Charity-helping them is hurting them

[Sokar Rostau]

Wow. Just... Wow. Let's just ignore agricultural imperatives and the ongoing effects of de-colonsiation and tell them all to Get The **** Out.

[Enigmers]

What makes you think people will want to have abortions, even if they are readily available?

That's exactly what I was thinking; if their beliefs prohibit birth control, they'd probably prohibit abortions as well.

[Üdorim]

In these trying times, there should be a removal of the hypocratic oath (to do no harm). What I would do, is send over doctors who specialize in abortion. These doctors could just do nothing but abortions all day long.

I thought you hit your peak with the polygamy comments, but I guess I was wrong.

Anyways, if you have a bunch of clinics set up for "hastey abortions" and aren't concerned with spreading disease...it's called a coat hanger, and is how much of Africa is already doing things. To the tune of about 5 million a year for the continent, if google be trusted. I assume you're delighted.

Just out of curiosity, exactly how many children do you think African people are having? I've been wondering since the first page but it's never come out.

[krischan]

At least this idea isn't new. On my trip to Scotland I visited Rosalins chapel. They have two carvings over an arch detailing the 7 virtues and 7 sins. Charity was with the sins and Greed with the virtues.

Seems to me a bit of common sense, outright charity untill you've taught people to take care of themselves pretty much solves the problem.

Dutch

That's quite in contrast to what Jesus said, so what kind of chapel was it ? With black candles and a blood-stained altar ?

From a black and white point of view I would call somebody evil if he says that charity is generally bad and greed is generally good. However, there are enough cases where being mean will help to a greater extent than being nice. Telling a lazy man to get a job will probably be better than helping him out of his self-caused misery all the time. Telling that to somebody who sits in a wheelchair is pretty cynical.

[Sokar Rostau]

Roslin Chapel has a lot of esoteric stuff in it. It's also associated with the Knights Templar who were arguably the first modern bankers. Swapping the positions of Greed and Charity is the sort of thing you would expect from bankers...

[BobCox2]

Culture is THE factor in Africa, Your lets say you focus on education with the handouts, your still operating against a culture thats very old, still exists as the majority and so by a baseline definition is successful and about as anti-western, pro-superstition etc as can be found in the world, frankly the rest of the world needs a good control culture with a society that can function with all the skills you need to survive in the village/world being taught by puberty in a small village thats not interdependent.
The South American villages and some other small spots qualify but Africa is the biggest concentration / Population like that)
The first two waves of "peoples of the earth" came from there and if the rest of us **** it up the next may do so as well,

[jakotaco]

There is also a problem with child soldiers and other war time attrocities. We are expected to help out these people...a people who are so evil they use children as their soldiers and establish 'rape factories' and commit genocide. To me, it sounds like the people we are supposed to help are far beyond help. If you help them, you are helping a people who produce men who use child soldiers. Wouldn't it be better to not help them? If the people are dying this means there are fewer men to create more rape factories and child soldiers.

A similar problem is with AIDS. Let's say you send over a large amount of AIDS treatments to help keep AIDS patients alive. It may sound cold, but people can't spread AIDS if they're dead. By keeping the carriers alive, there is at least some chance they can pass the virus onto others. Therefore, your charity work of keeping AIDS patients alive has increased the number of new AIDS patients. Doesn't that make you a killer in a shrewd sense? Why would you want to increase the number of AIDS patients when your goal is to reduce the impact of the epidemic?

I find these posts quite disturbing. I could draw a historical parallel, but I don't know how to phrase myself without invoking Godwin's law...

[stillman]

^ I know, it sounds horrible. All of it sounds like madness. But what I'm talking about is emergency measures. When your neighbor's house is on fire, you might have to break a window or 2 to rescue him. It's like you're saying breaking the window is too vile, so we should just let the person burn to death.

I believe such emergency measures in the world would do X amount of horror, no question about it. But keeping things the way they're currently going would be doing Y amount of horror. And Y is much much greater than X. In fairness, I think you should have also highlighted (bolded) the previous part of my sentence where I admitted "it may sound cold".

But in all fairness, aren't you worse than I am for suggesting we continue taking route Y which leads to a far more horrific outcome? You didn't say much, so I can only presume you are against any drastic measures taking place. Sometimes they need to amputate the leg to save the person.

Yes, what I said sounds really bad: People can't spread HIV if they're dead. But you know what? It's true. The horrible truths must be faced. Just because it sounds terrible doesn't mean it's false.

As for coathanger abortions, I didn't imply that abortions had to be THAT sloppy. Doctors are very smart and they would never do it that poorly. They would crunch numbers, take 10-20 years to figgure out the best possible approach, and learn how to minimize casualties and maximize the abortions. All I'm saying is they need to abandon the usual total perfection approach only in these extreme circumstances where millions are going to die anyway. The goal would be to provide anyone who wants an abortion the oportunity. The ultimate goal would be to prevent more children from starving to death needlessly. So the goal is one of almost pure good.

[AeroJonesy]

Of course, just because it's true doesn't mean it's good. If you kill everyone who has a chance of demonstrating how you can succeed in the face of perils such as AIDS, how will people ever get out of it? Don't you see? If you really believe killing people with AIDS is good, you're just doling out your own version of charity. And as you believe, that only hurts them.

And I don't see how you can call killing people to prevent children (which do not currently exist) from starving to death "almost pure good."

[Johnny]

And I don't see how you can call killing people to prevent children (which do not currently exist) from starving to death "almost pure good."

These children would not just starve. The rest of the population would aswell.