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However, having a choice in matters does not imply the guarantee of making the _right_ choices.

That is exactly correct.

In fact, even society acknowledges that fact by making certain choices available only after a certain point in life, such as voting, marriage, driving, drinking etc.etc on the ground, that making such decisions requires a certain level of insight and maturity.

FYI, these discussions are about free adults. Not about dependents like children.

But there's _still_ no guarantee for making right choices even after the "magical" age of 18 (or 21).

Yep!

The only thing one can do is to gather enough information in order to make the best choice based on available information and conditions _known_ to you _at that time_.

Right on!

And here's also the catch. By making a certain choice, one does usually _not_ choose the consequences of his/her actions consciously! In fact, the possible consequences may not even be foreseeable, predictable or expected in any way!

I guess we have to do our best anyway! But, seriously, most of the possible outcomes we are aware of. You gave the example of driving. Everybody knows that having an accident is a possible outcome of driving.

Let's take the example of Janice one more time (violins for Monty:)): certainly her decision to get married and have 4 kids was her personal and free choice at that time.

But it was not foreseeable nor expectable for her, that her husband would take off after a while for another chick, leaving her with the kids and a bunch of bills to pay!

She obviously knew it was a possibility. I mean, look around you! It happens all the time. This used to be the reason people formed marriage contracts. They used to be respected and when not respected enforced. (Incidentally, Janice's child support payment is absurdly low. This is a situation where a marriage contract would really have some value. Funny how the government isn't protecting women and children anymore - you would almost think they didn't really care.)

Thus she married him and later did what every wife would do: supporting him while he went to school instead of keeping the money for herself as a backup-cushion in case he leaves.

Her decision, though. Too bad it didn't work out better. It is a great tragedy of our society that marriage contracts cannot be freely made and that the terms and conditions are not enforced. For the most part women and children pay the price. (Also, the fact that pre-nuptial agreements are not consistently followed by the courts is tragic. Obviously, if you are wealthy you should be able to marry without exposing yourself to gold diggers.)

Is that really so out of the ordinary a choice??

Just because you go with the herd does not mean you did not make a mistake. But, really, I'm not convinced that Janice did make a mistake. Some people really want to have children. Some people really want to have a nice stable marriage which lasts decades. To get that you have to take chances. Sometimes it won't work out. That's life. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't worth a try.

But even if one is able to make fairly good decisions overall in life: you may not have previous conditions necessary to make certain choices.

If you're born into a poor family, who just can't afford to send you to College, how much of a choice to study will you have in that event? More likely is, that you'll have to work and aid in the support of the family instead of going to College.

But are you to be held responsible for the conditions that you are born into or grow up under?

Ummm....who else should be responsible?

Clearly not. As you go along in life, one's personal ability to influence your surroundings, conditions and overall life increase (with right effort). But to expect everybody to be able to make certain choices in a certain (right) way, or even expecting those choices being available, is not based on the realities of life but a mere projection from _your_ reality onto "theirs".

But, what you are on your way to imposing is your reality on everybody else. This is implied by your skepticism of the "free market". If people are not allowed to freely make choices and arrangements with each other, it is implied that somebody else will be making choices and arrangements for them.

So is the statement of "screw 'em all" (if they weren't able to make certain choices for reasons we don't know about).

The "screw 'em all" statements usually arise when people begin to claim that because somebody has done well they should help other people who have done poorly. Often, perhaps in Tim's case for example, the person making the statement also started in a less than ideal situation and through stubborness and years of hard work, investing, and luck managed to do quite well. To have some worthless rotter come along and claim they are somehow entitled to your hard work and perseverance can be known to cause great anger. Try putting yourself in somebody else's shoes.

Not only does it lack basic notions of humanity, such as caring for other people,...

Actually, most of humanity only mildly cares, at best, about people they do not know. Consider those poor people. Many of them spend many tens of hours each week watching television when they could be learning new skills, fixing up the house, or making their lives better. They could also be cleaning up their neighborhood, helping the people that live around them, or just volunteering in the soup kitchens. For the most part, poor people don't spend any time to speak of helping out other people. It isn't because they can't - it's because they are not inclined to do so.

...but also devalues the human ability to learn and change.

I completely disagree with this. The "screw 'em all" statement is actually an exhortation for these people to take responsibility for their own lives. It's a recognition that people do have the ability to learn and change but that other people can't do it for them. It's also a recognition that if they will not learn and change that they better not show up at the May house looking for handouts!

Just because you were young and careless (out of lack of understanding at that time) or you were born in a slum in Rio de Janeiro (or NYC) shouldn't mean, that you should still get "screwed" for it when you're fifty or you now deserve the dis-respect of society and no chances anymore. You may have never had them...

There are very few people who never had a chance. But, let's say you do manage to find somebody who fits that description. Who do you believe should help them? In my opinion, since you claim to care, you should help them.

While technically it is probably correct to say, that current conditions are caused by previous actions (different people have different expressions for that: karma, choices, fate etc.), there's no justification for suffering and certainly none for watching it passively and saying "they deserve it", IMHO.

BTW, do you actually express your care for other people by helping them in any way? My guess is that you don't. (By "help" I mean actual help such as giving them food or shelter or something like that. I do not mean helping by belonging to some political party or other.)

While technically it is probably correct to say, that current conditions are caused by previous actions (different people have different expressions for that: karma, choices, fate etc.), there's no justification for suffering and certainly none for watching it passively and saying "they deserve it", IMHO.

There is plenty of pain and suffering in the world and instead of working hard every day from morning to night alleviating it you are living in New York City and sending messages to the cypherpunks list. Wrong? By your standards it should be. In my case, I prefer writing these little essays to helping poor people. Most people make this sort of choice all the time. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.htm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNFPBeJaWtjSmRH/5AQHAzgf+LlwFk/ZuRwhF02fcnfmHqGyd5477FIkC FSYCdVBPX/g6270tgCJw0sGbJTOrpVncPWNQzVCQp8tQZAsWMfWDO6rMFmCthWQy CAnjA4xWbh6GlcV28wEGlv55C134FAin9GiJU+D87Zn+p1WRVzPKBPOAe8AXQtde a467+TGJtBDVLEcgI5GdjD2VLlo600oNti2kWSyr9G5yRTKhOglm9F0y8antP5Hq td9bjXEUX7Debd8Vb5Y4DJfkdQnYXQztsMDfdgr7XRLZKhdIVbrMbkXBcCVsyP7m Y7S2h3p/fdyDD8gPXrJWr3Dhm393MGW8BraO6zONz0TBf9cJI0Wsug== =jgE6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----