Update 16:

One of the things I don’t have an answer to.

Once upon a time in a land far far but not too far away there was a baby chick trying to get out of its shell. Along came this wonderfully kind and compassionate person who saw the shell starting to crack, vibrating and rocking as the chick was trying to break out.

I will ask you a few questions along the way here.

1st question. If you were that person now, and saw the chick hatching what would you do? Please think about this for a second.

Ok. Now this amazingly kind, compassionate person chose to help the chick hatch, (s)he wanted the chick to breath, to grow, to help alleviate what (s)he interpreted as the suffering the chick was experiencing as it fought to escape its womb.

What the person didn’t know at the time were the consequences of his/her actions. For sure it would be hard to place fault in his/her good intentions. After all (s)he had acted in good faith and was only trying to help!

However the chick will tell you a completely different story. It wasn’t suffering at all. It would have told the person, if it was able or knew it, please don’t help me. I am not strong enough to survive outside my shell, my hormones and chemicals are not balanced enough yet. Once they are, I will be strong enough to get out of my shell and will be able to survive in the cold hard world outside.

But the chick couldn’t communicate this to the person, and neither it nor the person knew the effects. In trying to help this chick, (s)he had actually paralysed it since it wasn’t chemically poised enough yet and essentially condemned the chick to an early death.

I suppose we could ignore this story, perhaps we can adopt the philosophy that there are always more chickens laying more eggs. But perhaps there is something more to be thought about.

2nd question. If you were that person now, and saw the chick hatching what would you do?

Is acting out of compassion without understanding the consequences acceptable? Perhaps acting out of good faith isn’t good enough anymore, or maybe ignorance is perhaps not that blissful after all? It could be possible that action without knowledge or even thinking about the ramifications could actually worse than acting but with knowledge that the outcome will fall short of desirable.

An Ethiopian man that had seen the effects of many instances of aid told this story to me the other night, I will not take credit for thinking it up, but it well illustrates my confusion and internal conflicts that I have had in my mind for some time.

3rd question. Dudes, what do we do?