The Glade 4.0

Barely affording to feed yourself is not the same as starving to death. I doubt you were stripped of intellectual stimuli as well.
I'm not calling you anything, Vindi, I'm just saying that you probably do not know what it is like to starve and be deprived of basic human physical pleasures and until you do, you can't say that the logical solution for these people is to abstain from sex.
I think its wonderful that you are educated and have such will power, that is commendable. I just do not believe that with the resources and the lack of resources that some of these Africans have that it is possible to win that argument of mind over flesh.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Additionally, your logic is not lost...this article seems to support the idea that teaching abstinence (to prevent AIDS) in Africa is having some success, albeit with kids/teenagers and it doesn't say whether this was in starving regions or not:


http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06063004.html




I think this is awesome, (abstinence in many parts of Africa seems like a great thing) I'm just wondering how it would be possible to get it through to someone that hey, I know you are starving to death and dying of starvation related diseases and life is miserable, but did you know that the one and only physical pleasure that you do have some control over is bad and you need to deprive yourself of that as well?
I dunno. I feel like I've made my point. Abstinence would be great, I just don't think its possible in these areas....when you are starving and depressed and sex is the only thing you have I would imagine that it would be almost impossible to modify actions based on future consequences when your entire body is screaming for instant gratification in the forms of food and sex. I could be wrong.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Lk, I surely can say that the logical thing for these people to do is not to have babies that will starve to death; starving and being "deprived of basic human physical pleasures" does not change that. I'm absolutely certain you haven't starved to death, nor have you been deprived of all physical pleasures, so why even bring up such a thing?
When I made those decisions, I was not "educated" (hell, many wouldn't call me "educated" now), and I didn't have the will power of a damp rag, those things didn't force me to rut mindlessly, and it wouldn't have excused me if it did.
I'm not saying that these people should be forced in any way to do as I think they should, but I am saying that I will not knowingly contribute to the extension and exacerbation of the tragedy.

edit:
It's not "bad", but the consequences are beyond reprehensible.
Its not "the one and only physical pleasure" of which they can avail themselves.
It is something they control, and in a life without much else you are in control of it may just be empowering to think that you have that much control.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

I spent two years of my childhood malnourished and locked in a bare room and sometimes a bathroom. No blankets, no pillows, no furniture, no wallpaper even. I was given a small bowl of plain oatmeal a couple of times a day (so I didn't starve although it felt like it and I carry physical evidence of stunted growth) and there are only so many things you can do to entertain yourself when there isn't even a dust bunny to play with.
Doesn't quite put me in the category of starving African but I do think it gives me some understanding of what it might be like.
I'm not disagreeing with you that abstinence is the answer, I'm just saying I don't think it would be possible to get them to agree with you and actually do it, er, not do it.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

I agree with you on two of those....but what are the other physical pleasures available to those in regions where they are literally dying of starvation? I can't imagine what other physical pleasures aside from sex would be available in a drought and famine stricken land.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

If you had the choice to put a baby in that same situation, without access to the food, in exchange for the possibility of an orgasm, I can't believe you would do it.

edit: Kissing someone you love, hugging someone you care about, masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, falling asleep with the knowledge that your actions haven't condemned a baby to misery and death...that would be off the top of my head.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

In an ideal situation you would be right. And maybe you are, who knows? Maybe its as simple as going over to places like Niger and telling them what you just said.
(incidentally, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2054rank.html?countryName=Niger&countryCode=ng&regionCode=af&rank=1#ng
Niger is listed as number one out of 223 countries as having the highest birth rate. I won't draw any conclusions with that fact but I do think its of import.)
I'd also like to think that I would put my future non-existent children over my own physical pleasure, but I can't say that with any degree of certainty. I could also point out that while sex is gratifying, having babies is very gratifying as well and the physical desire to procreate, along with the act of procreation are powerful in and of themselves....I would think that in their life circumstances that these desires would be magnified.
I wish we could have this conversation over coffee...I'm not so good with the written word.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

I'm not saying that it's probable or even possible for people starving to death to wholesale stop bringing others into their little chunk of hell. What I am saying is that they do and should be responsible for their own choices. We shouldn't enable them by saying, "Oh those poor people can't help themselves", just as we shouldn't fool ourselves with the myth of the "Noble Savage". What is possibly of more import is that I am saying that we contribute to the continuation and growth of the problem by creating the situation that allows these people to become dependent on our "aid", and chaining them to the locations where it is distributed.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Sounds like a good reason to support organsations that want to make a difference in these communities physically, socially, and spiritually rather than just hand out food.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I never hear about these groups. Do you? Missionaries yes, but organizations no. I'd like to know more.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

People who are literally dying of starvation generally don't have much energy for sex, and can't bring babies to term if they do get pregnant.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'd like to see some proof of that, DE.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

"literally dying" from anything pretty much precludes bring a child to term, and starvation does sap one's strength. I, for one, don't need too much in the way of evidence to accept DE's assertion.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Ok, on their death beds yes, but dying of starvation, from what I understand, is a long process.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Yes missions and mission boards. You should check with your local church to find one compatible to your beliefs.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

You want to see proof of the fact that a person who is dying of starvation does not also have the energy to bring a baby to term? Really?

If the body lacks sufficient intake of mass and energy for its own needs, it can hardly have any to provide for the mass and energy needs of the baby, to say nothing of the weight gain a healthy pregnancy normally involves. This is Conservation of Matter and Conservation of Energy - two of the most basic scientific principles.

Starvation



Yes, people who are starving to death lack the energy for sex since loss of sex drive, sexual performance, and the like will clearly occur well before a person is unable to move or eat.

Malnutrition is not the same as "literally starving to death". People who are merely malnourished may, indeed, have enough energy for sex and bringing babies to term but an undernourished mother is far more likely to ahve babies with birth defects and other disorders.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Well, maybe I am misunderstanding the things that I see on TV and the internet. I see moms who are nothing but skin and bones...beyond the horrifying pictures of anorexics we see here in the US...and they have babies at their breast...these babies are very tiny and also starving.
Are you saying that these women were not starving, had these babies, and then began starving? Also, if they can't procreate then why are all these starving people continuing to survive and have more kids?
I am sooooo confused!

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Each case is somewhat different, but yes, in cases where the mother is just skin and bones (I assume you're talking about the people who look like they've been in a concentration camp) she almost certainly was not that way when she was pregnant, or at least not until fairly late in the pregnancy. A person who is that skinny when not pregnant would simply not have sufficient energy to carry a pregnancy; they would have either miscarried or died. People that undernourished are extremely close to death; it is very doubtful if they would live the length of a pregnancy regardless.

Edward R. Murrow was present at the liberation of Buchenwald by the 6th Armored Division. At these extreme levels of starvation, prisoners were falling dead even as they were being liberated:

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Thats awful.
Why is everyone still upset about the holocaust but why is there no huge humanitarian uproar over the famine and deaths in places like Niger? Is it any less tragic? I don't get it. I don't get how we can just sit around and say "well, if they would stop having babies and just all die off...." Isn't that a rather Hitler-ish view? (Oddly enough a lot of what he said scarily made sense....)
We went to war and liberated the jews, why not the Africans?
I have a lot of heart but not a lot of logical/political understanding I guess.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Ooh, I do, I do.

Africa is huge, Asia is the only continent that has it beat in either population or size.

Africa is diverse, with geographic boundaries and distances that guarantee separation, and in some cases isolation of culture.

There are currently 54 different countries in Africa, some very large, some very small, a few moderately well off (Equatorial Guinea, Botswana, Libya, Mauritius and South Africa top the list), most are dirt poor (Guinea Bissau, Somalia, Liberia, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zimbabwe are at the bottom). Note, the Republic of the Conge, a different nation from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is fairly well up the list.

The only climate type not known in Africa is Arctic. All others are represented, including subarctic. Pretty much every type of terrain, including very fertile farmland, exists in Africa.

There are nine major deserts in Africa, including the Blue Desert, so called because a whole lot of rocks are painted blue in a hope for peace.

Egypt is in Africa, and in the Middle East, which used to be the Near East. Everything east of Egypt but east of Egypt is technically in Asia.

Then again, Europe and Asia are one continent, no matter what they like to call themselves. The Arabian gulf was obviously once part of Africa, but is much more connected to Asia.

The slave trade as far as the Colonies and United States are concerned was almost entirely out of West Africa - it was quicker and cheaper to go there than anywhere else in Africa, and the West Africans were more than happy to sell their neighbors, captives and unwanted family members to the crazy white people. West Africa is a region with 16 countries. Not all of them are coastal and those were probably minimally involved in the slave trade.

Hottest inhabited place - Dallol, Ethiopia, whose annual mean temperature was recorded from 1960 to 1966 as 34.4 °C (93.9 °F).[14] The average daily maximum temperature during the same period was 41.1 °C (106.0 °F). Not sure if it is still that hot, with all this climate change going around.

That cover anything you were asking about?

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

disclaimer: I am going to use the generic "you" often in here. I hope it will be obvious when I address someone directly.



The holocaust was a man who was trying to systematically exterminate an entire race of people. He would torture and kill them, subject them to unspeakable atrocities. It was a man who used the race as a scapegoat for the ills of his country.



Yes, the people who are starving are in their current predicament for a number of reasons. Some of it may be due to the Warlords, some may not. But there is not a single man who is trying to eradicate all hungry people in the world. It does suck, but genocide is a far cry from starvation.



It is not a matter of "stop having babies and die off" it is a lack of sympathy for people who know that they are in a predicament and continue to exacerbate the problem. You know the area you are in is a prime location of starvation, you already know food is hard to come by. You wonder if you are going to have enough to eat from meal to meal... Hey having a kid is an AWESOME idea!

LK, you described your situation earlier. You were fortunate to have escaped that situation. Having formerly suffered that treatment and suffering; and because you have lived that.. it will be a cold, cold day in hell before you let your children suffer the same situation, right? That is because you a decent human being.


Now turn that around, could you see how there would be a lack of sympathy if you were still in that situation and decided having a child was what you needed to do; And then did nothing to get out of your situation allowing your children to suffer along with you, essentially sentencing them to death because you could not control yourself... the parents in these places are the reprehensible ones, they brought a life into this world when their own lives were not able to be sustained without aid.

Quote:

We went to war and liberated the jews, why not the Africans?

Please see above where I state why I think the holocaust is worse than people starving.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Actually, we didn't go to war to liberate the Jews, and if we had we did a miserable job of it. We didn't know about the holocaust until the end of the war. Freeing the concentration camps was a by-product of winning the war against Germany. Approximately 5.9 million Jews were killed by the Nazis. Three quarters of the Jews in Germany were slaughtered, most of the survivors escaped during the early part of the war. Almost half of the Jews killed were in Poland. It isn't a good analogy LK. The major powers set up Israel as a place for a Jewish Homeland. Notice how well that is working out?

As far as why we don't go liberate the Africans being oppressed? We're tied up with wars on two fronts already, our troops are stretched to near the limit, and we are broke. We don't have the resources right now to do anything other than a token effort. A token effort isn't what this problem needs. The United Nations is the body that should be addressing this, but they are very reliant on the USA for troops and materials, see the beginning of paragraph.

The USA is not the world's police force, it is not our place to intervene in civil wars in nations, but we do too often anyway. Sadly, the resources we would be liberating are not worth the investment. The people may be, but, well, TC said it best, "Follow the money".

In closing, my cynical self gives you one of the most politically realistic songs from the hit musical, Jesus Christ, Superstar. This is the attitude of way too much of the world.

EVERYTHING'S ALRIGHT
YVONNE ELLIMAN

Try not to get worried, try not to turn on to problems that upset you oh
Don't you know everything's alright yes, everything's fine
Let the world turn without you tonight
If we try we'll get by so forget about all us tonight
Everything's alright, yes, everything's fine

[Judas]

Woman your fine ointment -- brand new and expensive
could have been saved for the poor
Why has it been wasted -- we could have raised maybe
Three hundred silver pieces or more
People who are hungry, people who are starving
Matter more than your feet and hair

[Mary]

Sleep and I shall soothe you, calm you and annoint you
Myrrh for your hot forehead oh
Don't you know everything's alright yes everything's fine
And it's cool and the ointment's sweet
For the fire in your head and feet
Close your eyes, close your eyes and relax, think of nothing tonight
Everything's alright, yes, everything's fine

[Jesus]

Surely you're not saying we have the resources
to save the poor from their lot?
There will be poor always, pathetically struggling
Look at the good things you've got!
Think! while you still have me
Move! while you still see me
You'll be lost
You'll be so so sorry
When I'm gone

[Mary]

Sleep and I shall soothe you, calm you and annoint you
Myrrh for your hot forehead oh
Don't you know everything's alright yes everything's fine
And it's cool and the ointment's sweet
For the fire in your head and feet

Close your eyes, close your eyes and relax, think of nothing tonight
Close your eyes, close your eyes and relax

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

*sigh* My argument has been reduced to this, and nothing more:

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Some people already covered this, but basically we didn't go to war to liberate the Jews; essentially we went to war with Jitler because A) we didn't want him running Europe and B) we got attacked by the Japanese, who were his allies, and Britain was also attacked by the Japanese and.. well you get the picture.

In any case, Africa today is nothing like Europe in 1941. It's made up of a huge number of countries, ethnic groups, languages, geographies, and climates. Not only that, but it's a very large land area. Invading and holding it would require.. a lot. Estimating how much is just going down a rabbit hole, but I don't think that, even without Afghanistan and Iraq, NATOs full military strength would be enough. Moreover, it would piss off pretty much all the countries that we're supposedly trying to help. People don't generally like it when you invade their country, even if you want to make it better. Sometimes you have to regardless because it's the best course of action for your own country. They'd inevitably fight back and we'd have a continent-sized Viet Nam on our hands.

Moreover, a lot of very important strategic minerals that our modern technology requires come from there and we sure as **** don't want to upset that. Before you say "but why should our comfort be more important than their survival?" well, it's not jsut comfort. Our survival, and any ability we have to help Africa, depends on that technology. A lot of these minerals are strategic; that is their availability or nonavailability is a matter of national security.

Africa's problems are myriad and complex but the bottom line is that a lot of the solutions will simply not happen without significant change in the way the average person in Africa thinks. For example, my cousin was in the Peace Corps in Madagascar. The people in the village he stayed at refused any sort of cattle other than their traditional breeds, even if other breeds were superior in milk or beef production. The reason? Their traditional cattle have large humps, and the size of your cow's hump was a status symbol. A better cow was unacceptable is it meant a loss of "hump status".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And no one ever gets raped in Africa, and women are definitely treated as equals to men, with equal access to the kinds of things that can help them make responsible decisions and protect themselves against potential problems. Am I right?

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show