{"id":149,"date":"2007-01-04T09:57:04","date_gmt":"2007-01-04T14:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/weeklyrob.dreamhosters.com\/?p=149"},"modified":"2007-01-04T09:57:04","modified_gmt":"2007-01-04T14:57:04","slug":"wisdom-of-the-ages-not-so-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=149","title":{"rendered":"Wisdom of the Ages. Not So Much."},"content":{"rendered":"

So many of our most difficult choices have been reasoned through and discussed thousands of times through the years. Socrates was already pondering most of the same questions we think about today.<\/p>\n

And until recently, the issues hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really changed through the years. Ethical problems are human problems, and humans have been the same for a long time. That is, we still love, fight, care for, and betray each other in the same ways. So the questions have remained mostly the same about how we do it.<\/p>\n

For thousands of years (at least since writing was invented), humans have been able to look to history for insight into how to handle problems of humanity. What did Socrates say? What did Lao Tsu say? What did Abraham say?<\/p>\n

And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll remain true for most questions. But the <\/span>Frozen Girl issue<\/a> made me think about how little we can rely on past thinkers for some of the toughest issues today.<\/span><\/p>\n

How can we guess at Plato\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thoughts on whether a woman can use her dead husband\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s frozen sperm to impregnate herself? Ot whether a person should be able to sell his kidney? Cloning? Or, yes, whether parents should remove their brain-damaged daughter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s uterus to prevent her from menstruating?<\/p>\n

We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the ancients here. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the first ones to comment on the moral implications of these questions. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re breaking new ground. I say, revel in it.<\/p>\n

The world is a hugely interesting place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So many of our most difficult choices have been reasoned through and discussed thousands of times through the years. Socrates was already pondering most of the same questions we think about today. And until recently, the issues hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really changed through the years. Ethical problems are human problems, and humans have been the same for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}