a4mula said:
Is this the rule, or the exception?
It's the exception. Why does that matter?
Life today would be quite unbearable if we based everything we did on the exceptions of reality.
Too late! You're arguing against the reality of how the morality of western civilization has worked for 200 years.
Morality did not triumph over Natural Selection. Was the ALS gene eradicated by this morality because his 3 children weren't affected? No, they just become carriers. ALS is allowed to continue it's propagation.
That isn't what natural selection is about - you have it backwards. Natural selection kills animals with flaws in order to not propagate those flaws*. When someone reproduces despite a genetic flaw, that means they beat natural selection.
Fight this all you will, until the time comes when we have the ability to genetically restructure ourselves we weaken our gene pool by allowing unfit members of our species to breed. This isn't personal, this isn't a shot at anyone, it's just the facts.
Weaken it how? Unfit how? The whole point of our growth beyond biological evolution is that there are now different factors beyond simple biology that are being selected into our gene pool. Steven Hawking is an example of how sometimes intelligence is selected into the gene pool despite a biological flaw that might otherwise have had more selective pressure. I would argue that the fact that the human race is still progressing is evidence that this trend is not to our detrement, but to our benefit.
This isn't a matter of convenience.
What you described in what I quoted is basically a paraphrase of the definition of convenience. Caring for your brother made life more difficult for you. The definition of convenience is making life easier for you - killing him at birth would have made life easier for you.
This is a matter of allowing individuals to have a choice.
Allowing
which individuals to have a choice? All of them or some of them? The concept of individual rights requires that
all individuals have the choice.
When two people copulate in hopes of a child they are not signing an agreement to dedicate every waking hour of the rest of their lives to an invalid.
What they
are doing is essentially signing an agreement dedicating every waking hour for the next
18 years to someone who can't care for themselves. That is true for
every parent and child. So perhaps, under your system of morality, it would be better to kill them/allow them to die when they reach age 18...
We say that voluntary abortion is fine as long as the child isn't born, yet if the child is born then discovered to be disabled it's a moral sin against humanity to make a conscious decision that it's in the best interest for everyone involved to terminate? That's hypocrisy at it's best.
Again, you don't know if it is in the best interest of everyone involved until you
ask everyone involved. And you can't ask
everyone involved until the baby has reached an age where they are capable of giving an intelligent answer to the question.
I concede this point. I would like to add however that until the time comes where any individual is held accountable for themselves then these two will be tied at the hip. This doesn't just apply to disability, but also unwillingness.
I'm not sure what you mean by that...
You haven't shown that at all. We've developed beyond animals because we have a pose able thumb and the ability to logically deduce.
Lots of animals have opposable thumbs, not a lot can logically deduce...and in any case, didn't you just agree with me with that sentence?
Morality has done nothing but hinder our evolution.
Evolution is not a predetermined path: different evolutionary pressures cause evolution to proceed differently. Morality has caused us to evolve differently. The word "hinder" does not apply to evolution.
[edit] Just to clarify that a little, evolution does cause continuous improvements, but that doesn't mean that choosing a different path is a hinderence: it is just an improvment along a different path.
You continue to use Hawking, but it doesn't fly. His momentary achievements are not justified by the continuation of a devastating disease. 5000 years from now nobody will know Hawking's name, yet the reverberations of allowing ALS to continue to propagate will be felt 10 fold. I exaggerate here, but the concept is solid.
You don't exaggerate, actually.
Millions may be affected by ALS*. But at the same time, Hawking is, at the very least, a 1 in a million intelligence. Besides the fact that he was actually able to pay for his own care, keeping his genes in the gene pool is worth more than the cost of the occasional ALS case it might cause*.
Fascism is a form of government that revolves around its economic policies. It was formed as a direct rebellion from both Capitalism and Communism which are both economic manifestos. Mussolini fashioned this concept directly from the concept of Social Darwinism.
Well... researching, there is considerable debate about fascism's place on the political and economic spectrum. So let's just go with history instead of philosophy: the historical reality is that fascism is autocratic and authoritarian - it does
not allow individuals to find their own path and succeed or fail on their own merrits.
Again, I reiterate that we are trying to adopt the government sanctioned economy of Fascism while ignoring the the social aspect of paring the weak. It's a lose lose situation.
I would argue, self contradictory and invalid based on historical reality...
You have to adopt this concept at whole value or not at all. Capitalism has nothing to do with personal freedom and you should really stop buying into propaganda. Capitalism is based strictly on ones ability to produce wealth through private means.
It isn't propaganda, it is historical reality. The problem with arguing political theory is people get so wrapped up in the theory, they forget that history provides a laboratory for applying and testing those theories. What you are arguing here goes against historical reality of how these theories work in the real world...
It's a slap in the face to Capitalism to make this assumption that anyone must be provided with anything for any reason. To Each Their Own.
If capitalism were to assume that parents were not required to provide for their children (after all, a child is an expense: a parent would do better economically if they never had kids), that type of capitalistic society would quickly lead to the extinction of the human race. Maybe you would consider what I describe to be an impure form of capitalism (and I said that what I believe is precisely that: not an absolute form), but what I describe is the reality of how capitalism and the principle of individual rights works in the real world.
*ALS is not hereditary, but for the purpose of this discussion, we can assume a hereditary disease. Hemophelia is an example of a hereditary disease that has not been eradicated because we have gone beyond what natural selection would ordinarily allow.
