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From: holmes@dalcs.UUCP (Ray Holmes)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.flame
Subject: Re: life rafts
Message-ID: <1506@dalcs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 5-May-85 18:01:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: dalcs.1506
Posted: Sun May  5 18:01:46 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 5-May-85 23:48:46 EDT
References: <1216@amd.UUCP> <5232@fortune.UUCP>
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada
Lines: 34

Ray Holmes asks that I state first off that this reply is not from him; it's
from his friend Andrew.

This life raft bit is rather interesting, but Karen Bain's "Survival of the
Fittest" idea has a few problems.  People in life rafts have as their
primary worry not starvation, but dehydration.  ("Water, water everywhere/
Nor any drop to drink" points out Coleridge, and was right.)  Now, this may
seem irrelevant to the ethical question of cannibalism at sea, but just hang
on a minute, I've a point I'd like to make. In Cord Christian Troebst's "The
Art of Survival" cases were cited wherein castaways were slicing each other
merrily up so as to get at their blood, in hopes of slaking their thirst.
(For those of you who sneer at survivalism entirely, take my word for it
that drinking sea water speeds the dehydration process, and since I've got
your attention, No, Virginia, the vast majority of the survivalist movement
in North America are not the raving homicidal lunatics we're made out to
be.)  The difficulty with that solution was that waiting for someone to die
is not as effective as killing him, since the blood flows out still under
pressure in the latter case. So, I have to agree, killing one of your number
seems a more practical idea.  The common complaint about the survivalist
movement stems from the fact that many of our number walk about with Uzi
submachineguns, Second Chance body armour, and suchlike window dressing.
Well, consider all of the situations which the survivalists out here are
considering and preparing for, many of which are analogous to your life raft
proposition, but on a larger scale.  If there are folks out there who'd kill
me in my sleep, and eat my meaty carcass, and have said so over the net, I'd
be out of my mind not to own a gun, and be willing to use it.  Maybe that's
just another way of defining "the fittest" (and I don't relish the thought
any more than you do, Karen) but in most such situations, the leftovers ARE
tossed over the side, figuratively speaking.  This is certainly not a pretty
thought, but if you are willing to off ME to survive, you're thinking like
the survivalists (self proclaimed; I certainly don't identify myself with
them) who've given the movement the whole repulsive image that we are trying
to avoid.  Well, anyway.  Anybody got a copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook
that they could loan a fellow?