After posting on facebook about Pat Robertson's remark that Altzheimer's was grounds for divorce, I was reminded by a friend of his remarks last year about the sin of the Haitians being the cause of their devastating earthquake.
It reminded me of my quite different take on it in my article, "Haiti Quake Produces 'Miracles'". where I quoted Col. Gili Shenhal, " 'If you save one man,' we say in Hebrew, 'you save the whole world,' and this is one of the main reasons that we are here." and added "Some, however, consider the outpouring of charity from so many recession-hit nations to these very needy people the greater miracle."
Death for Haitian quake or Altzheimer's victims is said to be justifiable because the person is "gone" or no longer productive, no longer functioning as a person is expected to function. It was stated tonight in Off-beat Cinema's "The War of the Colossal Beast" (1958) as the Colossal man could not be restored to the way he was, but was now merely a beast. Col. Manning's sister did not believe that then and some of us still do not believe it. Once Human always Human! I like to think that the ending self-electrocution didn't kill the Colossal Man but like electroshock restored the rest of his memory.
It was then and still is the heresy of utilitarianism, the false idea that a person is only a person as long as he or she is useful to society. In a sense this is true, but the untruth comes in when one failed to consider the usefulness of the useless. Beggars were once considered a vital part of society because they kept the wealthy from growing too proud. That sort of idea is now considered medieval, archaic, useless. It is not; it's hierogamous.
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