A question about friendship · 12:33am Jun 4th, 2014
So this thought popped into my head, and it's about friendship, which makes it relevant enough to post here, in my opinion.
How implausible does a hypothetical scenario have to be before a true friend is allowed to betray you? And I don't mean doing something counter to what you want because what you want is bad for you, or anything like that. I mean freely choosing to do something that they know is harmful to you, against your wishes, and generally with only ill intentions towards you.
For example, if I gained the means and intention to destroy the world and couldn't be stopped except by force, perhaps one of my friends would have to kill me. I'm not going to hold it against you if you would, hypothetically, choose to save the world in that case. On the other hand, I'm not going to call you a friend if you would backstab me for five dollars. Where in between those extremes is the zone of ambiguity?
Generally speaking, if they're going to backstab you for personal gain. They aren't really a friend.
If they backstab you because of something they rate higher than friendship to begin with, then that shouldn't really be considered backstabbing at all.
If they value family above all else and totally go against you for the sake of their family, I wouldn't consider it backstabbing on merit of the fact that, as friends, you should be aware of how important you are to them, Your standings and conditions should already be apparent.
As such, in this hypothetical scenerio, they should be allowed to betray you once something at risk that's greater to their respective ethics is being compromised.
You really answered your own question in here, I think. It's really about thresholds. How much of a friend, motivations, etc.
It's important to take into account the idea of 'character' as well. If you had a friend who believes strongly in the ideals of justice and honour, then no matter how friendly they are with you, if you turned heel, they will probably stop you. There's others who might do it for YOUR own good (think of parents who punish children to keep them 'on a path') and there's others who won't do anything no matter what because they believe in honour and loyalty to a friend.
It really depends on personal values, and how far they have to be violated before one single person would decide to do anything about it.
The ambiguity lies in the 'why'. If someone, a guy with high morals, or a guy who loves you, would backstab you for 5 dollars, that means that they'd have to have a pretty good reason. Being desperate, or having exhausted all other options, or madness, would drive someone to do that. Because one would probably have to be in a pretty dire situation before this became a viable choice.