From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Mon Nov 25 2002 - 13:46:32 MST
> Robert Bradbury wrote:
> > So extropes -- how can you justify these nice la-de-da philosophical
> > discussions while the bodies are piled higher and higher around
> > us each day? (This isn't directed at any recent ExI list conversants
> > specifically -- it is intended largely as a rhetorical question).
> >
> > Somedays I just wonder (a lot) about the gap between "our" reality
> > and that which pervades much of the world.
Nothing kills more people than bad philosophy. Nature takes its
toll, and we certainly must fight natural aging as strongly as we
fight other evils, but the vast majority of people on the planet never
reach the point of natural death because some human failing killed
them first. They starved because they live under a government that
prevents them from building a successful agricultural market or
even the infrastructure to move clean water. They died of AIDS
because the Americans insisted that their drug company's patents
were more important than African lives. They died of malaria because
environmentalist fearmongers were afraid of pesticides. They died
of curable, treatable, and preventable diseases because their
governments restricted trade in medicines or restricted research.
They died because they fell prey to charlatans hawking "alternative"
cures instead of real medicine. They died in a war over disputed
territory, or dispute over appropriate laws, or over religious
beliefs, or over trade restrictions. They died because they
expressed dissent to a tyrant. They died because failing economies
forced them to take hazardous jobs. They died because thugs took
their land and forced them to move into the desert.
Death is a tragedy, and it our duty to fight /all/ of its causes.
The "philosophical discussions" you decry are doing just that.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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