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Something to consider...


Doug Wellington

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@stryd:

I totally understand where you're coming from, and I have often thought the same thing, but ... for some reason, compassion is a relatively recent product of our evolution.  Maybe it's good, maybe it's not ... but it's here, and we inevitably concede to it.

We all have loved ones, and when somebody dies it is devastating for many.  Its effects ripple throughout humanity.  A person dies, the mother is devastated, a friend is concerned about the mother, the friend's husband gets frustrated and takes it out on his employees, who go home and take it out on their families ....

Darwin-level intellect is as new to humanity as compassion is.  On one side, medical advances help the sick who otherwise would not be among the fittest who survive, but on the other wise we have nations with laws to control population.  Maybe it will even balance out one day.

About 20 years ago, a distant cousin of mine was sick and required a marrow transplant, so I registered mine.  I wasn't a match, but I'm prepared to be donate should I be called on to one day.  I've since thought about it a lot, and this is the happy medium I've found.

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... for some reason, compassion is a relatively recent product of our evolution. 

Nah, it's part of our "animal brain", designed to have us protect other members of our pack, and especially our children, by enabling us to "feel" what others are feeling. It's wayyy old :)

goblinz/cimo: it's not just how much space we have, but how much of it we require exclusively for our own use, regardless of the consequences to other life... as in, some of that area, we'll use in a way that prevents other life from surviving. The fact that habitat destruction is the #1 problem we provide to the animal world, makes it clear that overpopulation is not a future problem. It's right now.

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if you ask me we don't have any overpopulation at all

just an extremely inefficient way of living

everything we do is actually pretty inefficient when you really think about it.

as for the topic, it's a nice thing to do.

a good friend of mine is probably going to save his mothers life doing this.

however..

there's so much more going on in this world.. one sometimes wonders where to start

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if you ask me we don't have any overpopulation at all

just an extremely inefficient way of living

Same thing :) If we're twice as efficient, we can have twice the people...

as for the topic, it's a nice thing to do.

a good friend of mine is probably going to save his mothers life doing this.

Prime example of my point. Sad fact is, his mother, like all of us, is responsible for the deaths of an incredible amount of life on this planet. Saving her is "a nice thing to do", if you ask her, or her son... Just don't ask the plants and animals and other people who suffer as a result. I know it sounds harsh, but that's the reality of the situation.... don't shoot the messenger ;)

Anyway, I'm repeating myself now, which means I've reached the hands-on-ears "lalala i can't hear you" threshold of the forum, and will promptly stfu :D

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Prime example of my point. Sad fact is, his mother, like all of us, is responsible for the deaths of an incredible amount of life on this planet. Saving her is "a nice thing to do", if you ask her, or her son... Just don't ask the plants and animals and other people who suffer as a result. I know it sounds harsh, but that's the reality of the situation.... don't shoot the messenger ;)

[tongue in cheek]

I think you're a hypocrite there Stryd - if you truly believed what you profess, you would have removed yourself from the world a while ago.

[/tongue in cheek]

:P

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  • 2 weeks later...

OK, I'm done for the day.  So far so good...  I have lungs, I have a heart, I have a little less blood (they took ~12 vials of blood for testing)...  Only problem is that my blood pressure seems to be a bit high (160/95 last week, 147/97 today) but that isn't going to get in the way of me donating...

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12!?! That's beyond even my record of 7. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself after losig four today. Shit... Twelve!!!

Eat well dude, drink shiatloads of water, rest up. This is a good time to break out the puppy-dog-eyes and beg to the wifey for special treatment ;)

Just a thought, maybe the unusually high (for you) blood pressure is related to your emotional involvement in the situation?

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Nah...  Probably my emotional involvement in my 17 year old daughter who is doing stupid things at the moment...  Sigh...

Hope it all sorts out soon mate. Unfortunately it's something that can't be avoided... 17 year olds doing the occasional stupid thing and parents caring. I'm sure it'll be fine in the end.

Well done with the marow donation. I've been signed up to the Antony Nolan trust in the UK (marrow database) for a few years now and it's a bit nerve racking knowing that one day I could get a phonecall requesting that I drop everything and head off to see some strangers about a fairly painful op :/

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Hope it all sorts out soon mate. Unfortunately it's something that can't be avoided... 17 year olds doing the occasional stupid thing and parents caring. I'm sure it'll be fine in the end.

Yeah...  I'm sure it will be fine in the end...  It's just surviving the in-between part that sucks...

I've been signed up to the Antony Nolan trust in the UK (marrow database) for a few years now and it's a bit nerve racking knowing that one day I could get a phonecall requesting that I drop everything and head off to see some strangers about a fairly painful op :/

Might not be that painful - instead of the direct marrow access, they decided to do a PBSC collection on me, which means I'll sit in a bed for about seven hours, hooked to an aphoresis machine - it takes blood out of one arm, extracts the stem cells, then puts the blood back in my other arm...  The worst part is going to be keeping my arm straight for seven hours...

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