Quote:
Originally Posted by m21sniper
"Death is a better, milder fate than tyranny."
~Oscar Wilde
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You try it. Oscar was quite the scamp and wit, but he sure was talking out of the other side of his mouth after imprisonment and hard labor.
It is all too easy to look at starvation, disease and suffering as an abstraction, until you have to live it. Liberty and tyranny can cause people to rise up, but having a purpose and three squares is a life. After that we look to the pursuit of happiness.
Some will be helping, and some will be looting in Haiti right now. Is it always Darwin who must win, or is there some more noble element to human nature that makes us different from animals ?
Even some mammals will come to human aid. Dophins have saved the drowning man, and bears and wolves have saved children from freezing in blizzards. I think under the correct circumstances, compassion is natural to all mammals. You just haven't hit that space where the abstract becomes real, and YOU have the power to do something about it.
I am pretty sure you would not walk away from a collapsed building knowng that a screaming child would surely die without your aid. At least I hope you would not.