TheGoddessAnoia

You were born into a highly social species. The basis of human society (and that of many other social species) is co-operation and mutual aid to increase the individual's chance of survival and reproduction, make life for group members easier and, at least since Neanderthals and Denisovians, longer, rather than, as Thomas Hobbes opined "nasty, brutish and short". While it is quite true that there are those who game the system to reap more than their share of the benefits while giving less or nothing back, overall, those who give more are more likely to 'earn' the respect of their fellows and gain the help they need to live as well as possible within whatever circumstances they find themselves.

Don't be too sure that the evil face no consequences. Until their book is finished and closed, you cannot know they will not wish once more to ride down the slope on Rosebud. I knew a woman who was the head nurse on a terminal ward for years -- to this day, I don't know how she did it. She told me one evening that, in all those years, no one had ever died wishing they'd made more money or achieved greater power, but many of the elite that passed through her ward died alone.

Alone: separate, apart, isolated from others; solo, without company; exclusively, uniquely; without aid or help. I don't see anywhere in the definitions in the OED, Merriam-Webster, or at Dictionary.com where it says your allies and/or companions have to be capable of winning the war alone. Most of the countries in the Empire declared war within 24 hours to one week after Britain did. The fact we lost tons of materiel and human lives to German submarines suggests rather strongly that, far from being alone, Britain was receiving materiel and soldiers well; before D-Day, The reality is that the partisans and resistance fighters, the colonial soldiers, the other nations also fighting on their fronts were all part of the same anti-Nazi alliance: Britain was emphatically not alone. It simply had the best orator and propagandist at the head of its government.

And, yes, you are right about the majority of Indian deaths being civilian. I admit I have always considered them with the soldiers because so many of them died of starvation when Britain confiscated their food for its own people.

I do wish people would stop with the "Britian stood alone." stuff. Even before Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, there were Allies fighting all over the world, resistance movements in every single continental European country, famously France, but also the Nederlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Norway, Denmark, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The entire British Empire was at war, either based in Britain, as saboteurs on the continent, on fronts from east Asia to the Sahara -- Canada, Newfoundland, Nepal, Australia, New Zealand -- India alone lost 2 million fighters (look it up!), Burma, Malta, South Africa, Egypt, and southern Rhodesia. China did not just surrender blindly: before 1941, both Mao and Sun Yat-sen had armies fighting the Japanese which kept them from attacking the Soviet Union after Hitler turned. Mongolia and Korea never stopped fighting, either. Britain endured the Blitz, it is true, and Churchill certainly made some great speeches about 'standing alone' while he was sacrificing literally millions of 'colonials' to preserve his European troops. But it was, and is, propaganda.

True or not, one can avoid the whole issue by using your phone as a phone, maybe to send texts, with location, mike, and camera switched off permanently, and all the other apps deleted or disabled. Sure, Google will still know you called your SO daily and your Mom once a week (NOT ENOUGH!), and that you were supposed to pick up the dry cleaning last night (did you?). Meh. If that's what floats the Surveillance Society's boat, I am not too worried.

The person promoting adoption is presuming a right to impose his/her morality on others, being emotionally manipulative, and assuming human children have an inherent superiority over, say, an litter of kittens or puppies starving at the side of the road. Nah.

Morality is an individual choice. If you perform an act because someone else demands it, or because 'it's what's done', or because you want to be judged worthy, as Yeshua ben Yusuf said, you get your reward in the approval. If you do it because you believe it is the right thing to do, regardless of praise or opprobrium, that is a moral act. My morality says a life is a life and all lives are of equal value, because each gets only one, and it is the most precious thing in the universe to the one who lives it, whether tardigrade, garden slug, disabled pigeon or human child. Based on that and other principles I have evolved over a life, I have not had biological children, nor have I adopted a human child, quite deliberately. Perhaps, in his/her eyes, I am evil. Tant pis: I don't answer to any conscience but my own.

Do you mean you have no memory of a tune, scent, a former home? No techniques to accomplish a goal or solve a problem, no idea how to win a game? You never have a fantasy or a plan? All these are ideas. So are equations, opinions, beliefs , mental pictures and those conversations you create when you are thinking about what you should have said to the boss when she humiliated you in front of the client. So are the shared concepts behind the words beauty, honesty, freedom, calm, ego, self, even, yes, idea. In fact, it would have been impossible to ask this question if you really lacked the ability to deliberately think of an idea, because the question is an idea, made by applying grammar, also an idea, to at least four ideas I can count.

People unable to create an idea may exist -- but we can't communicate with them to know what, if anything, is going on in their heads. If they do, they could only survive in a society that had the resources to keep their bodies alive. They might be among those considered in a vegetative state, but then advances in science have found that many thought vegetative were, in fact, conscious, but unable to respond to their environment.

Gwan wit'ee. Everyone has their own abilities. Stop worrying about what you are not so good at and work on developing your talents.