Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Babies

Babies are often used as symbology for innocence, as they lack guilt of any kind. I personally think an innocent life is the highest form of life, even if a life of great social status is in the equation, such as a comparison between a President of a country and a newborn baby. My belief would lie in the ideology that the baby's life is the embodiment of innocence; sinless, pure and new. A baby's life vs the life of an old man is like a new empty book vs a nearly complete book. This is the crux of my belief, I feel that everyone deserves a chance at life; that everyone should have at least a page written in their journal of life. Of course there is the arguement of a man who has continually made decisions that improved mankind vs a completely new human being with an equal chance of performing both bad and good. The arguement would be that the man has already proven himself to make good decisions and there's a higher probability that his survival would contribute more than the baby's survival. In terms of probability and practicality, it would be seen by most that the man's life is more valuable.

However, my belief lies beyond practicality, it is something most would consider irrational, it lies in our humane feelings and conscience. It lies in what is considered to be our race's uniqueness. Even though we know how unpractical it is, most of the time we are governed by our feelings. If everyone applied practicality above all else, where would our individualism go? Although it is often true that the most practical solution is the best solution in terms of materialistic ideals. Our humanity is what preserves our individuality and race. Without it, we would be like ants with brains, we would share a common goal but each with no form of individuality. Eating a burger from Mac Donald's is unpractical because it is unhealthy. Religions are usually unpractical because they have universal laws and universal laws are unpractical. I personally believe all situations need to be assessed before making the best decision. Such as the act of killing 1 man to save 10 men's lives. A universal law like "thou shall not kill" doesn't work in terms of practicality since the best decision is obviously to kill this one man. With absolute practicality, our race might progress incredibly fast as a whole but we would lose what makes us human.

Afterall, it is a fact that we still do not understand many things in this world, such as the existence of god, so I think that sometimes it is ok to hold faith in our feelings. That sometimes we should let our collective feelings as a majority rule us, instead of determining what is the right decision through absolute practical rationalization. Having said that and since most people think that the ultimate value is a person's life, I think that a baby's life, a new life holding a clean record, should be given a chance above all other lives, because I personally FEEL that it wouldn't be fair to take a life that has barely started away simply because he or she has not contributed.

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