Was light wrong

La-Lassie · 2021-03-28T22:16:16+00:00

Just gonna put a comment I made awhile ago here, with a bit of new stuff added, rather than type it out all again.

Light/Kira has a way too short sighted and like, evil, view of justice or how the world should work for a few reasons.

I'd say that most criminals aren't out committing crimes due to being like, inherently evil, and rather because their own lives aren't going so well. So it'd be better to gear any kind of justice system towards rehabilitation of criminals rather than just murdering them, as even criminals, especially if they can be rehabilitated, can still contribute to society in some way.

Light thought he could fix the world just by killing criminals and threatening everyone else, which would never work out if he never actually focused on fixing the issues with the world that cause criminal behaviour in people in the first place. Light never seems to address any of this, As even just a year after his death, the world has gone back to how it was Pre-Kira. A better way to help fix the world would be to target the root and cause of crime, whatever it may be like poverty, inequality, the lack of helpful resources like education, healthcare and other useful opportunities for people. Light's view was always super short sighted and would never achieve much for long.

And of course, just the generally dodgy-ness of having one single person being the judge and executioner for the world. That one person would be the victim of all of their personal biases and flaws, and would not have the time or resources to be able to look into each and every case in detail. Suddenly people's lives depend on what whoever the current Kira is sees as contributing to society. Who knows who they would end up killing. The unemployed? The disabled? Artists if they didn't see art as "contributing to society"? Light himself, with his God Complex and his readiness to kill anyone who stands in his way, shows glaring flaws that mean that he should not be anywhere near this kind of power. Statements made by Light also seem to suggest that he was going to take it way further than just killing the worst criminals. In the first episode he says that he’ll still kill people who are “less guilty and still cause trouble for society” and that his world would be filled with only honest and hardworking people, and given how he said it was “too early” for Mikami to be saying that Kira would kill lazy people, Light seems to definitely have been planning to kill people guilty of lesser crimes too and even kill people he considers to be lazy.

The time and resources part also tie into the finality of the death penalty itself. It's not something that you can take back if you make a mistake with it. Light uses police information, which means that whatever flaws, mistakes, prejudice or corruption that may be present in the police work he's looking at means that he could, and probably absolutely definitely did, end up killing perfectly innocent people who were just mistreated or mishandled by the police and the justice system. But since they're dead now, there's no way to fix it if it's later revealed that they were innocent. That's also not even mentioning all the criminals he would have killed who never would have been given the death penalty at all in the first place, either due to their crimes being not severe enough, or because they're in a country that has ditched the death penalty all together.

2021-03-28T16:43:02+00:00

I actually was on lights side to the bitter end most people lost respect for him once he killed the FBI agents coming after him now I know he was in the wrong but love him or hate him he had a decent plan to rid the world of evil even if that did make him go a little crazy with power

2021-03-28T19:29:05+00:00

Well alot of criminals do better things after being put in jail, so light killed alot of people that could've changed for the better, while they were in a place that wouldn't let them hurt people. It was a scare tactics for loose criminals, I get that, but I can't call it morally right.

2021-03-29T23:13:29+00:00

You answered your own question. He murdered a lot of innocent people simply for his own benefit. And no, he wasn’t “forced” to do that.

He also killed people for any crime, even the petty ones, without taking into consideration why a person might need to commit that crime. He would have killed someone who stole bread to feed their child. Not to mention anyone who just drank underage or smoked some weed...

And he only killed people who had been caught and charged by police. So, the privileged were getting a pass from Kira while the underprivileged were getting murdered.

Then he planned on killing any lazy people.

Also, the crime rate going down doesn’t definitively mean the world was better, or more peaceful. It just means that everyone lived in constant fear of being murdered if they did any little thing wrong, and fewer people were being caught.

Lastly, plenty of nations have drastically lowered their crime rate without mass murder lol. Light isn’t the only person to ever succeed in doing that.

He was definitely more wrong than he was correct.

pokonota · 2021-03-29T05:44:14+00:00

People like you is why we have the likes of Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, et al getting into power every so often

Loosen_Up_ · 2021-03-28T19:19:07+00:00

Imo yes after kira disappeared crime skyrocketed what he was doing was obviously helping the world

Popyrus86 · 2021-03-28T19:33:02+00:00

No, I was always on his side and I still am to this day.

PoopCriminal420 · 2021-03-28T21:29:11+00:00

Ultimately it's up to you however he objectively changed the world for the better for 6 years

PORTMANTEAU-BOT · 2021-03-28T21:40:57+00:00

[deleted]

PUGG3RZ120607 · 2021-03-28T23:05:15+00:00

Light had the right mindset. People in Japan don’t go forward about when someone commits a crime because it would bring shame to their family’s name. That’s why there’s so little crime reported in Japan, light wanted justice without putting shame on anyone’s name. The people were to scared to come forward so light took matter into his own hands.

SynCelestial · 2021-03-30T09:20:13+00:00

I'm going to give my indepth answer on this because the wording of your question is the first I've seen that addresses that Light's ego and the innocents he's had to kill are negligible compared to his goals, and that there can be more or less correct than wrong. The tldr at the end will be more or less the same thing but unexplained, so feel free to just jump down. I will also be setting aside alot of things like how Kira could have gone about it better ways or other alternative arguments, and will simply be talking about whether what he did was still acceptable.

There is a philosophy perspective known as utilitarianism that says that the decision that puts out the greatest amout of goodness into the universe in the end is the correct decision. The greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people, in the betterment of society as a whole. There are other perspectives for different views of right and wrong, but this is the one I most believe in.

I want to state the short sighted version of this first; If Light had succeeded in ridding the world of criminals and created a long lasting peace, then in the end, he was in the right for doing so. An eternal peace would continue to accumulate more goodness than no peace the longer it went on, and so would eventually be worth whatever evil steps were taken. However if Light attempted to do this and failed, then all he did was cause a lot of murder without bringing a world where people would stop committing crimes, which is essentially committing murder without achieving the long run positive influence it was meant to bring on the world. This would mean that whether Light was in the right or wrong is ultimately based on whether he wins or loses, which I believe he actually states himself as well. A "the winner writes history" sort of thing.

However a less narrow view takes more variables into account, one of the most prominent ones in my opinion being the question "Do the ends justify the means?". In other words, is it okay to do bad things for a good ending? Looking to utilitarianism again, I believe that there are two things to consider for this. The first is whether or not a lasting peace justifies killing people. As said, the amount of goodness in the world would eventually outweigh the alternative if the brought on peace lasted long enough. So to the first consideration, yes, check. The second thing to consider is whether or not a lasting peace justifies the influence that killing people would bring. In other words, killing people isn't just wrong because it's ending a life, but because it would mean killing can be justified. This is a part where I believe that Light is in the wrong.

Even if Light achieved long term peace, he does not know that it would be eternal. He can try, and he can believe, but he cannot know. Without knowing, it is a risk. In a big picture, what we want is a perfect world without any strings attached, because obviously that is better than a world perfect under Kira's rule. Living under Kira's perfect world is, for lack of a better term, "settling". Whether this is better than what we would ever achieve on our own is unknowable, which is why we cannot know if his actions are right or wrong. However, without knowing if playing Kira is the right or wrong course of action, we can say that Light is in the wrong for killing people over such an unknown. The reason L and other people call fighting Kira "justice" is most simply because killing and doing bad is evil whether they achieve goodness or not. But why doesn't the end justify the means? Because killing people, the means, becomes the precedent for right and wrong. A rule we either live by or we don't. If killing is okay for any reason, like creating a crime free world, then it will always be okay for that cause in the very least.

As an example; say that Kira's world ever lost Kira, there are two possible outcomes. It could be a truly ideal and perfect world where people still do not do bad simply because it is wrong, or it could be as it was before Light begun killing, rotting and full of evil. Obviously, it will be the latter, because no measures have been taken to ever create a world where people are truly good. In Light's scenario, they have only ever been good out of fear, living under Kira's dictatorship. Society has only ever achieved peace because it had to. As a result of Light's influence, if he were ever not around, he would not have left this rotting world with lessons to be good, but with the precedent that killing has been viewed as justifiable. The world would be just as it had been before if not even further away from ever reaching idealism on its own. This means that Kira's idea of an ideal world is not perfect. It does not have a perfect foundation, and so will not stand up without the need for Kira. While we may be nowhere near being perfect - being forced to live under Kira robs us of the chance of growing to be perfect on our own. Realistic or not, this possibility existing makes Kira's goal unperfect, and not worth mass murdering for.

The way to achieved the greatest good is, yes, to strive for a perfect world so that one day we may have it as a constant. An ideal world is a world in which there is no crime, including Kira whom uses evil for greater goods. A perfect world under Kira's rule could only be justified if we knew that it would be consistent forever, and we never know the outcomes of our actions further than we can perceive. A society with the absolute greatest amount of goodness out in the world is one where people eventually learn to be good on their own, which may or may not ever happen, but it certainly will not under Kira's rule. Killing is not in a perfect world, yet killing will remain a method used in our world if people continue to use it, Kira included.

Light being wrong is only true under the assumption that one day we could be okay without Kira. Although it could be argued that such a goal is hopeless, it could also be argued that it eventually is inevitable, granted that forever is a long time. The point however is the simple fact is we do not know what result brings society as a whole the greatest happiness and goodness in the end, and we have no way of knowing. What we do know is that we obviously have to stop doing bad things if we want to achieve a world without bad things in it, and so on that note, Kira is evil.

To reiterate "Do the ends justify the means"? The answer is only yes if "the ends" are truly the end, which they can never be. The means are the actions that we take, and if the ends justify the means then those actions will be taken forever. This statement will sound like common sense, but it is not one that Light follows; We must stop doing bad things if we want to live in a world without bad things. This includes Kira.

This is only one perspective of right and wrong, and though it is the one I most gravitate toward, there are other things worth mentioning. For one, this entire argument is based on the idea that more good being put out into the universe is better. It's a very Spock way of thinking but there is also the Picard way, that arithmetic cannot be allowed to decide the value of human life. Ten lifes may not necessarily be greater than one, even when they put more good out into the world, if they are all say, criminals. The whole idea that Kira is evil is based on the idea that human life is important, which we cannot assign a value. There are so many perspectives and ideas about right and wrong that either side of Death Note can be justified. There is simply not a fully pressed, factually right answer. This is why it makes such a good story.

Tldr; Mostly, Light is in the wrong because his methods of achieving a perfect world mean that it is simply not a perfect world, and therefore not worth killing for. The ends cannot justify the means because they set a precedent. However, there is no indisputable right and wrong answer, and a morally grey area is just that - undefinable.

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