X-Message-Number: 15954
From: "robin helweg-larsen" <>
Subject: Refusing sentience, in order to prevent suffering
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 11:10:44 -0500

Sabine Atkinsd wrote:

>enough granular resolution to qualify as citizens.  But you can't just go
>around messing with real people's lives!  Not to answer questions about
>World War II; not for any reason!  Get this:  I care about you and your
>rights, but I care just as much about the rights of any sentient being you
>ever create.  I don't think you have the right to abuse a sentient being
>just because you created it.  As far as I'm concerned, Lee Corbin and Lee
>Corbin's hapless Churchill thinkalike are both my fellow sentients, and
>each has just as much claim on my compassion.  Your desire to answer
>questions about WWII does not permit you to create suffering to find out.

I take exception with your claim to the right to prevent sentient existence
merely because it includes suffering.

We are not self-created - we are products of the Universe, which itself is
the product of some unimaginable process or power.  But we do not look
favorably on the Universe's standard means of terminating our sentience
through aging and death, and we resist it even if we are suffering, and
surely you can understand that as a member of the Cryonet community.

The population of the planet at the time of World War II would not have
liked your idea of eliminating their existence merely because they were
suffering.  The Jews were not thankful to be gassed, even though they were
suffering.  Wounded soldiers in hospitals did not usually beg to be killed,
even though they were suffering.  And the mass of humanity was not suffering
any more or less than it tends to do throughout history.

Sentient beings, no matter by whom they have been created, tend to struggle
desperately to preserve their sentience despite pain and suffering.  If it
gets unbearable, some individuals kill themselves, it's true; and, so long
as they have that ability, I fail to understand why you think you have right
to do it for them, or to prevent their coming to sentience in the first
place.

Even if you were the God who had created me, I would deeply resent your Big
Nanny interference in my life.  It is reminiscent of "I'd rather drain the
pool than teach the kids to swim."  Suffering is a more complex moral,
philosophical and practical issue than your approach implies.  Buddhists may
hope for the end of life and rebirth as an end to suffering, but not all of
us are Buddhists.

Learn to swim, and give swimming lessons!

Robin Helweg-Larsen

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