Dear Gregor, Maria & others,
I know my stance looks (and is, from many people's viewpoint) philosophically untenable, but I believe it to be very PRACTICALLY tenable, given the point in history at which we are now AND FOR ALL THE REASONS I HAVE STATED. I may have not felt this way 10-15 years ago when the furure was looking very hopeful for many minorities, including those of us with disabilities...
And even if people with disabilities aren't often born, there are STILL, as I said before, going to be a number of us created by accidents. We are NOT going to disappear unless we have another regime like The Third Reich/Pol Pot/Idi Amin to deal with and then the non-disabled will be exterminated in numbers as well...
After what I have been learning about "globalization" recently, I do NOT think it would be particularly MORAL of me to bring a child, particularly if he was going to have a disability, into this world, unless I had plenty of money at least.
(I also believe in different SPIRITUAL dimensions, so believe we will get a chance to work out our soul's lessons somewhere else, if not on earth... But then, I'm contradicting myself, aren't I? For, if we have "lessons" to learn, why not here?!?
Perhaps because 5,000,000,000 of us is more than the earth can cope with? If we want the planet to thrive we are going to have to look "beyond the square" pretty soon, otherwise we are ALL doomed.
A friend was telling me the other day of the aeroplane trip she took over Western Australia. She was really alarmed at the vast pink patches of land - land to all intents and purposes ruined by salination!)
Mind you, I am against abortion at all after the baby "quickens". It may interest people to know this was the Roman Catholic Church's stance until about 130 years ago, when the then Pope was "leant on" by the French government who were busy "expanding" into Africa and wanted a big population to use as "cannon fodder". Charming, I don't think!
To end this I will quote a small portion from my essay on Globalization vs. local "mutual credit" systems:
"There never was economic evidence in favour of capital market liberalization. There still isn't. It increases risk and doesn't increase growth. You'd think [defenders of liberalization] would say to me by now, 'You haven't read these 10 studies,' but they haven't, because there's not even one. There isn't the intellectual basis that you would have thought required for a major change in international rules. It was all based on ideology."
Joseph Stiglitz, former Chief Economist of the World Bank [See Appendix 1.].
"By privatizing public utilities the mega wealthy of most countries have robbed the poorest in the land of what little real wealth they had - part ownership of those self same utilities - and sold them in the form of shares mostly to the mega wealthy to service their already extravagant lifestyles... We seem to be, heaven forbid, going the way of Argentina, who had, about 60 years ago, large amounts of solid gold in their vaults, but because of the gross mismanagement (maybe including privatization?) of their elites have suffered up to a 1000% inflation more than once and have hardly any middle class left." You don't believe me? Well, how do you explain the following figures?"
Australian $$ INCOME per year 1988 1998
70,000 + 15% of households 30% of households
20,000 - 70,000 70% of households 40% of households
-20,000 15% of households 30% of households
"Sundari Marks", B.A.; Community Development worker.
Jai Guru Dev; Yours Sincerely,
"Sundari"
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