Food for Thought - a fallacy that we are all guilty of

By nature, humans have trouble with 'becomings'. Our minds attach labels to things in the surrounding world, and we interpret those labels as discontinuities. If things have different labels, then we expect there to be a clear line of demarcation bewteen them.


How many times have you been in a discussion in which somebody says "We have to decide where to draw the line"" For instance, most people seem to accept that in general terms women should be permitted abortions during the earliest stages of pregnancy but not during the very late stages. "Where you draw the line", thou , is easily debated - and of course some people wish to draw it at one extreme or other. There are similar debates about exactly when a developing embryo becomes a person, with legal and moral rights. Is it at conception? When the brian first forms? At birth? Or was it always a potential person, even when it 'existed' as one egg and one sperm?


The 'draw the line' philosophy offers a substantail political advantage to people with hidden aggendas. The method for getting what you want is first to draw the line somewhere that nobody would object to, and then gradually movie it to where you really want it, aruguing continuity all the way. For example having agreed that killing a child is murder, the line labelled 'murder' is then slid back to the instant of conception; having agreed that people should be allowed to read whichever newspaper they like, you end up supporting the right to put the recipe for nerve gas on the Internet.


If we were less obsessed with drawing labels and discontinuity, it would be much easier to recognize that the problem here is not where to draw the line: it is the image of drawing a line is inappropriate. There is no sharp line, only shades of grey that merge unnoticed into one another- despite which, one end is manifestly white and the other equally clearly black. An embryo is not a person, but as it develops it gradually becomes one. There is no magic moment at which it switches from non=person to person- instead, it merges continuously from one into the other.


- qouted from the Science of Discworld by Terry Prachett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen- Terry: while he writes about fantasy, his stories are always insightful about the true nature of human behaviour and the laws of society.


While as children
adults find a need to help us understand the world
by simplifying things into black and white
but as we grow
and learn
and experience
we should have learnt that the world
is never in monochrome


Instead it is alive, vivid
painted in many different colours
Just like in the movie "Pleasentville"
While colours bring about confusion and uncertainty
it makes life soo much more rich and textured


Life is not just about shades of grey
i feel
Life is filled with a riot of shades and tonnes and light
and we as Men and Women
should live through these colours
and stop worrying about
'Drawing The Line'