Can base jumping be morally defended

[jupija]

found this abstract in BASE jumping can b morraly defended.
Can maybe some norwegian jumpers get hold on to the hole paper

ABSTRACTS FOR IAPS 2003 CONFERENCE
Can base jumping be morally defended?
Gunnar Breivik
Norwegian University of Sport, Oslo, Norway
Some sports involve risk. They may lead to serious injury or even
death. Most risk sports are accepted. They are morally defensible or at
least not forbidden by law. However some sports cause debates. In this
paper I will look at base jumping, one of the new sports that have
caused a lot of debates both in the media, among the public, and
among persons involved in the sport. It is time scholars take up the
debate. Base jumping is defined as sky diving from material objects
like bridges, antennas, rocks, mountains, buildings and the like. There
are two questions that need to be faced. One is whether base jumping
is morally acceptable, defensible or even good. The other question is
whether it should be prohibited if it is found to be morally
unacceptable, or leads to social costs above a certain limit. The first
part of the paper lists the various arguments that are raised against base
jumping. 1) Base jumping is too risky. It is unacceptable to risk ones
life in an unnecessary manner or for no benefit. 2) Base jumping leads
to harm for the families and friends of the jumpers. They are very
often scared, concerned, afraid and may in case of death, experience
deep sorrow. 3) Base jumping leads to unnecessary risks for the rescue
people, the mountaineers and the helicopter pilots, that try to rescue
the basejumpers when the jumps have failed. 4) base jumping leads to
economic and social costs for the society at large.
To answer these objections one could introduce utilitarian
counterarguments. From a cost-benefit perspective there are also
various positive consequences 1) for the jumpers themselves, the joy
and life quality they experience, 2) for the public through television,
films, commercials, magazines 3) for the development of new
technologies and new sport forms. In order to answer the objections to
base jumping I will however in my paper rather argue along the lines
of Joel Feinberg who defends the freedom to choose ones own life
goals. I maintain that base jumping should not be forbidden by law, as
we have seen in some countries. I think that most of the problems can
be solved by regulations of various kinds. However this does not mean
that base jumping is morally defensible under all circumstances. There
are various situations, circumstances, cases, that need to be discussed.
I try to define under what conditions base jumping is acceptable. The
right to jump does not mean that base jumping is a good activity. The
last part of the paper discusses whether base jumping even can be seen
as a valuable and good activity.

[baseninja]

Never understood why most people would run away from helping a victim of a crime, but if someone saw a jumper at 3am downtown, they wouldn't be able to call 911 fast enough...

Kind of sad that BASE has to be "morally defended", the question is to who?

[sabre210]

This may sound like a flippant, smart assed comment, but I can think of more important moral discussions worthy of a conference debate than this.

Here's one off the top of my head.

Can it be morally justified to spend precious tax payers money on a "University of Sport" so that students and delegates can spend further money debating tenuous sporting moral dilemmas?

Just look at the quality of the arguments against.

1) Base jumping is too risky. It is unacceptable to risk ones life in an unnecessary manner or for no benefit. (Too risky??? who measures this ???Unacceptable - to who??? who has determined it unnecessary??? No benefit to who - the jumpers, no benefit to tourism or business)

2) Base jumping leads to harm for the families and friends of the jumpers. They are very often scared, concerned, afraid and may in case of death, experience deep sorrow. (mmmmmmmm)

3) Base jumping leads to unnecessary risks for the rescue
people, the mountaineers and the helicopter pilots, that try to rescue
the basejumpers when the jumps have failed.

4) base jumping leads to economic and social costs for the society at large. (which are???? and there are no benefits - not to the individuals who jump, to the manufacturers who make the equipment who pay tax and employ people who also pay tax. No benefits to the communities whose businesses we use and hotels we fill and to the companies whose airline tickets we buy????



Take any one of the list below and just substitute it for basejumping in the arguments presented above.

Hang gliding, skydiving, rock climbing, sailing, pot holing (spelunking), mountaineering, aircraft piloting, skiing, snowboarding, rambling, water skiing, deep sea diving, mountain biking, skateboarding, fishing, motorbiking, car racing, soldiering, policing the streets.....etc etc. Any one would happily substitute and make perfect sense.

What a pointless, futile waste of time and resources. Un-be-****ing-lievable.

I'm off. Need to prepare for next weeks debate. "Can we morally justify anti-fungicidal socks"

(shaking head in utter disbelief)


ian

[zennie]

"Can we morally justify anti-fungicidal socks"

Absolutely not!!!

That would put the Tinactin folks out of business! People would lose jobs! That means folks would go on unemployment, which would drag down the economy! And, and...

[BASE xx]

I have been doing a search for the complete article. I could not find the article itself, but I found more details for it (which may help others in obtaining it):

Title: Can basejumping be morally defended?
Author: Breivik, Gunnar
Norges idrettshøgskole
Institutt for samfunnsfag
Topics: basejumping,morally defence, philosophy, sport
Conference: 31st annual meeting of the international association for the philosophy of sport
When: 2003-09-18 - 2003-09-23
Where: Cheltenham, England
Published in: 31st annual meeting of the international association for the philosophy of sport
Year: 2003
Publisher: the international association for the philosophy of sport
FORSKPUB-ID: r03023487


- Kristian

[QuickDraw]

Morals ? who's morals ?

31st annual meeting of the international association for the philosophy of sport ?

Sounds like a bunch of overpaid freeloading a$$hats trying to justify their own existance.

[Raymond Losli]

Quote:
31st annual meeting of the international association for the philosophy of sport ?
Sounds like a bunch of overpaid freeloading a$$hats trying to justify their own existance.
........................................

I think they call this......
Sucking the Public Tit

[sabre210]

I think they call this......
Sucking the Public Tit[/QUOTE]

Bingo Ray!!!!!!! Money, time and resources well spent I'd say.

ian

[willz]

All,
I emailed this guy the other day asking if there is a full article that is available to read on this topic or other research which he had done that can be obtained and reviewed. Today I got a response back which also included his presentation (slide show) in pdf. He also says that he "will write an article on the topic in a book that is forthcoming, edited by Simon Eassom." So those that are interested can keep an eye out...
There wasn't much in the slide show that wasn't in the abstract but if your interested in it, I can email it to you...

[460]

On the topic of morals and defending your rights:

This may seem a bit unrelated, but, my soon-to-be father-in-law quoted some famous writings from terrible dictators and various ideologies considered unpopular in the Western "democratic" world. He wrote it up, word-for-word, and changed only a few of the words such as, for example, "comrad" to friend, and changed the names of these controversial people to American forefathers or heroes or people such as that, and handed out the writeups to his co-workers. Everyone of them, except one of the dozen people who received a writeup, wholeheartedly agreed with dictators like Stalin, Musolini, Hitler, Castro, Hussein, and the likes. It's funny how easy it is to manipulate the opinions of the masses using simple Georbels-style propaganda.

[Mac]

its funny, i returned to work last week for a couple of days after 3+ months off from an injury and my Finance Director would not give me the chance to defend BASE jumping. On my first day back I was taken to the office and he came out with things like:

"If you BASE jump again you dont have a job"
"I dont care what other people do, what you do is too dangerous"
"The risk of you getting injured again does not suit our corporate goals"
"There must be something wrong with the sport if its illegal"
"Other injuries in other sports are acceptable, what you do makes it your fault"
"if its not wrong then why do you sneak around at night"
"you have a 50/50 chance of loosing your job if you require further surgery and more recovery time"

I stopped the conversation as I could see there was no point in arguing this with them. Today I find out if I require further surgery that will put me out for much longer, and with the added pressure of recovering as quickly as possible, I now have the pressure that it may lead to me loosing my job.

My lesson learnt here is that even if you are friends with your boss, if your sport clashes with their corporate goals, then BASE can not defended!
I wont be telling my future bosses what I do outside work..........

Michael

[ZegeunerLeben]

"The risk of you getting injured again does not suit our corporate goals"

>>My God I felt sick to my stomach when I read that. It's nice to know they're so concerned for your health and well being. Maybe you should just leave and find a job with a competitor and see how that suits their corporate goals. Hope you don't need a 2nd surgery let us know best wishes

[Mac]

well I have now seen my surgeon, and I require further surgery (my 3rd).....

I have recently applied for new a job, and when asked about my injury, I did it playing soccer........

Even if you think people are your friends, its not worth telling them what you do.......