There are times when almost everyone dies. There are times when I was young and took too many risks that didn't seem that bad at the time like almost dying in a white out Blizzard on Mt. Shasta from freezing to death in a Snow Cave on Mt. Shasta Christmas Vacation from College with two buddies then. Almost dying of exposure trying to climb Mt. San Gorgonio in the winter time with snow everywhere and once again on snow shoes. The biggest problem was after summitting I slide down from the peak into Slushy Meadows. However, before you get there there are 8 to 10 feet tall manzinita bushes that I didn't realize I was walking over the top of. So, at one point I broke through and found myself poked by many manzinita Ironwood parts so I was bleeding from this and hanging by my snow shoes upside down and it was starting to get dark and I was 22 years old. At this point I started crying because I wasn't sure I was going to survive all this. However, I took off my snow shoes while hanging upside down and then fell into the Manzinita Bush more and got more bloody and then managed to disentangle my snow shoes from the branches and I managed to climb up out of there. But then I was in the middle of all these manzinita bushes covered up with snow that you couldn't see because of the snow at all. So, I gingerly walked lightly (very lightly) on my snow shoes so I wouldn't fall through by accident once again because I wasn't sure if I could survive that or not at this point. The point is: We all face places in life where we might not survive even that day. (At least I did many times).
However, my son was talking about Good and Bad and we began to talk about how one defines good and bad and I was saying to him that one of the best statements about this is from the philosopher Descartes from France.
He said, "There is nothing so Good that no bad may come of it and nothing so bad that no good may come of it."
This got me thinking about people like Hitler, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung who all were responsible for millions and millions of deaths of their people and others.
Hitler alone was directly and indirectly responsible for around 100 million deaths.
However, if one observes all this pragmatically one sees that what did Hitler actually do?
He prevented human extinction long term by what he did as crazy as it was.
Then one looks at Abortion (which almost everyone agrees is bad). However, people who have studied this enough realize that without abortions worldwide we would all have gone extinct already.
I in fact did the calculations and realized that without any abortions worldwide the human race would have gone extinct somewhere between 1965 and 1970!
So, as you can see: "Nothing is so bad that no good may come of it".
As long was you believe the human race not going extinct is a good thing.
And I think that most people believe this too here on earth.
What a strange world we live in that all these things are likely true?
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