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But doesn't that go for any life-giving or life-preserving action? Say I was drowning, and someone saved me: should I be grateful to them, or just say "Well, if I'd died, I wouldn't have to be grateful: you're just my condition-of-possibility, so the point is moot."
I appreciate the point, but it's not quite the same thing, which is probably my fault for badly wording the post. In order to be drowning, you presumably had a life and an individual identity prior to toppling into the water. Not only that, but that in the event you did drown it would have an impact on the world you left behind, to one degree or another.
What I was referring to was the simple variable of born/not born, rather than born then died/not died. Since your never being born doesn't really have an impact on the world, I can't see it suggests - by converse - that your being born is something for which you should be grateful.
Nephilim - I think the point of this thread is whether you owe gratitude to your parents simply for giving birth to you
Spot on, Deva. And Nephilim, although you posted at a slight tangent to the thread, I'd still like to clarify my own stance on what you've said, that being that I am extremely aware of - and grateful to - my parents for the stirling work they put in, both physical and emotional, in raising me at all, much less in raising me to be the kind of person who would pose the type of question with which this thread is concerned.
...but, as Deva pointed out, I'm more interested in whether or not it is expected, or right, to feel gratitude for the simple fact that your parents happened to get frisky one day and, nine months later, you popped into the world.
A thought experiment- say I build a house, out of broken glass and diamonds. Then I give it to you- you didn't ask for it, don't want it and can't give it back. Then I tell you how painful it was and how much it cost me, and how you should be grateful I went to such lengths to give you a house made of broken glass.
Should I receive your gratitude?
Like Nephilim, you've shot just shy of the point Quantum. The point of the thread is to ascertain whether you are grateful, or believe you should be grateful, to your parents for the simple fact that they gave birth to you. What isn't in question is the fact you might appreciate or be grateful for the astounding degree of work they did for you after that event. |
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