Comment on On Caring

Wed, 15 Oct 2014 22:50:30 GMT

A lot of people around here see little difference between actively murdering someone and standing by while someone is killed while we could easily save them. This runs contrary to the general societal views that say it's much worse to kill someone by your own hand than to let them die without interfering. Or even if you interfere, but your interference is sufficiently removed from the actual death.

For instance, what do you think George Bush Sr's worst action was? A war? No; he enacted an embargo against Iraq that extended over a decade and restricted basic medical supplies from going into the country. The infant moratily rate jumped up to 25% during that period, and other people didn't fare much better. And yet few people would think an embargo makes Bush more evil than the killers at Columbine.

This is utterly bizarre on many levels, but I'm grateful too -- I can avoid thinking of myself as a bad person for not donating any appreciable amount of money to charity, when I could easily pay to cure a thousand people of malaria per year.

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