On Topic Discussion A serious talk about the value of human life...

[luckynumbah7]

I do think social engineering is far from always a bad idea.

 

[Dominus]

It would help if the knowledge had a sight reminder. Very visual animals, people. Sheer knowledge isn't enough.

Site of the Nazi death camps didn't seem to deter people from murdering 6 million people up close and personal.

I'm sorry, I do not have the same faith in people like you.

I apologize if I have offended you.

 

[luckynumbah7]

Site of the Nazi death camps didn't seem to deter people from murdering 6 million people up close and personal.

I'm sorry, I do not have the same faith in people like you.

I apologize if I have offended you.

You missed the point. Those camps weren't in general sight, no sirree. Not like the pictures of black lungs on cigarette packets were. Testing social engineering and all.

I don't subscribe to faith, generally speakin'.

Another way to put it is most animals won't try to change something until it becomes personal. They'll test it or try their damnedest to ignore it, or they'll just run. Which is exactly what people do as well. Generally speaking, of course.

 

[eastofeden]

I am amazed at how fast this can go from the value of a human being to animal rights. Do some care more about the feral cats than they do for the man who shares an alley with them?
How about the hungry child? (If only we had spared it this life)

They are not mutually exclusive.

A person can care equally about all life...and please leave the fetuses out of the equation.

I was wandering through a yearbook the year after I left high school the other day and for some reason I was shocked to see the clubs I founded were still running..never even occurred to me....and I was very happy....

One was the Ecology Club. We started the first recycling station in the South San Jose area where we had huge bins for paper and bottles....and a line of cars that waited to drop them off. We used the money we made to donate to Greenpeace and to plant trees....

It was my idea....and I implemented it....

Another was the Social Action Club. This was a busy one. We did the UNICEF thing in October...in November we raised money and went door to door as well to feed families...and we fed alot of them for Thanksgiving. People were very generous. In December we raised money and went to convalescent hospitals to visit people and give them a gift..we talked to them...did a Christmas Show....

Then there was the March of Dimes that took up the new year....

Again..my idea..I implemented it...because I CARE about other people.

I also volunteered at Agnews State Mental Hospital ...and that bastard Reagan closed it down and put them in the street.

Today..when someone insists on buying me a present..I tell them to please donate to Father Flanagans Boys and Girls Home...or St Judes or Stanford's Children's Hospital...for many many years now.....they can do it in my name..or theirs... or anonymous...

I could go on but the thought that one cares about the earth and ALL the life on it INCLUDES human beings...and wanting to keep the population in check due to the problems they will face with global warming and lack of food and water in alot of places IS caring about human beings....

I am concerned about the people who are already here....and I want to leave a better planet for the people who have yet to be born...

...and I also care about animals...and the environment...and the planet...and I think it is kinda insane to think you can ignore the only home we have and claim to care about life...and I am amazed that you equate caring about all living things to not caring about human beings...

May I ask...is this discussion religious based? It has that feel...I have heard preachers say alot of these things.

 

[luckynumbah7]

Another way to put it is most animals won't try to change something until it becomes personal. They'll test it or try their damnedest to ignore it, or they'll just run. Which is exactly what people do as well. Generally speaking, of course.

Another way to put it is most animals won't try to change something unless they both recognize it as a harmful deviation and until it becomes personal.

Missed a rather important addition, there. For the black lung and other imagery I'm referring to the testing that's been done with smokers and tobaccy-of-choice reduction/elimination.

 

[MakeDigitalLove]

This sounds like social engineering, which has always been a bad idea.

The fact is changing people's attitude on anything is very hard to impossible. They proved long ago that smoking causes lung cancer and chewing causes mouth cancer. This does not seem to stop people from smoking and chewing. We know this because we just moved back north from the south where everyone was chewing and smoking.

Look, we can't even convince some people to be nice to pets. What on earth makes you think people will ever change their eating habits?

If anything I have said offends you, I apologize. It was purely unintentional.

Nothing here has offended me, I’ve been chased out of a bar being called a faggot with a friend, that didn’t offend me. Just having a conversation.

It’s only hard or impossible if you make yourself believe so, beside health issues and allergies changing your eating habits just takes a bit of meal planning and dedication. You get to a point to where it falls into place, I know it’s not going to be an easy transition for everyone to make and it wasn’t for me quite a few times but I did it because I wanted to and dedicated myself to doing it.

The problem is people don’t want to take the effort or if it becomes to hard they give up, which is why you see a lot of people pop up in the gym after New Years and that slowly deters off, because actually losing weight and maintaining that weight takes effort, work and dedication. You as an individual decide whether or not that’s worth keeping up with.

I am amazed at how fast this can go from the value of a human being to animal rights. Do some care more about the feral cats than they do for the man who shares an alley with them?
How about the hungry child? (If only we had spared it this life)

Why choose one or the other? Why can’t we care about and save both? Give both homes, a place to eat? To me both of them deserve help just as equally.

I personally don’t separate the human value of life to animal value of life, I think they’re both equally important.

I’m not trying to rag on humans, there are plenty of good people out there that do things to just help, not for selfish reasons, because they see someone in need and they want to help. I love these people and wish more people would get off their asses and be more like them.

I have to ask, what makes you think people do? Barring a basic conception of the thing most people are unable to give first-hand examples beyond themselves. That does not indicate actual understanding, to me. Most people can pick out a gross exaggeration; as can the the other 'higher mammals'. Elephants lieing about how much work they're contributing for the group effort, as a slightly more benign example, so they deliberately fudge how something looks. But regarding overall knowledge and application, it seems to be thin on the ground everywhere.

I would agree, I just think we have a better understanding of all of the things we do and the ramifications of what that might do to others, animals and our environment. Though for some of us, regardless if it’s negative or positive to said group, we do it anyway for a multitude of reasons.

And personally I just don’t understand how people can continually do something that has a negative affect when they know before hand, outside of the fact that they are just selfish and aren’t empathetic or sympathetic because it doesn’t affect them.

 

[luckynumbah7]

And personally I just don’t understand how people can continually do something that has a negative affect when they know before hand, outside of the fact that they are just selfish and aren’t empathetic or sympathetic because it doesn’t affect them.

One of my cats does that shit all the time. He's the usually lovable, extremely healthy and rather dim one. Slightly dimmer than average, but unless you think other animals likely do a better job on the planet (I'm pretty sure the Cephalapods might but I wouldn't put cent one on dolphins) then you'd get similar problems either way. We're certainly not the only species who've managed throughout history to engender its own and other's demise through what I can only describe at the moment as base animal ignorance.

 

[Dominus]

You missed the point. Those camps weren't in general sight, no sirree. Not like the pictures of black lungs on cigarette packets were. Testing social engineering and all.

I don't subscribe to faith, generally speakin'.

Another way to put it is most animals won't try to change something until it becomes personal. They'll test it or try their damnedest to ignore it, or they'll just run. Which is exactly what people do as well. Generally speaking, of course.

Yes they were, to the soldiers, doctors, and other nazi sympathizers who operated the camps as well as the commanders, high ranking officers, etc.

 

[luckynumbah7]

Yes they were, to the soldiers, doctors, and other nazi sympathizers who operated the camps as well as the commanders, high ranking officers, etc.

No, they weren't, not in the manner I'm referencing. Compartmentalization is part of the key to a dictatorship.

 

[zoltanspawn]

And believing humans have souls and not animals, I think, too, that human life has more value inherently than animals.

Would you be willing to describe a little bit about what your notion of the human soul entails?

Is it a supernatural counterpart of our personalities? Is it an eternal carrying-on of our individual point of view? Is it our mind, our life of mentality, separate from our bodies? Or is it some sort of self, utterly unlike our own?

And for bonus appreciation, can you say a little why you think humans have souls? Have you had experience of your own soul, or observed others'? Lacking that, have you reasoned that humans must have souls, or accepted the notion on religious authority?

(For fairness' sake, I believe we have personalities, points of view and mental life, but that these things are not supernatural, eternal or independent of our bodies; and that these attributes are shared with other animals.)

 

[peeonme]

They are not mutually exclusive.

A person can care equally about all life......and I am amazed that you equate caring about all living things to not caring about human beings...

May I ask...is this discussion religious based? It has that feel...I have heard preachers say alot of these things.

I started this thread out of a concern that I have that human life is held in low regard. I know many animal lovers, I have a pet myself.
But, when I see man killing man constantly I have to ask when the cheese slid off of our cracker. I am not speaking of 2 guys with a grudge shooting it out. We see the massacre of Innocent people over and over again. We have always had guns and people have always shot other people. But what we see today is different than "he slept with my spouse so I killed him" stuff.

Angry males decide that they have the right to kill school children or shoot up a church. I have to ask what changed? We see homeless people and now it's "just the way it is".

This discussion is not about religion, when you questioned me about God earlier in the thread I mentioned the "clock winder" theory.
I don't subscribe 100% to it, but those who do believe that God started it all and walked away, that he does not intervene in human affairs. Thomas Jefferson was said to be a deist and I found it interesting that in the declaration of independence Jefferson made a reference to "natures God".

I believe that the way our reproductive systems work that we are here by chance, about 250 million swimmers and one (maybe two)
might find an ovum. So I don't think that God decides which cell gets the gold medal.

So, if someone has a thought about when, how and why people got the thought that if they were pissed off they could just go kill a group of people I would like to hear it.

 

[zoltanspawn]

So, if someone has a thought about when, how and why people got the thought that if they were pissed off they could just go kill a group of people I would like to hear it.

This may fall in line with your suspicions of secularism and humanism since it's probably a depiction of evolutionism, but anyway...

 

[luckynumbah7]

So, if someone has a thought about when, how and why people got the thought that if they were pissed off they could just go kill a group of people I would like to hear it.

Not a chance. Whenever I try people start pissing and moaning about how the problem is really 'x' instead of the interplay of intricate social connections, expectations and basic human reaction.

It's kind've like how when you created the thread you framed the abortion thing to be conceptualized in a specific way, while in reality many people do not have the same definitions of 'sentient life' or 'soul' or a large cognitive distinction* or any of the other various conceptions of such that you, yourself, may believe. There's a lot of things people refuse to accept, after all, and one of them is definitions that are outside of their own understanding. But can't get very far if we can't even agree on the definitions, now can we.

*Yeah yeah, I think we're at the top, or close enough to as to make little difference these days. But in the grand scheme, I've severe doubts that we differ from the rest of earth's animals too much.

 

[zoltanspawn]

Not a chance. Whenever I try people start pissing and moaning about how the problem is really 'x' instead of the interplay of intricate social connections, expectations and basic human reaction.

Aha, so it's the interplay of intricate social connections, expectations and basic human reaction?

 

[luckynumbah7]

Aha, so it's the interplay of intricate social connections, expectations and basic human reaction?

It's not necessarily the information people disagree with, at least not that I can tell. It's the examples, and that the examples always seem flat when they're discussed due to the necessary narrowing of focus that aims a discussion. What isn't said looms large & that includes public vs personal fear.

 

[mikey3000]

Like most other resources on this plant, human existence needs to be managed accordingly. When the right of reproduction is abused it should then be regulated and turned into a privilege.

 

[luckynumbah7]

Like most other resources on this plant, human existence needs to be managed accordingly. When the right of reproduction is abused it should then be regulated and turned into a privilege.

....And then there's Mr Eugenics right here.

There's a difference between forced sterilization and leaving someone's fertility up to themselves. It never ends well when you dole shit out like a privilege instead of it be considered a responsibility.

 

[zoltanspawn]

Like most other resources on this plant, human existence needs to be managed accordingly. When the right of reproduction is abused it should then be regulated and turned into a privilege.

Ideally, everybody would be sterilized, and reproduction would be enjoyed through just administration.

The problem is that it would indeed be very hard to justly administrate reproduction, and the rich would simply abscond with the privilege. On the other hand, we regularly negotiate with imperfect governance, so I'm not certain reproduction is so sacrosanct it, too, shouldn't be subject to the same.

I think a lottery (in which the winners have their sterility reversed) is a fair idea.

 

[luckynumbah7]

Ideally, everybody would be sterilized, and reproduction would be enjoyed through just administration.

The problem is that it would indeed be very hard to justly administrate reproduction, and the rich would simply abscond with the privilege. On the other hand, we regularly negotiate with imperfect governance, so I'm not certain reproduction is so sacrosanct it, too, shouldn't be subject to the same.

I think a lottery (in which the winners have their sterility reversed) is a fair idea.

Or! Instead of throwing ourselves off the eugenics cliffside head-first (tends to be the end result eventually when so many people have so many reasons why x should breed but y shouldn't for all sorts of nebulous and nonexistent reasonings) - instead we could start with some of the basics regarding the important distinctions of personal responsibility, sex education and birth control. And abortion. And people not pretending that those have been given a fair shot would be a start.

 

[zoltanspawn]

It's kind've like how when you created the thread you framed the abortion thing to be conceptualized in a specific way, while in reality many people do not have the same definitions of 'sentient life' or 'soul' or a large cognitive distinction* or any of the other various conceptions of such that you, yourself, may believe. There's a lot of things people refuse to accept, after all, and one of them is definitions that are outside of their own understanding. But can't get very far if we can't even agree on the definitions, now can we.

And sometimes people just want their biases confirmed, never mind those pesky opinions that conflict with their own.