Personal preservation and survival is deeply encoded in all animals, including the human animal. I don't put myself above that. I am sorry that you are aghast at my decision, especially since I like you and we normally agree. Survival of the fittest is a cold hard fact of life.
But you can exercise your individualism! :P You have the power to make your own individual moral choices. You don't have to follow what is encoded in you from birth, if it is encoded from birth at all. Perhaps the best way to say it is that I think it's extremely surprising so many people would give their life for one person they love, but wouldn't give their life to save millions of people (some of whom they probably know). Individual preservation clearly isn't that important when so many people would die for someone they loved.
If it was my life for ten lives, or even a hundred lives, maybe I would do the selfish thing too. But the stakes are too high. In 2012, over 8 million people died of cancer around the world. I can't get my head around how someone could live with themselves knowing that their actions had killed 8 million people every single year. If that figure stays the same and I lived for 60 more years, I would have killed half a billion people in my lifetime - more than the population of the US, the UK, Australia and Germany combined, and almost 50 times the size of the Holocaust. And that's just in my lifetime, because the positive impact of the cure would survive long after my death. An uncountable number of people would have died because I was a selfish man.
I respect your stance and you make nothing but valid points. I admit freely that I choose to be a selfish asshole hahaha. Not so much for me but for those close to me that it would hurt. So I guess it is only semi-selfish.
P.S. I might be the one who is meant to find the cure for cancer in another way. It might be cheaper and easier to use. I can't deny the world that possibility :P
Would you be willing to die for a cure?
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Personal preservation and survival is deeply encoded in all animals, including the human animal. I don't put myself above that. I am sorry that you are aghast at my decision, especially since I like you and we normally agree. Survival of the fittest is a cold hard fact of life.
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dom180
9 years ago
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But you can exercise your individualism! :P You have the power to make your own individual moral choices. You don't have to follow what is encoded in you from birth, if it is encoded from birth at all. Perhaps the best way to say it is that I think it's extremely surprising so many people would give their life for one person they love, but wouldn't give their life to save millions of people (some of whom they probably know). Individual preservation clearly isn't that important when so many people would die for someone they loved.
If it was my life for ten lives, or even a hundred lives, maybe I would do the selfish thing too. But the stakes are too high. In 2012, over 8 million people died of cancer around the world. I can't get my head around how someone could live with themselves knowing that their actions had killed 8 million people every single year. If that figure stays the same and I lived for 60 more years, I would have killed half a billion people in my lifetime - more than the population of the US, the UK, Australia and Germany combined, and almost 50 times the size of the Holocaust. And that's just in my lifetime, because the positive impact of the cure would survive long after my death. An uncountable number of people would have died because I was a selfish man.
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anti-hero
9 years ago
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I respect your stance and you make nothing but valid points. I admit freely that I choose to be a selfish asshole hahaha. Not so much for me but for those close to me that it would hurt. So I guess it is only semi-selfish.
P.S. I might be the one who is meant to find the cure for cancer in another way. It might be cheaper and easier to use. I can't deny the world that possibility :P