So if you loved your brother dearly and everybody else knew this, you would feel less guilt if he died while you were on a hiking trip together with a group of other people?

Thinking back to how the cliff ledge where he'd been standing suddenly began to collapse, and everyone else had simply stood there, frozen, and you instantly lunged towards him, and actually managed to just just brush his finger tips... but by that time you had fallen over the edge yourself.

Then WHUMPH! an out-jutting tree broke your fall, knocking the wind out of you like the fist of a god. You hung there, bent double, bleeding and bruised, unable to draw even the shallowest breath, and could do nothing but watch in the slow motion vision of the adrenalin rush, as your twin brother and best friend in all the world fell... and struck a sharp outcropping with a sickening wet crack... and tumbled... and fell again... and hit... and rolled... and fell again... and...

Well, I'm not sure, but I think I'd feel guilty after that. "Auto-flagellation" indeed; Constant thoughts of 'If only I'd been a little faster!', even though everyone who saw the event says, 'A little faster? You can't beat yourself up for not being super-human!'

Unfortunately I have no such brother myself, so I guess I can't be sure.

My own little brother, by contrast... well, he has been diagnosed as psychotic, I'm pretty sure it would be correct to say that he hates me, and I can't honestly deny that I feel he's pretty worthless as a human being.

I don't want him to die (I don't want anyone to die), but if we were ever in a situation together, alone, where I had to decide whether to let him die or take a great risk to my own safety in exchange for a small chance of saving him... the choice is obvious.

And I wouldn't feel guilty about it, I don't think. A little sad and angry at the unfairness and cruelty of the world, but no more than I do when I think about some distant newspaper tragedy.

What do you think?