Phil: However, when one lowers one's standards, the danger is that it soon becomes a race to the bottom of the well.
Here's my personal race to the bottom. I was reflecting on how far I might go, were I a political dictator / American Hitler, to save Western Civilization -- libraries, museums, universities, major cities, and so forth -- from Muslim terrorists and extremist groups organized to destroy it.
I soon entertained the notion that I would be willing to destroy the entire Muslim world. It would not be an impossible task -- it would be horribly easy! -- and it would answer concerns that fighting dirty would bring more Muslims to the cause.
The USA has a little over 5,000 nuclear weapons. Russia has about 900, China about 200.
With about thirty nuclear weapons in the 2- to 5-megaton range, the US could destroy all civilization from Indonesia to Egypt. With fifty nuclear weapons of that power, we could make sure that no traces of organized human life were present within the boundaries of any Muslim nation.
That would leave us 4500+ nuclear weapons to deter any retaliative considerations. As hypothetical Hitler, my concern would be the effect of fallout on the West -- nuclear winter, increased leukemia and cancer in the Western fallout zones. I would have no qualms about destroying an entire civilization that was intent on destroying mine.
So the choice would be mine and I could easily go down in history as the most evil person who ever lived, or as a savior who took the hard choice, depending on who told the story.
The choice reminds me of the "baby or the Boticelli" choice, where both are in the canal in Venice and you can only save one. While I would opt for the baby in that individual choice, if it were a question of all art, literature, philosophy, reason, and science versus an Islamic theocracy forever -- destroying the entire Muslim world would be a no-brainer.
Consideration: don't art, literature, philosophy, and reason call us to higher values, and don't those higher values prelude civilization-destroying actions in their defense? Container or contents? A way of life or life itself? In this post I am entertaining the notion that a way of life may be more important than life itself.
That was part of my original question: if a higher standards lead to the destruction of the society holding the higher standards, is it valuable in itself? Or can higher standards be a form of suicide pact?
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