>Stan said:
> >Frank said:
> >I agree wholeheartedly that there are way too many people on this
> >planet using way too many resources. As far as what to do
> >about it, I think we should do nothing.
> In my opinion this should include doing nothing to help
> people live longer. Use medicine to alleviate pain, but not
> to prevent dying.

I don’t have time tonight, but I think this is a very important part of
the puzzle. How to do what we can and know how to feel about the
tragedies we’re unable prevent. The outside interventions in other
people’s societies that have been failing us for a long time, sometimes
just multiplying the tragedy to come, need to be stopped by a
combination of being reinvented, and the wisdom of accepting the things
we can’t change.

Sometimes the problem with aid programs has been interpreted as making
people aid dependent, standing in line waiting for hand-outs, rather
than assisting them in becoming independent. It’s been one of the big
issues for the neocon radicals, used to attack government aid of all
kinds. In the Times today there were two stories on it. Front page a
story about how the Palestinian community has become totally aid
dependent and suffering now that their government is out of favor. Then
on the front of the Business Section Paul Wolfowitz, the neocon chairman
of the World Bank, was in the news for holding up dozens of agreements
due to poor protections against corruption. He gave it to seem that
lots of nations are demanding their handouts and perhaps not willing to
provide sufficient safeguards, others thought he was just being mean.

It reminds me of the special anger the neocons reserved for Bill Clinton
for taking their idea of reforming welfare, redesigning it as a ladder
for people to climb on rather than a trap to get caught it, and taking
the ‘wrath of God’ purpose the neocons really wanted away from it. He
got it enacted as an act of more intelligent generosity instead. Boy
they hated him for that….

So, just curing disease and feeding the starving children, the charity
button, is the wrong motive because it often just multiplies the
problem. There’s got to be a right motive for allowing some
preventable tragedies happen, other than the temptation many people are
drawn to, that helping other people is a kind of robbery and any tragedy
is just punishment for people being undeserving.

Phil