Should we have sympathy for flood victims?

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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I've had very similar thoughts over the years, especially when dealing with second and third world countries, where at one point you might have been able to give them excuse of ignorance, but a lot of time and effort has been put into educating these people. When you still see them overpopulating in famine afflicted areas, rebuilding villages and towns right on top of fault lines and flood prone areas, and similar things, it becomes harder and harder to be sympathetic. Especially when in some cases if you dig you might find that X nation's ruling "government" just bought a bunch of military surplus from a nation like Russia and has been busy polishing it's 2-3 generation old tanks and MIG variants to bother constructing proper safeguards. The way I see things is if people are dying by the tens of thousands in preventable national disasters anyway, the people should be rebelling against their government, especially in nations where they can outnumber government troops hundreds to one, sure a lot of people might die, but eventually if they just keep coming the oppressive militaries will run out of bullets before the rebels run out of bodies (sort of like Zulus fighting British colonial troops, or Muslims overrunning the Foreign Legion). Beyond a certain point it takes a very "special" kind of people to keep letting this status quo exist and dying by the thousands anyway.

I've been sort of the heartless opinion that we should pretty much let Darwinism take it's course, every time the US and other countries come in and provide disaster relief and supplies to the same groups of people, we're perpetuating the cycle and propping up a broken system and ultimately just throwing resources into a toilet, addressing a problem that will never be solved, and of course encouraging the people we're helping to rely on us rather than stand on their own feet and deal with their own problems.

When it comes to the first world and other heavily developed nations, I have a little more sympathy because at least efforts have usually been made. When I look back at something like "Hurricaine Katrina" half the problem was the safeguards we put into place were not sufficient (and it actually surprised everyone), reasonable amounts of effort were however made, and people knew the risks. What's more it can be argued it was a bureaucratic failing when it came to FEMA as much as anything.

Unless of course you happen to intentionally move into an area where these problems are common, knowingly, and knowing there aren't any kinds of safeguards in place. For example when it comes to colonizing the floodplains and such I'd have to look at exactly what kind of countermeasures are being put into force there to justify this. If there aren't any reasonable justifications for it, then as far as I'm concerned people who choose to live there, know the risks, and I'm not going to be as sympathetic as I normally would.

This might sound pretty cruel and heartless, but understand that a lot of it comes from the simple fact that we have lots of problems, poverty, and starving people here in the USA, and 17 Trillion dollars in debt. It's nice to be a White Knight when you can afford it, heroism is a good thing. On the other hand the US can't afford it right now, so we need more "evil" pessimism from people like me, and people coming up with reasons "why not"... at least until we get our debt and other problems under control. After all when it comes to "sympathy from the US" and us running out to the rescue, we're actually borrowing money (since we run at a deficit, the ceiling of which was just raised again) in order to give charity to someone else, and honestly when it's the same people that keep overpopulating in their famine stricken areas, or keep building in areas they should know by now are not safe for habitation, I do not think we should be borrowing money in our name to cover their stupidity. Maybe Darwinism (as mentioned above) will do the job and eventually if enough people die from flooding or other disasters they will either turn on their government to provide safeguards (or establish a new one) or will simply decided to not keep living in places like that.
 

Shymer

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One issue with trying to avoid these exceptional events is the ubiquity of the risk factors. 1/6 of the UK is on a flood plain or below sea level and potentially at risk from flooding. (Compared to 2/3 of The Netherlands which spends 2x the amount of anti-flood measure per capita than the UK). London is built on a flood plain. Most of our towns and villages grew up on positions near rivers and other watercourses. Water is vital to conurbations, industry, agriculture, and historically travel and commerce. We can't always avoid it any more than we can avoid living near trees.

People are only sometimes aware of flood risk when buying property. I bought a house in New Malden that was nowhere near any marked watercourses. Nothing came up in searches or surveys. The previous owners mentioned nothing. It was only when we received notice from the local council that we were on a flood warning register that we realised what might happen. Indeed the nearby road junction would regularly need to be closed because of a massive puddle. It wouldn't have taken much for that to expand sufficiently to threaten people's houses as well as their travel. Given the exceptional rain and wind recently - well, I'm pleased we have since moved.

One of the sad things about discovering that your house is at risk of flood is the immediate drop in property value and ability to sell. Richer folk with more travel options and more freedom to relocate get to choose. The poor, not so much.

I don't like seeing the media crowing over people they have found that have not received any help. Thousands of people are engaged in rescue and support operations and the press rush to find someone critical of the environment agency or who hasn't received a sandbag for some reason.

However current local planning permissions seem liberal in the face of flood risk. There was a pub car park in Buckingham which routinely flooded. I lived there for a number of years and saw several flood events. It was unexceptional. I could not believe it when they sold the car park to a developer and a block of flats was raised on the site. I drove past there today and workmen were back and the river had engulfed the underground(!) car park and was clearly causing some issues.

We are caught in a difficult situation in the UK where population is growing, more people are leading fragmented lives, which means we need a huge stock of lower-cost housing and we are not generously endowed with land and facilities. Rate of building continues to lag demand - pushing property prices higher. I am not surprised that developers are pushing the boundaries of good sense. They are being driven by the government to build low cost property, which means low cost land, which means risk of some kind or another.
 

dyre

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MeChaNiZ3D said:
dyre said:
If you get shot/raped/mugged in a high crime area, no sympathy for you! You should've known that it's dangerous to live there!
Yes, you fucking should have. How do you live in a high crime area and not take precautions? I'm not saying I wouldn't have sympathy for someone in that scenario, but common sense.
Except this thread is about sympathy, not common sense. Come on, don't waste my time.

Also, you seem to have this funny idea that taking precautions makes you immune to disaster...

edit: I see some other posters have already trashed your reply. No need for me to get involved then. (My thanks, DoPo)
 

MammothBlade

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Sarge034 said:
KingsGambit said:
Also worth mentioning, for those living in areas for a long time who have the landscape changed around them, local councils who save money by ceasing river dredging and farmland turned to housing, etc, I do not question their suffering at all since the area was knowingly fine when they chose to live there. My question really concerns those living in high-risk areas. Should the taxpayer support the relief to these high risk areas? Should we feel sympathy for victims struck by a disaster that was easily predicted? What do you all think?

Of course we should have empathy for the victims but not all victims get my sympathy. If the disaster is a very rare occurrence or is particularly worse than normal they get my sympathy. If the disasters are regular or increasing at a predicted rate then no sympathy from me. Now there is also something to say for people who can't afford to move. They get my sympathy simply because they do not posses the means to correct the situation if they wanted to. However, if you knowingly move to an extremely disaster prone location... "You'll get no sympathy from me. You want sympathy, look in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. That's where you'll find my sympathy." - Major Payne (1995). As for the money bit... I don't know. Both giving aid and not providing aid have their pros and cons so at this point I am torn.

As an example I have no sympathy for Louisiana, none. You can't live in a hole next to the ocean and expect that hole to not fill up with water.

So you admit yourself, there are different reasons people live in such areas. And it's not because they want to get hit by floods. They have their entire livelihoods there, their jobs, their family, everything. No-one looks at a map and goes "GEE WHIZZ I SURE WISH I LIVED IN A FLOOD-PRONE AREA!"

Often, living in an area that is prone to floods is a necessity. The vast majority of people are not to blame for their misfortunes. There's no need to sit on a high horse and tell people after the fact. It's not as if low-lying areas are just barren wastelands which produce nothing of value. To say these sorts of things is just ignorant, I think.

It's okay not to have sympathy, you can just not care and ignore it. But it's quite different to go and say that people living in flooded areas are to blame for their troubles, as a lot of people seem to be doing here. And it's no good, as you are doing, to simply cherry pick your sympathy based on your own perceived criteria of worthiness.

With the attitudes some people have, I don't think flood victims want their sympathy anyway. "Sympathy" is only worth something coming from decent, considerate people.
 

MeChaNiZ3D

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DoPo said:
MeChaNiZ3D said:
DoPo said:
MeChaNiZ3D said:
I am interested in finding out what those "precautions" are. Just to be clear - you must be talking about something 100% certain to prevent anything, it's affordable, and is is not "do not live in dangerous areas". Because otherwise...how are you so certain no precautions are being taken?
I'm not suggesting that.
On the contrary, that's exactly what you said. By your very own words, if somebody gets shot/mugged/raped, they should have taken precautions. Thus suggesting that if they had, they wouldn't have been.
I may have said what I meant unclearly. I proceeded to clarify what I meant. You arguing about what you construed, reasonably, my first post to mean does nothing because I agree that it would be an unfair assumption, but it is not my opinion, as you knew in reading my reply. I don't know what holding me to something that you know was not my intention to say is accomplishing.

dyre said:
MeChaNiZ3D said:
dyre said:
If you get shot/raped/mugged in a high crime area, no sympathy for you! You should've known that it's dangerous to live there!
Yes, you fucking should have. How do you live in a high crime area and not take precautions? I'm not saying I wouldn't have sympathy for someone in that scenario, but common sense.
Except this thread is about sympathy, not common sense. Come on, don't waste my time.

Also, you seem to have this funny idea that taking precautions makes you immune to disaster...

edit: I see some other posters have already trashed your reply. No need for me to get involved then. (My thanks, DoPo)
And if you read my reply to that you will see why I do not have that funny idea. Also, there is binary not having sympathy and having sympathy, and there is a scale of having more or less sympathy. I have sympathy for victims of crimes. I have less sympathy for people who know they live in a high crime rate area and do not take precautions.
 

debtcollector

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Therumancer said:
I've had very similar thoughts over the years, especially when dealing with second and third world countries, where at one point you might have been able to give them excuse of ignorance, but a lot of time and effort has been put into educating these people. When you still see them overpopulating in famine afflicted areas, rebuilding villages and towns right on top of fault lines and flood prone areas, and similar things, it becomes harder and harder to be sympathetic. Especially when in some cases if you dig you might find that X nation's ruling "government" just bought a bunch of military surplus from a nation like Russia and has been busy polishing it's 2-3 generation old tanks and MIG variants to bother constructing proper safeguards. The way I see things is if people are dying by the tens of thousands in preventable national disasters anyway, the people should be rebelling against their government, especially in nations where they can outnumber government troops hundreds to one, sure a lot of people might die, but eventually if they just keep coming the oppressive militaries will run out of bullets before the rebels run out of bodies (sort of like Zulus fighting British colonial troops, or Muslims overrunning the Foreign Legion). Beyond a certain point it takes a very "special" kind of people to keep letting this status quo exist and dying by the thousands anyway.
This....this is a joke, right? You're just a very subtle troll, right? Because, if not, this is a fucking terrifying attitude for a human being to have.

It's so damn easy for people who've never had to struggle for anything to say "well, they should fight back", "they should have known better", "well, they let it happen" when confronted with the ugliest parts of life. It's a sort of venomous apathy that simply calls anything outside one's sphere of experience "not my problem". And, true, there's only so much one can care about anything, particularly things halfway around the world but....Christ.

Do you honestly believe these people wanted this? Do you think that people living in a famine-stricken area made a conscious decision to live in a place where they couldn't feed themselves or their families? If this is how you think the world works, then grow the fuck up and get out of the schoolyard, because you are sorely mistaken. These people would just love to fight back against their corrupt regimes, and will, just as soon as they get enough food to feed their families. Which they'll get as soon as they can get money, which they'll get as soon as their country's infrastructure becomes even remotely stable. It's not a case of "Oh, well our city was just destroyed, guess we'll just live here until the next earthquake kills us for good" it's a case of not having fucking anywhere else to go. The city is the only chance they have to get fed at all, and if they'll have to deal with another disaster somewhere down the road, whatever. They're trying to live day-to-day, they don't have the luxury of worrying about the future. And it's not like they can just get out of the country, since immigration costs money, and we all know how that goes.

But no, you're right, it's their own damn fault they were born in the most impoverished part of the world, that their own government repeatedly shits on them, that they're too busy getting fucked over by their own damn circumstances to even begin to fight back. How fucking dare they.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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debtcollector said:
Therumancer said:
I've had very similar thoughts over the years, especially when dealing with second and third world countries, where at one point you might have been able to give them excuse of ignorance, but a lot of time and effort has been put into educating these people. When you still see them overpopulating in famine afflicted areas, rebuilding villages and towns right on top of fault lines and flood prone areas, and similar things, it becomes harder and harder to be sympathetic. Especially when in some cases if you dig you might find that X nation's ruling "government" just bought a bunch of military surplus from a nation like Russia and has been busy polishing it's 2-3 generation old tanks and MIG variants to bother constructing proper safeguards. The way I see things is if people are dying by the tens of thousands in preventable national disasters anyway, the people should be rebelling against their government, especially in nations where they can outnumber government troops hundreds to one, sure a lot of people might die, but eventually if they just keep coming the oppressive militaries will run out of bullets before the rebels run out of bodies (sort of like Zulus fighting British colonial troops, or Muslims overrunning the Foreign Legion). Beyond a certain point it takes a very "special" kind of people to keep letting this status quo exist and dying by the thousands anyway.
This....this is a joke, right? You're just a very subtle troll, right? Because, if not, this is a fucking terrifying attitude for a human being to have.

It's so damn easy for people who've never had to struggle for anything to say "well, they should fight back", "they should have known better", "well, they let it happen" when confronted with the ugliest parts of life. It's a sort of venomous apathy that simply calls anything outside one's sphere of experience "not my problem". And, true, there's only so much one can care about anything, particularly things halfway around the world but....Christ.

Do you honestly believe these people wanted this? Do you think that people living in a famine-stricken area made a conscious decision to live in a place where they couldn't feed themselves or their families? If this is how you think the world works, then grow the fuck up and get out of the schoolyard, because you are sorely mistaken. These people would just love to fight back against their corrupt regimes, and will, just as soon as they get enough food to feed their families. Which they'll get as soon as they can get money, which they'll get as soon as their country's infrastructure becomes even remotely stable. It's not a case of "Oh, well our city was just destroyed, guess we'll just live here until the next earthquake kills us for good" it's a case of not having fucking anywhere else to go. The city is the only chance they have to get fed at all, and if they'll have to deal with another disaster somewhere down the road, whatever. They're trying to live day-to-day, they don't have the luxury of worrying about the future. And it's not like they can just get out of the country, since immigration costs money, and we all know how that goes.

But no, you're right, it's their own damn fault they were born in the most impoverished part of the world, that their own government repeatedly shits on them, that they're too busy getting fucked over by their own damn circumstances to even begin to fight back. How fucking dare they.
At the same time however, understand that the first world has spent literally trillions of dollars, and thousands upon thousands of lives trying to solve these problems. All we have done is make the problem worse in many cases by causing the people to rely on us, and come running to the UN or wealthy countries like the US with their hands out when something goes wrong, like it's some kind of obligation on our part. We've trained and educated people in these regions and then seen them simply turn around and use what we've taught them to take over, and become a new, more cunning breed of warlord that are better able to exploit UN policy.

Don't get me wrong, I understand where your coming from, but over the years I've gradually come to the conclusion that at the end of the day some problems cannot be solved from the outside, no matter how much you might wish otherwise. A country like the US can say destroy a nation or terrorize it for it's own protection or gains, go in, kill lots of people/destroy stuff/get out, but as much as we might like to think otherwise we cannot change who a people are on a fundamental level. This was the big folly of the so called "War On Terror" which was never a war, we decided to go into these countries, some of the poorest on earth, and instead of wiping them out so they would no longer be a threat we decided to "win the peace" which means we rolled around in a decade long police action, providing charity, infrastructure, and all kinds of things to improve conditions only to have the people themselves tear it down. We give them the ability to create a new government and the first thing they do is declare themselves an Islamic state (theocratic) in their new constitutions. We go in with the ambition of women's rights, and we fail that right from the get go because the people themselves fundamentally do not want to change, a decade later we still have to force our women in positions of authority to pretend they are subservient to men in meetings to avoid offense. The same basic logic applies to disasters and other extremely poor regions, except in their cae they haven't presented a threat where we've needed to consider military action for our own reason. We can give them tons of resources, send in military peacekeepers, and do all kinds of other garbage, like we've been doing for even longer than "The War On Terror" but at the end of the day unless the people themselves change the problem isn't going to get better, all it's going to be is a resource sink.

This is why I mentioned Darwinism, what your looking at is basically social Darwinism in action, as ugly as it is, with societies and the people that make them slowly dying out due to their inability to cope. It's not their fault, no more than it is when nature causes a creature unable to deal with other more adaptive species to go extinct. It's not the fault of these wretched people they were born where they were, or that their society is such a mess, and your right maybe they couldn't change it if they wanted to (though in many cases I think they could, they have just gotten too used to the handouts and outside support, which has increasingly been demanded as an obligation on the part of the first world rather than an act of charity and temporary assistance), but at the same time when the first world is itself suffering we cannot be expected to break our own countries because someone else has it worse than we do. Again, the US has 17 trillion bloody dollars in debt, and we have people still unable to feed themselves here, pardon me if it sounds "heartless" but we do kind of have our own mess to deal with. It's not like the US is sitting on top of this massive surplus we're hoarding and refusing to share, then I might agree with you, but face it, that's not reality.

As I've said before, and will say again, the world sucks. It's not nice, but yeah, at this point my basic attitude is "deal with your own problems, we have ours" if the people manage to (and I think a lot can if they were forced to and didn't lean so heavily on foreign aid) that's a great thing, if some just die out with a whimper... well, it won't be the first time in human history, and it won't be like we didn't put in one hell of an effort before it got to this point.

Besides, understand my entire attitude is even more terrifying than what I'm presenting here. At the end of the day I believe for humanity to survive 90% of the population needs to die, and the remaining 10% need to be assembled into a single nation/culture with tight population regulation. I've written some detailed explanations of this in other posts, and it ultimately comes down to resource depletion and the needs of being able to get into space seriously to expand and obtain more resources, I won't bother to go into the details here. Needless to say I'm such realist nowadays, and realism is so close to being nihilistic, that I see situations like this as part of the equasion to begin with. Too many people, not enough resources. If humanity as a whole is going to survive 90% of the population needs to pretty much die off and we need to get into space within a couple of decades (Steven Hawking more or less seems to agree with me on the time table and resource issues, though he doesn't seem to ponder the ugly sociological realities), so since I'm pretty much convinced that depressing truth is the only hope, it's hard to really be sympathetic in situations like this... and no, it's not fair, and it's all kinds of messed up, but hey... that's our sucky world.
 

Eclectic Dreck

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The brutally honest answer is that the only sympathy I have for such victims is an incredibly vague thought that such outcomes really suck; such a minor thought that it rarely even results in a simple verbal acknowledgement of the situation. What it comes down to is that I have no real emotional reaction. Those people are people I do not know in the slightest which results in a fair amount of emotional detachment. That said, what little response I do have is sympathetic because, going hand in hand with that whole not knowing them thing is the fact that I have no idea if they actually had the means to avoid calamity (that is, awareness of the problem, ability to take steps to avoid it and willingness to put in the effort). For all I know, they were sucker punched by ignorance or circumstance and there is nothing to be gained by being snide.
 

Ratty

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If you're living in a dangerous area, whether it be from natural disasters or man made ones like wars and or drug epidemics, then you're probably too poor to move somewhere else. So yes, yes we should have sympathy for people in these situations. We're not fucking Social Darwinists.
 

Therumancer

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Trilligan said:
Therumancer said:
At the end of the day I believe for humanity to survive 90% of the population needs to die, and the remaining 10% need to be assembled into a single nation/culture with tight population regulation.
Let me guess.

The '90%' should be all the brown people who don't speak English. And the 10% should all be blonde, blue-eyed, and fair skinned.

Ahh, more racism allegations.

That said, it's unlikely any blanket population reduction would be entirely discriminatory one way or another. If it was say a war for example one would expect countries like the USA to be hit heavily themselves. I myself have mentioned that in a situation like this I'd be likely to die myself. I after all am probably one of the weaker links in society, and pretty much dependent on medication to function as well as I do (brain damage) I can't see myself surviving any particular apocalyptic scenario and largely my arguments are made from the perspective that I, and pretty much everyone I know, are going to die, just like the odds of it mathematically happening give a decent chance of anyone reading this being in the same boat. I just believe that it's best for humanity in the long run.

In say a World War III scenario which is most likely, the US and it's allies would presumably be at war with China, Russia, and other such nations and their allies. Such a conflict is unlikely to be entirely one sided. In a "blameless" scenario like in a lot of science fiction, where say a genetic plague or virus ravages humanity in such a way as to prevent moral judgement in the backstory pretty much every type of person is going to be hit.

Now where "bigotry" of a sort comes into play is that I very much believe that the US and Western morality and society forming the backbone of planetary government is the best way to go. Largely because at least in principle (if not in actual practice nowadays) it's the one type of system where all kinds of people are going to be able to co-exist within the global culture more or less as equals. In comparison if someone like China was the big society leading the reformation you'd be likely to see it being rebuild with an ethnic dominance (Chinese superiority) and all other races being subservient. The same would apply to say a victory by Middle Eastern powers who see themselves (Arabs) as being gods chosen people and the ones he spoke to first, etc. People today tend to underestimate how much racism there is out there especially in a lot of these fairly mono-ethnic cultures and don't realize quite how cosmopolitan the US and it's immediate allies actually are despite our tendencies towards self criticism.

Of course I've explained all of this in other threads, but it hasn't come up in this one. Also understand that in a lot of cases I'm talking long term, a lot of my short term militarism is pretty much intended to keep the US strong and in a position where it's ideals are the most likely ones to survive if humanity itself experiences the things that will be necessary for it's own survival. I'll also say at the end of the day even a global culture established in the spirit of a nation like China or Russia would be preferably to the outright extinction of our species, so I figure even if the western world pretty much lost and our culture wasn't the one to become the global culture, it would still ultimately be for the best, albeit not what I'd personally aim for given my choice.

That said, this is all well off topic. I merely mentioned my overall attitudes, as grim as they happen to be, because they do influence my thinking in situations like this. Also, don't confuse being a realist with an overall lack of compassion. I just believe reason trumps emotion in cases this thread is about. Think about some of the points I've
made here about the tons of money spent on global charity, and how little difference it's made, as well as how it's created a situation where people all around the world really do approach the first world out of a sense of entitlement now. Not to mention the 17 trillion dollar debt is not something I'm kidding about when it comes to the US, and it's about to get worse. If the USA is having trouble taking care of itself, we shouldn't be running around trying to rescue second and third world countries unless we want to destroy ourselves. That said there are exceptions when I would intervene, mainly if close allies (albeit none of these would likely be second or third world) were in trouble. Despite the debt if the UK asked for help with the flooding I'd support intervention, not because they are white, but because the UK has been a close ally, backing us in wars and stuff even when it was unpopular, and at great cost to themselves. The same would apply to Australia, the whole "War On Terror" was never really popular there, but I do remember when the US called for help it was the first time an Australian ship had fired in anger since World War II, I do not forget things like this even if many people do.... and yes I suppose you could play semantics about "what if" with tons of other countries or mention minor things, but please take that point as it's intended. It's about the close alliance with these nations, compared to ones we're simply doing charity in.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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Trilligan said:
Therumancer said:
(brain damage)
Aha.

That explains so much.
Predictable snap, but it doesn't really change the points, especially seeing as the basis for my points comes from a lot of people who aren't brain damaged. Steven Hawking, various environmentalists, and of course population control arguments that were being made decades before I was even born, specifically to prevent us from arriving at the place we are now. Granted what I say is not popular, after all it's been deeply ingrained into the psyche that simply "getting rid of people" is wrong, and honestly on a societal level it is, but we're dealing with a situation where it comes down to either this, or there are going to functionally be no people, and no hope for humanity, at all. Granted some people make the overall points far, far, better than I do or ever will, especially seeing as I tend to be anything but diplomatic about it (largely because I don't believe in mincing words or doublespeak). At the end space travel is necessary for humanity to survive, if for no other reason that simply getting mineral resources in the solar system, which of course brings us to the point that we are well on our way to depleting all of the resources at the current rate of consumption far sooner than anyone wants to believe (as environmentalists have been pointing out for quite a while), as Steven Hawking has pointed out there is a definite space between when we deplete the resources to the point of ending civilization until our sun explodes (and functionally killing so many more people than what I've said), and the point where we deplete resources to the point of being unable to support a functional space exploration program, and pretty much lock ourselves into a doomed, downward spiral. It's an odd place when what amounts to mass murder becomes the same thing as humanitarianism, but it does happen.

At any rate, if your going to blame something it's not the brain damage, it's probably more along the lines of the depression. One of those "chicken and the egg" arguments, does realizing these things make me depressed, or do I gravitate towards them because I'm depressed? I basically choose not to contemplate it that way though, because really I've never been a full on emo or enough of a nihilist to become a full on goth (that is one who isn't a poseur). The point being that is one of my more frequent criticisms. If you bother to really think it through I'm pretty much approaching this from an optimistic direction, as is there is hope for a brighter future despite all these unpleasant facts, it just sucks in getting there. Basically the little sunshine boy dropping sunshine and WMDs on the planet for a happier tomorrow... oh wait that last description probably did come from brain damage. :)
 

shootthebandit

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I dont mean to sound harsh but as long as no one dies its just an inconvenience. Provided you have adequate buildings and contents cover you might be seriously inconvenienced and if you have a house with no cover then I have no sympathy whatsoever. Here in the UK we dont have it that bad, just look at things like hurricane katrina which destroyed the lives of thousands

Ive seen posts on facebook from some of my more right-wing friends saying "When there is a disaster overseas the UK is the first to send aid and/or troops but when we have a disaster no one bails us out". Its really not that simple, the fact that we are one of the richest countries per head of population and the fact that these floods are nowhere near as bad as other countries

having said that, yes i do feel sympathetic but not as sympathetic as a malnourished african child that travels 20 miles for dirty water
 

Tom_green_day

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KingsGambit said:
People voluntarily opt to live in these areas. They knowingly choose these parts of the world to make their homes when there are more hospitable ones available.
I stopped reading here because it was so dumb.
You think they chose their houses to be there even though knowing it would flood there? The reason us in the UK are so surprised with the floods is that they have come much further inland than we expected, and houses that wouldn't normally see water are completely under it.
And although other houses are available, it doesn't make them equally plausible to live in. Cities cost more to live in and aren't good for all kind of jobs.
 

Vykrel

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you seem to have literally no concept of what it is to be "less fortunate".
 

Doclector

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Aug 22, 2009
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Well, yeah.

1) People may not necessarily know they're in a flood risk area. Sometimes the defences look far better than they are, or the riverbank looks deep enough to hold a decent amount of water.

2) People may not fully choose to live in such a place. Times are tough, especially if you're going for that dream career. Say you get that job offer you always wanted, but you'll need to move to a high flood risk area. Are you really going to throw the opportunity of a lifetime away for something that MIGHT happen?

I mean, I would. But I'm insane.

3) It may not have been a flood risk area when they moved there. Things change. Defences decay, weather changes, poorly planned development fucks over flooding prevention, and it isn't as easy, practically or emotionally, to leave, and that's if you even know that the area has become a flood risk area.

This whole thing caught us by surprise. Some of the areas affected haven't flooded like this for ages, it's all too easy to believe that it's safe now.
 
Apr 5, 2008
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Tom_green_day said:
KingsGambit said:
People voluntarily opt to live in these areas. They knowingly choose these parts of the world to make their homes when there are more hospitable ones available.
I stopped reading here because it was so dumb.
Regrettably then, you missed the part where I specifically mentioned the current situation in the UK and that it was not related to the point I was making. Read properly, you'll note I'm talking specifically about high-risk areas with foreseeable disasters. In general, it helps to have all the information prior to forming an opinion.
 

SUPA FRANKY

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Aug 18, 2009
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So to sum up this thread? First World Problems, and " It's So hard to be so much successful than people across the world!"