in an isolated room. Question after question, the terrorist refuses to answer. Is torture justified in this particular instance?
Well if we appeal to our instincts, the answer seems an obvious YES. First and foremost, his notorious history and his lack of regard for our lives, seems to lesson our appeal to him as a regular respectable human who deserves dignity and respect. But how much are we exactly allowed to torture him? Suppose that the terrorist does not respond to any physical pressure. Say the only way of getting him to say anything useful is by getting in his mother or family. Maybe raping his daughter in front of him might make him speak.
Now here lies the confusion. And this is what exactly we should seek to explain if we are to establish whether torture is to be justified. The equality as it is stated now “torture one saves a million “’ sounds very tempting but to what extent is it true? Let us study this scenario.
First the government does not know if there really is a bomb. There is a big possibility there might be no bomb. Remember it is just a rumour. So, torturing such a person in this case is not justified until you know the absolute consequences behind the act of torture. And of course no one knows the consequences in this case.
Second even if there is a bomb, how many lives are at stake, is it still worth torturing if the bombing will kill only one. Here, you are torturing one life for the sake of another one life. This gives rise to the argument that all human lives must be treated equally without any distinction. Why shall we torture one life to save another one life? What makes this life so special that you torture a person to save it?
Torture by its nature does not provide reliable results. Under torture the strong resist and the weak say anything to stop the pain. So, does torture guide you or rather confuse you? Since you cannot know absolute truth, you will never know whether the person under torture is telling the truth or not. Maybe the person intentionally tells lies to confuse you as some sort of revenge towards the torturer.
It is also impossible to know which terrorist exactly is the one responsible in any sort of bombing. So, saving people from the explosion may require torturing so many suspects in which case the torturer is unjust towards many of the suspects who have no information about the bomb. There is a big chance that torture will be unfair in so many cases and it is wrong to treat people with unfairness. It would also be a disaster if the person under suspicion has no information about the bomb because in such a case the community is just harming the suspected person and causing him harm depending on basis that have no stable grounds. The case is just worse when torture is not only restricted to suspects but probably their family and direct friends.
Of course, making a pressure on suspects by raping a member of their family is totally unethical. No matter what the consequences are, no one has the right to violate others’ dignities.
Now, the equality reduces itself to the following, torturing many (many of whom are innocent themselves) with the possibility of saving some people vulnerable to the bomb explosion. It does not seem as tempting as it once sounded. As long as seeking the perfect information is impossible, one cannot torture others under the assumption of suspicion.
If our aim is to reduce everyone’s suffering then consequentialists’ analysis will clearly fail the test. It has been shown in many instances that terrorism and torture do not yield results. It just causes further harm with no positively leading results and consequences. You can never build an assumption of X happening as long as you’re only suspecting. Moreover, no one will ever know the truth because only God knows what the consequences of what we do are. So, in my opinion, ticking-time bomb fails as it is built upon assumptions not certainties. That’s why philosophers say that ticking-time bomb is not based on certainties but on possibilities and assumptions.
Some people argue that torture is always wrong and no matter what the good consequences are, it is improper to break moral beliefs just to achieve good consequences. ”The ends cannot justify the means.” However, “cruelty justifies cruelty” because the use of time bomb becomes justified as long as government, for instance, is causing harm to such citizens through torture. Nevertheless, one really cannot depend on information given by a person who is suffering from extreme pain out of torture because this person would say anything that would stop this pain. This gives rise to the issue of utilitarianism. Assuming that lives could be saved behind torturing the suspected person, torture is justified as long as the consequences of this action is saving millions of lives and thus reflecting an overall happiness on the society. No matter whether torture is morally right or wrong, one must practice it as its consequences may reflect positively on the society. However, certain restrictions must be set from which utilitarian consequences could be obtained through certain means within the moral boundaries.
Another argument defending torture and with which I strongly disagree is: “Torture satisfies some people’s needs and no matter what the moral boundaries are, no one must give up anything that causes him/her pleasure even torture.” The concentration and extermination camp in Auschwitz, run by the Nazis, describes how humans could have no sympathy to murder “about four million people” by torturing them. Most of the “dead” were Jews. “They were burned naked in gas chambers and even Nazis have done sterilization experiments on women prisoners.” How can torture be justified in that case? Well, some people defend it as long as it is a reflection of Prejudice. Actually, a person with prejudice cannot survive without his belief. Nazis wanted superiority and wanted dominance over other humans. This gives rise to racial discrimination as Nazis believed that no one except their race should have the power of controlling Mankind. No matter what, this doesn’t justify torture because no one except God can control humanity as a whole. Only God has the “power”. Moreover, this concentration camp nowadays is considered to be absolutely against human rights. It shows the wrong and dark image of charity and civilization.
To sum up, torture is to be forbidden and abandoned, because one comes to a conclusion that humans will get no where behind torture. As we saw, all arguments defending torture failed under some circumstance and as long as we are not certain about the consequences of torture, which is always the case, one must not practice torture. In these days, where civilization are evolving towards protecting human rights and forming peace bonds, such unethical practices should be banned. U.N is taking torture argument into consideration in order to build a bedrock on which humanity can rely when dealing with harsh and disastrous cases especially the case of Israeli and Palestinians that have to come to an end. Palestinians can no more handle psychological and physical torture. They have the right to live in peace. Torture has to be banned by imposing punishments on governments that are still practicing torture even in cases where it’s not worth it.