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4thTimeLucky · 06-01-2003, 11:31 PM

Publius
I spent my whole Philosophy degree wondering if I would rather be an unhappy Socrates or a happy fool.
I am now of the conclusion that unless you value intelligence over happiness (and note the lack of any ethical codes based upon the absolute supremacy of intelligence) then even the smart person would choose to make their life happy, if ignorant, one.

Dragonlich
Sure, *we're* going to do okay. *We're* going to live the life of kings.

NB: This next part is not intended to be plaesant. Please skip if you are uneasy about talk of suffering.
----------
Seeing all those numbers and then a label next to them is never going to convey the horror of the reality. I have found that if I look at the figure "6 million Jews died in the Holocaust" I am completely unmoved. It means nothing to me. But if I am to sit down and read the account of the life of just one Jew - their business stolen, their children taken away, their home confiscated, the beatings, the train journey..... - then I find myself overcome by the barbarity of what occured and the devastation that this caused in their lives. I cannot comprehend the full enormity of 6m people meeting this brutal, violent and protacted end. Noone can. Their heart would break. That is why we take Genocide so seriously.

Now, let us ignore for a moment those with lack of clean water or sanitation and assume that these people live largely happy lives. Let us even ignore the 800 million who suffer chronic hunger. Let us just look at those who die.
Year in, year out a group of people greater in size than the population of Australia (or the population of Texas) will die from starvation or thirst. I will ask you to consider for a moment how painful one's life must be to die of sustained malnourishment or lack of water. Consider everything that makes you happy (hope, sport, books, films, work, DIY, children...) and then take on board the fact that these people will never have any of this open to them (or in the case of children and family, you will have to watch them die with you). They would not even have the energy to take a walk in the park - not that they have any parks. So now you have in your mind some picture of what a life must be like at genuine starvation level (though of course what you imagine will not come close to the true reality, just as we can never truly understand what concentration camp victims suffered). I would now ask you to imagine visiting Australia, Texas or New York (stricly one and a 1/2 NYs). You are walking through its cities and suburbs and every single person you see is suffering from a starvation or thirst that will soon kill them. You drive out of town to get away from it, but then the next town and the next and the next is filled with the same dying people. This is what the world is like. Of course you and I will never see any of it (*we* will be fine) unless we make the effort to do so. But regardless of whether we see it first hand or not, we know it is going on. And every year that population of Australia or Texas dies, only to be replaced by another population of 20 million people facing exactly the same fate. A triple Holocaust occuring year in, year out. Are those people unhappy? Are they miserable? I will let you answer that.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Just two causes of death - starvation and thirst. It does not include war or disease. It does not consider those who get enough food not to die, but are still in chronic hunger. In fact there is literally a whole world of suffering that it does not include.

--------------

The fact of the matter is that mankind is not "living in better conditions" than they ever were. For most of man's history people lived quite adequate subsistence lives. The environment ticked along quite nicely and people produced for themselves. There weren't cars or cinemas or jeans, but day to day life for almost everyone was quite adequate - and most of the world still doesn't have cars, cinemas or jeans. We now live in a world where the environmental degredation is throwing increasing challenges at the developing world. More important, however, is the economic system we live in. There is plenty of food to go round and almost every country on earth has enough resources to feed itself. However agricultural produce is "cheap" in land where people live on a $1 a day, and so this produce is sold to the first world, which pushes up the price and places it out of reach of the local population. And don't think that the revenues from the sale of food goes into raising that $1 a day lifestyle. It doesn't.

06-01-2003, 11:31 PM	#18 (permalink)
4thTimeLucky Psycho Location: 4th has left the building - goodbye folks	Publius I spent my whole Philosophy degree wondering if I would rather be an unhappy Socrates or a happy fool. I am now of the conclusion that unless you value intelligence over happiness (and note the lack of any ethical codes based upon the absolute supremacy of intelligence) then even the smart person would choose to make their life happy, if ignorant, one. Dragonlich Sure, we're going to do okay. We're going to live the life of kings. NB: This next part is not intended to be plaesant. Please skip if you are uneasy about talk of suffering. ---------- Seeing all those numbers and then a label next to them is never going to convey the horror of the reality. I have found that if I look at the figure "6 million Jews died in the Holocaust" I am completely unmoved. It means nothing to me. But if I am to sit down and read the account of the life of just one Jew - their business stolen, their children taken away, their home confiscated, the beatings, the train journey..... - then I find myself overcome by the barbarity of what occured and the devastation that this caused in their lives. I cannot comprehend the full enormity of 6m people meeting this brutal, violent and protacted end. Noone can. Their heart would break. That is why we take Genocide so seriously. Now, let us ignore for a moment those with lack of clean water or sanitation and assume that these people live largely happy lives. Let us even ignore the 800 million who suffer chronic hunger. Let us just look at those who die. Year in, year out a group of people greater in size than the population of Australia (or the population of Texas) will die from starvation or thirst. I will ask you to consider for a moment how painful one's life must be to die of sustained malnourishment or lack of water. Consider everything that makes you happy (hope, sport, books, films, work, DIY, children...) and then take on board the fact that these people will never have any of this open to them (or in the case of children and family, you will have to watch them die with you). They would not even have the energy to take a walk in the park - not that they have any parks. So now you have in your mind some picture of what a life must be like at genuine starvation level (though of course what you imagine will not come close to the true reality, just as we can never truly understand what concentration camp victims suffered). I would now ask you to imagine visiting Australia, Texas or New York (stricly one and a 1/2 NYs). You are walking through its cities and suburbs and every single person you see is suffering from a starvation or thirst that will soon kill them. You drive out of town to get away from it, but then the next town and the next and the next is filled with the same dying people. This is what the world is like. Of course you and I will never see any of it (we will be fine) unless we make the effort to do so. But regardless of whether we see it first hand or not, we know it is going on. And every year that population of Australia or Texas dies, only to be replaced by another population of 20 million people facing exactly the same fate. A triple Holocaust occuring year in, year out. Are those people unhappy? Are they miserable? I will let you answer that. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Just two causes of death - starvation and thirst. It does not include war or disease. It does not consider those who get enough food not to die, but are still in chronic hunger. In fact there is literally a whole world of suffering that it does not include. -------------- The fact of the matter is that mankind is not "living in better conditions" than they ever were. For most of man's history people lived quite adequate subsistence lives. The environment ticked along quite nicely and people produced for themselves. There weren't cars or cinemas or jeans, but day to day life for almost everyone was quite adequate - and most of the world still doesn't have cars, cinemas or jeans. We now live in a world where the environmental degredation is throwing increasing challenges at the developing world. More important, however, is the economic system we live in. There is plenty of food to go round and almost every country on earth has enough resources to feed itself. However agricultural produce is "cheap" in land where people live on a $1 a day, and so this produce is sold to the first world, which pushes up the price and places it out of reach of the local population. And don't think that the revenues from the sale of food goes into raising that $1 a day lifestyle. It doesn't. __________________ I've been 4thTimeLucky, you've been great. Goodnight and God bless! Last edited by 4thTimeLucky; 06-01-2003 at 11:41 PM..