Believe it or not, there's a huge gray area between "real-life jerk" and "acting selflessly a lot." Just because I'm not the latter doesn't mean I'm the former.

What it means to me to value human life is to do something (an action) that proves it on a regular, ongoing, long-term basis, based on your own abilities and means. It's a big sliding scale. If Bill Gates sponsors one kid in Africa at $25/month, that's worth significantly less than a McDonald's burger-flipper doing the same thing. Similarly, working part-time at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen if you're disabled and in a wheelchair but have your own full-time job is worth a lot more than a rich & bored housewife that does the same thing.

Get where I'm going with this? Whatever it is you do, be it spending time and effort or money, it has to be something semi-substantial and noticeable to you and your place in life. This is just my opinion, so don't rip me a new asshole if you disagree with it.

Now...There's a counter-argument to the whole donating-your-time thing. Doing something to help other people that also makes YOU feel good is a double-edged sword. It's my personal opinion that a lot of people do it because they enjoy the feeling it gives them. In other words, they help others to help themselves. It's like that warm feeling you get when you spend a lot of money on a specific gift for someone and they absolutely love it. It feels good. It helps make the money or time you spent worth it. It can even be the motivation for spending a lot of time or money. So, you might say that I don't inherently trust even the most seemingly altruistic of actions. Again...This is just my opinion; but if doing nice things for people made you feel bad instead of good, I suspect the significant majority of people that do these things now, would stop.

So you think that we should share our wealth based on what we earn?

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RIP ROAD WOES 12/2/2012

No, Sonic, that's not what I said, nor what I meant. I'm saying it's a lot easier to donate 0.01% of your income than to donate 5% of it.

I haven't even said people should be, or try to be, selfless.

I think - and correct me if I'm wrong, Roland - that he's saying 7% of Bill Gates' charity should be a hell of a lot more than 7% of Squeaky McFlippaBurger's. If Squeaky's sponsoring one kid in Africa, then Bill Gates should comparatively be almost single-handedly trying to eradicate malaria in Africa (which he is, incidentally).

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I blog, I tweet. When I'm not writing or goofing around on Seahawks.NET.

I don't think his point was that Bill Gates has more money than a burger flipper like fenderbender.

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RIP ROAD WOES 12/2/2012

Well, I'd vote for: More than we spend on destroying them.

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Talent can get you to the playoffs.
It takes character to win when you get there.

I would totally pay a million bucks to save somebody's life if I had it. I mean at least I think I would.

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Tanzania¹²

I didn't say that was his point either.

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I blog, I tweet. When I'm not writing or goofing around on Seahawks.NET.

Well I guess that's the bonus of doing good things, it tends to feel good.

I don't disagree with most of what you're saying. But I think that what somebody doesn't or wouldn't do is at least as important as what they do do when trying to establish whether or not they value human life. Obviously people can only control what's within their ability to control, but I don't think it's necessarily something people have to go around proving. Volunteering at a soup kitchen it's awesome, so's adopting children instead of having your own, but just because somebody doesn't do these things doesn't mean they don't value human life.

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Tanzania¹²

The easiest way to value human life is to cherish and be kind to those closest to you, family and friends. You get bonus points for spending your extra money on sponsoring or fostering others' children or volunteering your time to help strangers in need. Humans are complicated enough to die for someone they love, yet also support the legal murdering of criminals or abortions of unborn children (or as some of you call them, future criminals). Someone can value human life and at the same time completely disregard it. In other words, you don't have to value ALL lives to value life.

Man, I really expected more to come out of that little nugget. Not quite "Atlanta in flames as Sherman marches to the sea," but at least more than a little good-natured snark.


(Still, I do think at least a significant percentage of the "pro-life" people are really just "pro-birth.")

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Okay, so maybe that pass rush is still an issue. Lather, rinse, repeat.

We can just use reruns of McDonalds commercials for that.

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Member formally known as AC59

Exactly. Nobody wants to admit it even though there is a number out there. Most people would gladly spend other people's money to save lives, but probably not as much of their own.

I think one thing worth noting is that lives aren't ever actually "saved", rather death is just postponed.

Them burgers ain't gonna flip themselves!!!

No, there's no number out there. Anyone can arbitrarily assign a value worth to anything, it doesn't make it a fact.

If your mother was kidnapped and ransomed, I assume you would give up everything you own and try to borrow and collect as much as possible to get her back. Say you got her back for $1mil, does that make her worth $1mil? The answer is no.

We should always expend as much energy as possible in saving lives. We don't, but we should.

Why?

::high five::

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RIP ROAD WOES 12/2/2012

I could say it leads to the advancement of civilized society, or that it is morally just. I could say these things and then get hit with another question of "why?"

So instead I will simply ask, why not?

I could make the argument that wars have led to more advancement of civilized society than the pursuit of saving lives. I'm not sure I really want to get into that, and I'm not saying I agree or disagree with your assessment, but the blanket statement you made is definitely not some altruistic truth about the human race, that's for sure.

Neither is the blanket statement you alluded to, people on here keep pointing to the Freakonomics link to abortion and crime. In that somehow *POTENTIALLY* stunting the crime rate personally justifies and appeases your conscience that children that are developing in their mothers' wombs are vacuumed out in pieces. I am not of fan of that line of reasoning. Nor am I a fan of people like Smokin, whom thinks children tragically killed by guns deserve Darwin awards. In your example of wars advancing a society, sure they technologically and militarilly advanced society but it also heeds societal advancement from understanding our fellow man. Every time there's a war it seems a new racial epithet develops and we become more and more numb to violence.

Every person is unique and can bring something completely unexpected into the world, especially in our capitalist society that promotes individualism and has many specific examples of rags to riches success.

That is one reason to try and help others and save lives. Another easier to digest reason is simply to pay it forward, every bad thing that happens to others is foreign until it happens to you. Offering your help will create the want for others to help you in your time of need.