The nitty gritty of SHTF.

sorry, had some more thoughts after posting,

I KNOW I would have long term mental issues from this if it was a kid, no ifs ands or buts, I love children and the mere thought of having to do that makes my skin crawl.

I have only seen one dead child in my life and that was after a motor vehicle accident outside my old house. Even this little kid who I never knew got to me as I wondered who he could have been, would he have made a good dad? been a good man?

No, I think I would baulk in the face of having to do that to a child, if that makes me weak, so be it, but there are some lines I couldnt ever see myself crossing

Morality, I think I can add some clarity here and with claims for morality, as it's been talked about for about 2500 years by wiser and smarter people than me and I will attempt to bring the highlights, at least from what I understand they have brought to the world.

Evil is the initiation of force/violence/threats of force against others. If you start it you are evil or acting evilly if you like. If I stick a gun to someone's head and make them do something, I have initiated the force and therefor I am evil.

Morality is also fundamentally an absence of hypocrisy. A thief steals but doesn't want to be stolen from. A murderer murders but doesn't want to be murdered. Is it immoral to defend yourself against attack, of course not, it is not hypocritical to bring violence or force to those who have brought it to you. Easy right. What people do though is either mistakenly or deliberately confuse things with claiming it's relative, it is not. Oh, if "I'm starving, it's not immoral to steal someone's food" is suggested by someone, you may be desperate, but it is untrue as it is hypocritical to steal, as we have shown above. That is, it's an immoral act. Said starving person could have attempted a trade or asked for charity and perhaps kept pursuing a win-win negotiation of some kind until finding a situation that is mutually beneficial. The person who steals from the orchard is immoral because of their hypocrisy.

Now if I'm starving, I might well 'choose' to be immoral, though I am under NO illusion as to my morality in this case. I know I've done wrong, as ethics is defined by universal values, that is an absence of double standards as illustrated above. There's no 'true' justification for it, though many people have delusions of justification of their actions, and as I've stated already, negotiation could have continued until a suitable win-win is found. To say it's better than shooting them is true, in that it's both immoral 'and' evil to shoot them dead, though it's still immoral.

The reason people try their best to not be immoral, or try to redefine morality is to avoid the guilt/shame that most people feel [Sociopaths don't] for their actions. This is why we live in a world of people redefining morals and morality, 'oh its ok for government to use coercion' for instance is incorrect, it's evil and immoral by philosophical standards. Yet nobody talks about it, mostly because it's been incorrectly redefined.

Would I act immorally, perhaps, though as a prepper I'm fairly certain that the whole thing is about choices to 'not' be immoral.  Having more food means we can get through bumps in the world and perhaps be the focus of immoral peoples actions.  It has been this way for ever, those who trade and look for win-win the good, aka the moral and those who steal, the immoral. 

I hope that helps in understanding morality a little better, the confusion of which is the basis of many people's emotional difficulties in that they feel guilty for something that wasn't immoral or they didn't do.