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Originally Posted by Cowutopia
You just lost, get out of the thread.
Why do you think you have a right to life?
That's another thing. WHAT THE FUCK makes a cat different than a mosquito? It's fucking cuddly? How do you value life?!
How do you choose which animals are important and which aren't? You don't see people clamoring to protect salmon, do you?
You just lost, get out of the thread.
TJ held that truth to be self evident. I don't.
That's what he wanted. He was interested in living and pursuing happines so he wanted to create a place which would protect those things. So he wrote that shit down.
That "pursuit of happiness" deal for a lot of early americans included beating their wives and owning slaves.
can't wake up
What part of society, though? You work for an actuarial firm, which I assume does work for insurance companies. Insurance companies are generally considered by many to be the root of all evil, especially those in the medical industry. So how productive are you?
What about the guy that smuggles in illegal aliens for his factory in Omaha? He's scum, you might say, and I agree with you, and he does the area harm. But he pays his taxes, and the taxes fund the government that keep us safe and protects our assets.
What about the drug dealer? He's scum, too, but he's providing a service and something that people in society want. And the black market is a part of society, any large society. And the people buying from him, a lot of them are regular working guys like you or I who pay our taxes, buy stuff like good consumers, etc. Probably productive people, eh?
So, really, who decides what "productive" is? You? Ted Kennedy? Scary thought, indeed.
You know what? I don't think I'm that valuable. If I was going to do a mass killing to cull society down to its vitals, I'd off myself.
Our society is far removed from a pure ideal of society because of mass overpopulation. We've made it super complex. I fill a niche in the society - helping people deal with the laws of the society itself. It's only necessary at all because of the society itself. It borders on absurdity.
You asked me a question. You said "Do you think society has an obligation to protect the weak and powerless? I answered it.
The rulers of the society would have to determine or appoint people to determine the value of a person if it was necessary to start keeping track. So yeah, whoever Bush decided to appoint. Condie Rice would determine my value.
OMG SHIT CHANGES
You could in your illegal alien importing drug dealing scum evaluate value by comparing his worth to society (taxes generated) to the harm against society (taxes spent imprisoning his illegal immigrants.)
I don't have an equation for the value of a person. I don't think people are that valuable. And in our current society the value of an individual is heavily diluted.
If we were a society of 300 I think it'd be pretty clear who was valuable and who wasn't, and the leader of that shindig would make the judgements in any case. Unless it was majority rules. If 151 people think "Bob" is hurting Taco Island, Bob's getting offed.
And hey, societies functioned like that. Ours still does to an extent. Serial rapists put to death are not valuable to the society. Hence, dead. Or imprisoned, though imprisonment just uses tax money keeping a useless sack of shit alive for no reason.
Last edited by Cowutopia; 04 May 2005 at 03:22 PM.
can't wake up
Those rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence have nonetheless been expanded to all American citizens over the past 230 years. Thats one of the things that happens in a society, it evolves.
So you say that society has no obligation to protect anyone weak, just the productive and valuable, but you have basically no idea or criteria for what makes someone productive or valuable. Thats what I mean when I said you havent thought these things out. And maybe you can start looking at viewpoints other than your own from an empathetic POV, which Im sure would benefit you greatly.
I have though it out. Everyone in this thread who has an opinion on this is making a value judgement on the child.
Some people think it has value because it's got a shot at life. I don't.
fuck that noise. You could tell me every new baby has a chance to be the next Einstein. It doesn't make me want to try and save every egg and sperm because we might lose the winning combination.
Everyone has their own criteria for what makes the kid valubale. A lot of it just stupid though.
Like with kittens.
So here we are again. What makes your opinoin, or value judgement on the life of this child, more important than anyone else's, (including the mother.) and who is to say so?
Last edited by Cowutopia; 04 May 2005 at 03:28 PM.
True, but the context of something is importent to consider when quoteing other people.
anyway. It is not a good idea to quote something that at the time it was said only applied to one select group, in an argument that is discussing a concept of life that applies to a very large group.
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