{after reading this semi-cogent business, at Body and Soul
I wrote this partially coherent expostulism:
I too am burnt and looking toward rest.
but the Gates-as-Ghandi thing has got me all riled up.
where and when was it decided that any saving of human life is
always an inarguable good? I missed that completely. yet it seems to
be a given.
could it be the same old dualism we're trained to see the world in?
so that unless you accept that all saving of all humans all the time
is good, then what you're advocating is Nazi genocide, euthanasia?
and so even really cool kids in Chuck Taylors and original
motorcycle leather jackets will have to go away if they have
Down's Syndrome? is that it?
or we just keep saving lives and saving lives and trying to feed
greater and greater numbers, and don't forget water and places to
live.
one or the other and nothing in between.
my butt.
it's not about culling the weak. the weakest among us have risen to
positions of near Satanic power. and of course now they're the ones
most strongly advocating 'social darwinism'. now that they've wormed
their way into a central position genetically.
I've learned in my life that whenever someone starts trying to
force me to choose between two alternatives, I'm probably being
scammed.
is saving human life the ultimate absolute moral good? at a time
like this?
could it possibly be there are other things even more important
than individual human lives? that we may be saving some people now,
and condemning all people later? is it possible that that choice is
cowardly and in its fulness more cruel and deadly than any genocide?
there's a sea-otter die-off in California. Fish and Game says it's
a result of cat feces entering the near-coastal marine biosystem.
cats are cute. otters are cute. what a dilemma.
aren't we assuming godlike powers of life and death over almost all
living things, and at the same time completely abdicating the godlike
responsibilities that go with those powers?
is cowardice a virtue now?
agrarian societies of necessity evolve a relationship with 'seed
corn', edible grain that must be saved for there to be a harvest the
next year. successful agrarians get real hungry before they even
consider eating their seed corn.
this culture has eaten everything it's gotten its hands on.
the question I'm asking is, should we spend our diminishing
resources on the symptoms of our failing that are easiest to treat,
or on those difficult problems whose resolutions promise most to
sustain those who come after us?
thanks for reading this
mg
__________________
which I'm only posting for the great gaping hole it leaves in my ego when these things are sent and disappear without a ripple or a trace.
and of course I meant eugenics rather than euthanasia}
