[pf] death; its place in a Positive Future world.

At 10:26 16/02/00 -0800, Molly wrote (in: Re: Violence / Non-Violence):
>I just don't have answers. I don't know what the options might be. ... 
>And I wonder where to draw the line. ...
> ... then I wonder how that killing would change my soul, my being. 
>IS it then OK to destroy someone's crops, stores, homes, burn towns to
>the ground, etc., if there is a greater good involved? ...
>
>And where do you draw the line once violence is OK? ...

**  This is more about death than directly about violence, though I see it
as illustrating that ethics is contingent, depends on the circumstances.

**  I've just come back from killing some plants (it's late on a bright
summer Friday morning) with my pocket knife. They were convolvulus
("Morning Glory") which grow like weeds here, tending to smother our plum
trees. And they did fight back - my arms are itching and coming up in
welts, from the white sap (blood) bubbling from the cut stems.

**  I realise I'm happy to kill them /while they are so successful/ (a
definition of weeds: "too" successful).
**  If they were an endangered species, I'd let them kill the bush they're
smothering.

**  You see the contingency? And how that could (/I/ think does) apply to
humans?

**  I'm /not/ talking about humans killing other humans, I'm talking about
death by illness and accident. Should we let the Ebola virus run rampant?
Not try so hard to stay alive? Now that we're weeds?

David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3142/Pg1-AD11.html
 or better: http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/
****************************************************


_____________________________________________________________
Who will win the Oscars? Spout off on our Entertainment list!
http://www.topica.com/lists/showbiztalk