A society needs to grow when it is small, otherwise natural disaster, predators, etc. can wipe it out. However, a society must also limit its growth or it will over-run its ability to provide food.
Murder is a fact of life which must be acculturated (IMO) differently in different cultures. In a small struggling tribe, any form of birth control threatens its ultimate survival. In a culture overflowing with human resources, birth control, abstinence and abortion become sanctified. I much prefer birth control to abortion (speaking personally here), and much prefer abortion to infanticide. But all are murder in the eyes of people in a tribe too small to survive.
The old are an incredible drain on resources. Getting old, myself, I sure do not advocate wholesale killing of the old. However when children are not adequately cared for because so much money is going to prolong the life of the terminally ill, I have to wonder about priorities. Take my friend Sharon, for instance. She died of leukemia. In the process of her dying, it cost over $750,000 (in 1988). How many schoolbooks and hot lunches can be bought for poor kids for that same $750,000? The poor are unable to get into drug rehab programs while the poor old die in expensive hospitals at government expense while the doctors drive around in their Mercedes they bought from sucking the last penny from those dying in their care.
I do not speak here of answers. Only that killing is a pragmatic decision which each culture must decide for itself. The societies which kill least are those not so small they may fail, nor so bloated that they destroy all in their path of growth. But that middle ground of growth is but a phase. Given time, other circumstances will dictate other moral codes.
no subject
Murder is a fact of life which must be acculturated (IMO) differently in different cultures. In a small struggling tribe, any form of birth control threatens its ultimate survival. In a culture overflowing with human resources, birth control, abstinence and abortion become sanctified. I much prefer birth control to abortion (speaking personally here), and much prefer abortion to infanticide. But all are murder in the eyes of people in a tribe too small to survive.
The old are an incredible drain on resources. Getting old, myself, I sure do not advocate wholesale killing of the old. However when children are not adequately cared for because so much money is going to prolong the life of the terminally ill, I have to wonder about priorities. Take my friend Sharon, for instance. She died of leukemia. In the process of her dying, it cost over $750,000 (in 1988). How many schoolbooks and hot lunches can be bought for poor kids for that same $750,000? The poor are unable to get into drug rehab programs while the poor old die in expensive hospitals at government expense while the doctors drive around in their Mercedes they bought from sucking the last penny from those dying in their care.
I do not speak here of answers. Only that killing is a pragmatic decision which each culture must decide for itself. The societies which kill least are those not so small they may fail, nor so bloated that they destroy all in their path of growth. But that middle ground of growth is but a phase. Given time, other circumstances will dictate other moral codes.