If there really are only harmful options, for sure choose the least harm. But you have to make sure that you’re not ignoring an option which involves no harm.
The problem really is when people assume there’s only two choices. If you dont like the choices, be creative and come up with something else.
If you are in this position, it helps to remember a great suits quote:
You need a bigger gun
—Harvey Specter
Depends on your meta-ethical framework. If you’re a consequentialist, then you should always choose the option that leads to less evil being done. Same if you’re a utilitarian.
If you hold to a Kantian value-based framework, like the action itself holds the primary moral goodness or evil in its own nature, then choose the action that itself is less evil.
There are many other frameworks. It also depends on what you think happens in the case of something like voting. Some people see participation in any sense as a sort of tacit agreement or endorsement of the system as a whole. So by casting any vote, even one of protest, you are legitimizing the system as a whole.
Others see voting as a mere means to an end, and thus, is justified if the outcome is better than not voting would be. Some see it as purely neutral, like a tool that can be used for good or bad.
Still, others see it as an inherently good thing, and view abstaining from the act of voting as a moral wrong, because it is a willing act of self-sabotage of the moral interests of the greater good, or sometimes as a violation of the social contract.
There are many other positions and considerations. Basically…it’s complicated.
Some people see participation in any sense as a sort of tacit agreement or endorsement of the system as a whole. So by casting any vote, even one of protest, you are legitimizing the system as a whole.
This assumes that there we are always afforded the option to choose whether or not to participate. If you are a bus driver and your full bus is careening toward a cliff, and you have the opportunity to swerve into a procession of nuns crossing the street (toward the cliff? What kind of street is this?), not choosing is still a choice. You can’t say, “well, I’ll just sit this one out. I can comfort my conscience with the knowledge that I’m not making a choice.” The people on your bus are still going to die, and it will be your fault. Now, if you swerved, the nuns would die, and that would be your fault, too.
A person who comes of age in a country with suffrage is a part of that system; they are not afforded the luxury of not casting a vote guilt-free, even if they tend more Kantian, because they were placed in the driver’s seat of that bus on the day they became an adult. In fairness, they share that seat with hundreds of millions of others, but they still face a choice between two bad options. No matter which they choose, even if they choose neither, bad things will happen.
I guess what I’m saying is, when the stakes are high enough and stacked up against you enough, you have to become at least a little bit of a consequentialist.
I could do it once. When the “lesser evil” decides their whole strategy is being the lesser evil and blackmail me with “if you don’t vote us the big evil will come” then I grow tired and issue a big fuck you to the “lesser evil”.
Not choosing is also a choice. It may or may not be the right or wrong choice.
It’s a great way to lose an election.
Its usually used by more evil evildoers trying to paint themselves as less evil than their (real or made up) opposition, while advocating for evil. I think its a desparation move by villains who got found out.
Thats how it is in our grayscale world
I mean, if you truly have no other choice, what else can you do? Can it even be considered evil at that point or just “still painful”? If I have to chop off my/someone’s gangrenous leg to ensure survival, is that evil or just, you know, not ideal? It’s important not to get too lost in semantics…
The concept of the “lesser evil” operates as a manipulative technique, much like the neoliberal slogan “there is no alternative” (TINA). In both cases, the spectrum of alternatives is artificially narrowed to create the illusion of fewer choices than actually exist. For example, while the United States has roughly fifteen multi-state political parties, the lesser evil strategy deliberately implies there are only two.
No, the First-Past-The-Post system + media polarisation makes it a two party system. If you had proportional election you would have more parties, because the rest votes don’t dissappear. The US election system is from the 1800s and outdated.
If you had proportional election you would have more parties, because the rest votes don’t dissappear.
The US election system is from the 1800s and outdated.
So, would the better option not be to fight for a better system or infiltrate one of the two parties and change it from within?
I think the biggest problem I have with the way the US has been working is that we just vote for the lesser evil and call it a day, thinking we’ve done our part. We’ve done all we can do. It makes things simple. It makes us feel good.
The real solution is a long, hard fight for change that will actually solve some of our problems. It involves convincing others, fierce public debate, and may result in violence. You will not be alone, but there will also be countless others who may not agree with your solution and will fight you every step of the way. Your opposition may be inspired by a genuine passion for a different solution. They may have an irrational fear of change. Some may simply benefit from the status quo and prefer to protect what they have than solve any problems for the rest of society. It’s so complicated and it’s just so much easier to offload that work to politicians.
Unfortunately, the most powerful among us know this and work as hard as possible to convince the politicians that they know better… or they just buy them out.
You are intentionally shutting out reality and choosing to believe that third party candidates are viable but they absolutely are not
You are intentionally shutting out the meaning of my comment.
Which is? If it’s not trying to convince people to piss into the void by voting third party, I’m all ears
Too often this option is presented by people who are deliberately manipulating you and causing you to think that you only have the two choices which each benefit them and neither you. Always consider who is offering this choice and why. The true lesser evil here is whatever you have to do to get out of the situation where this choice is being presented to you.
Yeah “lesser evilism” always supposes the choice is being made in a vacuum where there’s only 2 options and nothing can be done about it later, there will never be another choice.
Obviously if you were presented with two options and that was it. You would always pick the lesser evil.
It’s a farce.
There are never only two choices. It is impossible to actually construct a real world situation where in there are only two choices. Even in an elementary school, given a test with only on question on it and it only has two answers, you can eat the test, scribble on it, punch the computer screen, walk out, etc.
Even in prison with guards pointing guns at you and putting you in a position to do either A or B you have options.
However, the concept of lesser evil is a shallow abstraction of the real world experience of pragmatism. Amongst all of your options, what course of action leads to the most desirable outcomes?
This is a real thing. We do it all the time. People in positions of grave responsibility have to do it with consequences and constraints that are absolutely gutting. Let’s say the war has already started, well, now you have to make decisions about how to avoid losing the most strategically important objectives, even if that means people dying. In fact, the strategies employed in war force decision makers into these sorts of choices as a matter of course - an opponent knows you don’t want to make certain sacrifices and will therefore create pressures that trade off those sacrifices with strategic objectives. Sometimes it’s not even that they believe you’ll give up the strategic objectives but the delay you have when choosing will give them an advantage, or the emotional and psychological toll of being put in such situations repeatedly over a long campaign can create substantial advantages.
Lesser evil is rhetorical sophistry or mildly useful thoughts experiment when exploring the consequences of ethical frameworks in academia.
Depends on the context, but almost always a strawman imo.
Evil is simpler and easier to pull off than good (because you don’t have to value everyone in your equation), so “reasonable” compromises with evil compounded enough times leads to some pretty evil outcomes.
almost always a strawman
Tell me what party should I vote for then :(
Obviously true? In real life I’ve found it’s often worth doing a bit of thinking / effort to find a third option though. Not always possible though - like when voting - though I don’t think picking the least worst (imho) option when it comes to political representation is immoral
Yes, always.
A friend of mine puts it this way: “I don’t vote for who’s turn it is to lead the KKK either.”
The day the KKK has control over your friend’s day today existence, that will be a relevant policy.
I mean, couldn’t we all just join the KKK and vote in a more moderate grand dragon?
