Terror and pity, was Re: It's better for peculiar people never to have lived, I guess

From: Michael M. Butler (mmb@spies.com)
Date: Fri Jan 03 2003 - 06:39:25 MST


Lee Corbin wrote:

> If ">" is a preference relation, then
>
> normal > abnormal > null.

For some preference relationship(s). Yours?

What of the people who [say they] wish they had never been born?

? contented > suffering > null ?

? resigned > struggling > never-born ?

Says who? On what basis? On a bad day, I think things won't get better. What if bad days are as good as it gets?

The problems of informed versus retroactive consent are many. So are the problems of an entity's
chattel versus sovereign status--even sans the hard-edged duality implied by that way of putting it.

One philology source I've read claims the ancient Greeks and Romans didn't even have a word for
leaving newborns out on flat rocks if they didn't seem fit. Supposedly, the term "infanticide"
was coined by a much later Christian scholar. Go figure.

I have no recipe.

I have a solution, but the margins of this email are too small to contain the proof.

As is any subsection of an entire lifetime. Maybe.



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