Dearth

[yopele]

No one listened to Holmes.

[d0rkyd00d]

@Phaedrus

I think there’s a far cry between using stem cell research to try to cure diseases and letting politicians decide who may procreate. The former strikes me as a wonderful idea, that latter an abomination.

I realize that they are very different, that is why I used them to illustrate: stem cell research shouldn’t even be the subject of debate, the latter should. And I am curious as to why you think the latter is an abomination?

[Phaedrus]

Because the idea of a Republican banning a Democrat from being able to procreate, or vice versa, strikes me as arbitrary & ludicrous. Same for laws saying blacks can breed with whites, ad nauseum.

[Ierrellus]

Great discussions here! Thanks to all.

I realize that in some “underdeveloped” countries the notion of birth control is seen as infringement on their right to assert and multiply their kind, that there are some on our planet who still do not know what causes babies and that birth control for those who are educated, sensitive and caring may simply reduce their kind in favor of those who are not any of those things.
I’m not a religious person; but, the parable of the good Samaritan strikes me as getting to the heart of what we owe others. The Jews loathed the Samaratans (See the small book “The Sayings of Chairman Jesus”). so the parable was an in-your-face indictment of traditional morality. The Samaritan offered help without first considering 1. does this person deserve help?; 2. will helping this person just produce more undesireables such as he?; and 3. what do I get out of this?

[Mr_Predictable]

@Obw

I would say the latter - a bountiful supply mismanaged. There really seems no need for poverty. I’m always reminded of the idea that the resources and energy that goes into one “field” of cows could produce three “fields” of grain. There are many non ‘meat vs veg’ ideas ike that too, simply to do with tax reductions and so on.

That has to be true.

I have been all over the world and there seems to be plenty of room to create more produce.

That’s not the current focus of man though.

[Gobbo]

There is tons of most things.

We’re kept in a state of perpetual worry and fear.

There are even the systems available to essentially recycle the world back into the start of an equilibrium but this technology is kept down for control reasons.

[Ierrellus]

O.G.,
Yes!!! We are kept in fear by the notion of dearth, by belief in enemies (us vs. them), by apocalyptic ideas (“Revelations” tells of our future torments.), etc. Where (“ubi sunt?”) are those voices for reconciliation, for bountiful supply, for us and them, for (as expressed by Faulkner in his acceptance of the nobel prize for literature) the resilence of the human mind that can overcome all such adversities?