Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Andries Botha: Well, I think the question, is a statement is really perplexing to believe that, one would think, that your life is more important than somebody else’s. As to why we do it, I guess it’s a fundamental fact of reality that the world is a subjective lens embodies itself, as you see it for yourself. However, the secret would be is to see yourself much smaller, at a much smaller level than which you currently do and this is really see your own humanness as being part of somebody else’s. Humanity indirect to humanness, so, I’m not exactly sure why do we consider that there are lives more important than ours. Simply because we do, I suppose. I know we shouldn't but we do. This is a very, very strange idea. A very strange idea. It would be terrible but we do.

by Andries Botha

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Angaangaq Lyberth: Nicola, you should be sitting down at your own Parliament and ask that question. You should make them aware that that is your question. And you should make sure that they answer every word of your question. As I should at home sit in my Parliamentary building and as the very same question. As everyone else in this beautiful circle, they should go home and ask that question to everywhere. Life is equally worth everywhere. 6-1/2 billion of us are equally worth. Never again believe that other lives are less equal than to others. Everyone of these people sitting here, every one without any exception, are equally worth. Why we don’t? We still that believe that others are better than the others and they are not. I will give back to you the answer. Nicola, you need to do better in ensuring that every life on Earth is recognized as being equal to anyone else’s life. Anyone’s. 6-1/2 billion times. Did you hear me?

by Angaangaq Lyberth

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Anthony Arnove: This is really a tremendously important question, and the reality is that life is not considered to be a question of universal equality. Our life in our world today is given a dollar sign and the value of certain lives is far greater than others. We see this even, for example, in the very cynical fact that insurance companies will give money to the family of deceased people, people who had insurance, on the basis of their earning power, on the basis of their class position in our society, so that certain people’s lives have more value in death than others. And then, also, of course the question of whose lives count in a political sense is even more profoundly unequal. The lives of Palestinians, the lives of Iraqis don’t matter as much as the lives of the people who are oppressing them. There are lives that [lose] experiences never will matter, account in the calculations of corporations and the calculations of governments. And in fact, their lives are an obstacle to the pursuit of the interest, pursuit of power of those in control of our world. So, the profound inequality exists in how lives are valued today really exposes the idea that capitalism is bringing about the growth of freedom, the growth of quality, the growth of the value of human life, it’s actually the opposite.

by Anthony Arnove

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Anuradha Koirala: Because some of us--some lives have more worth than others. Because we live for ourselves and not for others. We live for ourselves and not for others.

by Anuradha Koirala

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Anuradha Mittal: When I first saw this question, I thought of, if there was a way to bring this question to the people in Bhopal who in 1984 were affected by the gas leak from the Union Carbide factory. And out of that settlement basically which still has to reach many people is less than $800. First of all, can we actually determine what is the dollar value of a human life, of the communities who were ravished and continue to suffer even today, continue to go blind, continue to die, continue to suffer from all kind of respiratory diseases? So given that, yeah, I did want to bring this question to them and they would answer why do we think some lives are more valuable and how they -- what happened to them has been so ignored by a company like Union Carbide and time has gone by. I think I am guessing that they would say that the answer lies in the power structures. The people who have the power have decided that the people whose power has been taken away that they are meaningless, that their lives do not matter as much or they don’t count as much. But, it’s a matter of time when people organize as the people in the Bhopal have, whether it’s a women group, the people who were affected, they have organized to take back their power and to be able to say that it is not for somebody or some corporation to decide whose life is more valuable. And so, it is not really we, I would say, that we consider some lives as being more valuable. There is some among us who might think so but not all.

by Anuradha Mittal

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Ashok Gangadean: The question here is “we” and which “we” are we speaking, because if it’s “we” of say a Jesus or of a Buddha or of a Moses or of Mohammed or of a Lao Tzu or of a Lakota, of indigenous leader. That “we” would not treat some lives as more important, because that collective awakened global “we” that comes from global wisdom and global spirituality recognizes a sacredness of all lives, not only human lives, but of all life of expressing directly the fundamental truth of that infinite force by what everything we call, I use the word “logos” understood in this infinite name to be the sacred space of interconnectivity. And, when we speak from that culture, which I think has been the culture of a collective high wisdom of the planet, that “we” recognizes that we are all of equal worth and dignity. Every grain of sand is sacred, every part of nature is sacred. So, to the extent that the “we” is ego-based, yes there is that alienation and fragmentation and violence to the other that in the dominance of the other and the control of the other and the alienation of our self from that other that would lead to distortions of thinking and treating some humans as having more worth than others which is a distortion of global wisdom and spirituality.

by Ashok Gangadean

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Audrey Kitagawa: I don't believe that some lives are worth more than others. I believe that all lives are worthwhile, that all of life is sacred, and therefore we must honor and respect each life and all life forms as sacred. So there is no life form that is greater than or worth more than any other, and this is part of the sacred turn in life to be able to understand that from the spiritual perspective there is no high nor low in spirit and that life itself is sacred, is valuable, and ought to be honored and respected. So I don't believe that there are lives that are considered worth more than others. All of life is worthwhile, valuable, and sacred.

by Audrey Kitagawa

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Benjamin Fahrer: What are the basic dignities that each human deserves and why do we let so many people go without them? It’s a really good question. The basic human rights is access to the commons, access to clean water, to air, to land, to grow food, to communication, to freedoms. This are common, it should be basic to everyone that lives. Unfortunately, we live in a system now that has taken that, has taken away people’s common rights, common dignities to live and to be human. What it means to be human? We’re not human doers, we’re human beings. And so we need to have access to these resources in order to be. In order to be.

by Benjamin Fahrer

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Benson Venegas: Because of ignorance and lack of understanding, we forget the real meaning of life. There's no life better or with more value than others. Everyone as you see around in this circle moves at a basic rhythm. And the most primitive rhythm that moves our lives is our heart. And the heart [how many] people that is around the circle, one hundred and twelve people, it beats with a most primitive rhythm, and that beating is universal. So that give us a sense that everyone, every life, is important. Every human being is important. And all of us are part of the same level and concept, because we moves with the most beautiful and basic rhythm, that is the beating of your heart.

by Benson Venegas

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Beverly Schwartz:

by Beverly Schwartz

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon.

by Bianca Jagger

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Bill Joy: I would like to talk about health care and consider where we spend our money in health care. I think it’s clear at least in the United States we’re spending an enormous amount of money on health care and we’re not necessarily getting good health and I think part of that is that we’re not spending it in the right places. We spend an enormous amount of money on what I would call terminal care. Clearly if you have someone, a long loved member of the family, and they’re ill and they’re dying you don’t want them to suffer. But we sometimes go to extraordinary lengths and spend fantastic sums of money keeping people alive at a relatively low quality of life for a very short time. On the other hand we have young people and people who have a lot of life left and whose quality of life is poor because we’re not meeting their basic health care needs. So the overall amount of happiness and the overall quality of life would be better served by making more sensible decisions about where to put our limited resource for health care. Does this mean that we’re valuing some life more than other? Does this mean that someone who’s 20 whose life we can save’s life is worth more than someone who is 90 who’s life we can prolong? Well perhaps it does. But that’s the kind of I think judgment we need to make if we want to deal with the fact that we have a limited total amount of resource available because we just don’t have an infinite amount of money. And we have to treat everyone humanely but we ought to perhaps allocate our resources more sensibly.

by Bill Joy

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Bora Cosic: While we are biased, intolerant, illiberal, amatory, sometimes stupid, and sometimes we really believe that someone due to his talents is more worth more then other person. Off course there could be made a lot of differences between Shakespeare and butcher, but both of them are just two human beings with deferent occupations. Without equality between those two persons, which we our self must set, there is nothing.

by Bora Cosic

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Brian J. Weller: Well, I guess maybe because we – it’s probably through judgment. When we think about it, judgment is - when we judge another we’re really using – we’re comparing others with others, people with people. We can use criteria like economic worth, you know, someone worth more than another person. It’s an expression of positional power – I’m higher; you’re lower; better than you. What we’re really doing here, we’re mistaking difference with judgment. Yeah, we’re mistaking difference for judgment. So when I, me and mine comes first, then others come second. And then when you think about it, what behavior comes out of that? Behavior then shifts into this idea of winning or losing, being right or making other people wrong. It leads to domination. Those kinds of behaviors, of course, destroy relationships. This is very low order consciousness and I think we humans are better than that and we have to rise to be better than that. So, why do we consider some people’s lives to be worth more than others? Why do we do that? I think it’s a complete error. It’s a mistake. In Sanskrit the expression is “prajnaparadh.” It means “mistake of the intellect.” So it’s a mistake. It’s an error. It’s a bug in the software you could say. We’ve got to fix it.

by Brian J. Weller

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Catherine David: I think that not everybody considers that all lives are of the same value. I leave out the dilemma of Albert Camus. The dilemma of Albert Camus during the war in Algeria and the dilemma of Camus mother which is very personal but also very metaphysical so I leave it out. We have to ask why a Palistinian or an African who suffers from aids deserves not the same effort as an Israelian or a frenchmen who suffers from aids. We have to leave behind this kind of naivity and to realise that all this values of inequality have their origin in a world order which wants us to believe that today there aren't any political, cultural, social or economical problems but only the problem of terrorism. We are about to dishumanise and to erase a part of humanity so we have to ask the questions more precisely. But I think we have to ask the question why a taliban or an iraqi resistance fighter are not as worth as an american citizen.

by Catherine David

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

China Keitetsi: I think it depends on the country, how rich they are. Then they become more important. For example, in Africa 200 child soldier gets killed and it's not even reported. Three hundred child soldier gets killed and buried in the bush, we never get to know. And one American soldier or one European soldier gets killed, it's breaking news. I think in poor countries they have seen so much killings. In wars, for example, Congo or Rwanda where a million people was killed or in Congo where still millions are dying, or northern Uganda where half of the little girls live with no legs or no arms. Half of little girls are pregnant from the rebel groups, raped from the rebel groups. And yet it's unimportant. It's not even shown every day for us, or not much scream is made on that. And also when many people get killed and dictators kills at the end the value of person is nothing. It have to be 1 million to be killed, a scream to be heard. Here in Europe when you get in an accident, psychologists run after you to heal you, but in Rwanda a million people are killed and every woman and every child and every man there lost incredible a lot of their family and yet not a single psychologist helped these people. And I was amazed until today, I’m amazed that an African lose so many people in their lives and go on smiling, and without psychological help. Their homes are destroyed…

by China Keitetsi

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Constantin von Barloewen: It is scandalous indeed to imagine that economically speaking the life of Americans or Europeans should be worth more than the life of an African. If you imagine a plane crash somewhere in the world, and the Western insurance company will pay 3 or 4 Million Dollars to the family of a victim if he was American or European and will pay only a few Thousand Dollars if he was an African or South American. This shows that even in death we are not considered equal, materialistically speaking. It is a scandal that about 35.000 children under the age of five are dying each and every day of avoidable or cureable diseases. And it is a scandal that two million people were swept out of Sudan. That 400.000 people died of hunger, or were murdered. Only a few examples to show that those victims are counted less because they are Africans, in comparison, of course with due respect, to the 2.500 victims of the World Trade Centre who counted more in the eyes of the world´s public because they were Americans. This in comparison to the people dying every day in Asia, Africa or South America of hunger, diseases, war, civil war or ethnical or religious conflicts. Guatemala, e.g., had millions of victims in civil war, but they do not count because they are allegedly less valuable persons, economically speaking. This is a scandal of the world´s public opinion.

by Constantin von Barloewen

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Cornel West: Where the long, long set of traditions and the human adventure that create a chain of being, a hierarchy of rank in which the lives of those below have less worth, value and status as the lives above in that chain of being in that hierarchy of rank. It’s a sad history; but alongside that history there is a grand history that call a chain of being into question, that radically interrogate the hierarchy of rank and say, in fact, that there is an egalitarian status of lives, so that a life in Guatemala, a life on the West Bank in the Middle East, a life in Brazil, a life in China, life on the south side of Chicago in the USA, all have the same value. But the challenge then is how do we institutionalize that fundamental belief that each life has the same value. That is one of the most crucial questions of our day. It’s a question of democracy, it’s a question of freedom, it’s a question of liberty, it’s a question of equality; and it has everything to do with our courage or vision to ensure that the value of a baby in the Middle East, the value of a baby in Latin America, the value of a baby in Africa and the value of a baby in Europe all have equal status, equal work and equal value; and it is a challenge that is worth living and dying for.

by Cornel West

Sep 9, 2006 11:35:00 AM cite

Dedi Baron: Answertext will be available soon.

by Dedi Baron