What is life worth?

[The Black Whirlwind]

bush seems to think that lives are worth a million bucks, thats what he gave to the widows and families of the people who died on 9/11

 

[DreamQuickBook]

bush seems to think that lives are worth a million bucks, thats what he gave to the widows and families of the people who died on 9/11

Oh please. That is totally beside the point. C'mon.

 

[michel]

Oh please. That is totally beside the point. C'mon.

I personally think that all life is precious; every individual (Talking about humans here) has something to offer - as for animals and flora &fauna, they are all part of the food chain - take one out of Nature and the balance goes off.

Talking about the mentally ill, just think what we would have missed out on if some of the great historic artists had been doped up to the eyeballs with drugs, for their depression..........

 

[DreamQuickBook]

I personally think that all life is precious; every individual (Talking about humans here) has something to offer - as for animals and flora &fauna, they are all part of the food chain - take one out of Nature and the balance goes off.

Talking about the mentally ill, just think what we would have missed out on if some of the great historic artists had been doped up to the eyeballs with drugs, for their depression..........

Right, but my point was that human life is priceless, so how much 9/11 victim families received has nothing to do with Bush's estimation of the worth of human life. That was poor logic and a rather offensive accusation.

 

[michel]

Right, but my point was that human life is priceless, so how much 9/11 victim families received has nothing to do with Bush's estimation of the worth of human life. That was poor logic and a rather offensive accusation.

This is one point with which I can never quite get to grips - compensation. How one puts a price tag on suffering, on the death of a loved one, I'll never understand. With the exception maybe of the death of a partner, where I suppose a figure could be calculated to represent what that person would have been able to earn.

 

[DreamQuickBook]

This is one point with which I can never quite get to grips - compensation. How one puts a price tag on suffering, on the death of a loved one, I'll never understand. With the exception maybe of the death of a partner, where I suppose a figure could be calculated to represent what that person would have been able to earn.

Of course. You can't put a price on suffering, but you do what you can. That is the best you can do.

 

[The Black Whirlwind]

All life is precious, it has no material value, life is priceless. All life has a place in the Force, a place that cannot be replaced if vacated. Every life is special and priceless.

 

[Serpens]

All life is precious, it has no material value, life is priceless. All life has a place in the Force, a place that cannot be replaced if vacated. Every life is special and priceless.

All life is precious? What makes it so? Living things prey on other living things to survive, and human beings are no different. Instead of making assertions, please explain why you feel it is precious.

 

[DreamQuickBook]

All life is precious? What makes it so? Living things prey on other living things to survive, and human beings are no different. Instead of making assertions, please explain why you feel it is precious.

hmmm. Good post. I'd like to see an answer.

 

[The Black Whirlwind]

all life has a place in the Force, and each being is unique, it cannot be replaced. A main tenet of my belief system is to preserve life in its many forms. And i already did it my first post.

"All life has a place in the Force, a place that cannot be replaced if vacated."

 

[Nehustan]

I don't think one can put a value on life, however in a world in which we are little more than power sources for the machine i.e. valued by the worth of our labour and the variation of the worth of that labour it would seem our life is more or less valuable. A whole treatise could be written on the subject, but to illustrate the point rather that commenting on this value I will post some facts about our relative consumption, which while not analogous, may be seen as related...

There is a term 'ecological footprint' which is calculated to be the 'cost' of an individuals lifestyle dependent on seven major activities measured in Hectares. These activities are; i) growing crops, ii) grazing animals, iii) harvesting timber, iv) marine and freshwater fishing, v) accommodation of residential and industrial facilities, vi) burning fossil fuels, and vii) waste disposal. So let us consider the actual footprint for individuals across our globe. The African and the Asian Pacific individual takes around 1.5 Hectares, under the global allowance which is considered to be 1.9 Hectares. The Middle-East, Central Asia, Latin America, and the Carribean come in at the average of around 2.3 Hectares. Central and Eastern Europe jump considerably to around 4 Hectares per individual, with Western European individuals having the luxury of nearly 3 times that of an African at around 5 hectares. America has an ecological footprint which comes in at double that of Western Europe, at 10 Hectares for each individual, on average of course. (Human Evolutionary Genetics, 2004, Hurles, M. E. et al., Garland Science, p.430)

George W. Bush was reported to have said at the time of 911 'This is an attack on the Free World' which surely was an ironic statement with an answer held within it. The thing is if we are the free world, what does that make everyone else, and what are the chains that bind???

http://www.ecouncil.ac.cr/rio/focus/report/english/footprint/

http://www.redefiningprogress.org/footprint/