AIDS

AIDS is one of the most peculiar and bewildering phenomena ever seen in this world. I am not talking about the nature of the disease itself, which is very odd, but the attitudes and behavior of people towards the disease. On the one hand, everyone seems to want to hush it up, as though ignorance of it somehow improved something. On the other hand, everyone seems to want to advertise it as though it were the most important event of the twentieth first century.

AIDS is a devastating disease, and those without it probably cannot imagine how much torment and anguish its sufferers experience. But it is not only devastating to individuals, which is bad enough, but in many parts of the world, to whole nations, making victims of entire populations, even of those who do not actually contract the disease.

Yet, as devastating as it is, it is not the only disease that is devastating, and it is not the only disease that causes its victims long term excruciating suffering. Although, from some of the literature, you might think so, this is just another part of that peculiar attitude I mentioned. Here is a disease that has gained the attention of the world and garnered the efforts of medical professionals and health resources many times that devoted to more serious and more prevalent diseases, and its one unique feature is all but ignored. AIDS is a totally preventable disease for any adult who chooses not to get it. (No doubt there are some very rare exceptions.)

It is this fact that would, in a rational world, determine the attitude of all people and the direction of all efforts in combating the disease. In the actual world, all the effort, all the energy, and all the resources are directed toward everything except the one thing that would work. Although, realistically, it won’t work, because it requires the one thing that always fails, changing people.

The AIDS propaganda machine has concentrated its effort on convincing people that AIDS is impossible to get through casual contact. (The veracity of that is in some doubt, however.) In general, this seems to be true, but caution is always the better part of valor. If it is true, than how does one get AIDS? This is not the information the propaganda machine concentrates on, but the answer is sex. What’s more, everyone knows it.

Let us quickly point out, sex does not cause aids. In fact, some sex actually prevents aids. Fully satisfying sex between a husband and wife prevents AIDS, period. Only through indiscriminate sex can AIDS be contracted.*(_ see_ Note:)

More specifically, if one never has sex with someone who is HIV positive, they will never get AIDS. The best insurance, then, is to marry a virgin and never have sex with anyone but one’s spouse. If there is sex under any other circumstance, both partners must be sure the other is not HIV positive. These are the only ways to insure one will not get AIDS.

This kind of behavior cannot (and should not) be legislated, and if it were, it could not be enforced. No amount of teaching or propaganda is going to convince people to practice this kind of behavior, either, and experience proves, people are not going to begin practicing this behavior on their own. Since nothing else is going to work, any effort to “stop” aids is wasted and futile.

Here’s the point. Sex does not happen to people, they do it. It is not something they do involuntarily, they do it by choice. The person responsible for the act and all its consequences is the person who makes the choice. The person responsible for AIDS is the person who has it.

(For the obtuse, of course we are not talking about the rare, though not as rare as it should be, cases of rape, or those who involuntarily gets AIDS, at birth, or as a result of blood transfusions. Yes, some AIDS is the result of drug addicts sharing needles. So?)

Just say no to AIDS.

If there is a terrible disease, and there is some action one can take to insure they never get that disease, and that action is neither dangerous or harmful to one’s self or others, why are people opposed to doing it?

People are probably not opposed to doing it, although there are plenty who are opposed to anyone even suggesting that people do it, usually the same ones that insist drivers wear seat belts and motorcycle riders wear helmets, for their own protection.

The problem is, people do not reason about their sex practices. It is one area of human life where most allow their passions to completely overwhelm their reason, then have an almost self-righteous attitude about it, as though there were something heroic in being out of control to a single desire. It is really no one else’s business if people choose to do this, so long as they are willing to bear the consequences of their choices themselves and don’t try to foist their resulting problems on everyone else. They can do this too, and do, but they better know decent people are not going think their just fine folks and are not going to be real keen about helping them.

In most cases, AIDS is a self-inflicted disease and its victims deserve no pity. In some cases, AIDS is inflicted on others, such as children. Do not claim to pity these innocent victims so long as you feel anything but contempt for those whose practices make it possible for this disease to exist and be inflicted on the innocent.

However contemptible their lifestyle, or whatever despicable practices an AIDS victim may have been guilty of, no decent person feels anything but compassion for the AIDS sufferer, as an AIDS sufferer, or for the sufferer of any disease. Human disease and human suffering are always evil, and no human pain or suffering is ever good.

AIDS is a result of a choice, or a number of choices, but AIDS is not the only thing people suffer as a result of irrational choices. There are really evil things that people choose to do that result in a destroyed life or great suffering. It is right that the one that makes the choice bear the consequences of that choice. It is right that the consequences be commensurate with the nature of the choice. No matter what that choice, or what the consequences, however, the fact that a human being must suffer is always a tragedy, whoever or whatever the cause.

Nevertheless, we must not let our sympathy for one’s suffering becloud the fact that those who’s acts cause the suffering of others, of the innocent, deserve for those acts, nothing but our contempt. Their suffering does nothing to right any wrong they have done, but their choices and actions deserve neither our mercy or our forgiveness.

If, beginning tomorrow, men and women never have sex with anyone except their wife or husband, AIDS will disappear from the world in single generation. We can therefore expect AIDS to continue for a long time.

This is just to emphasize the reality that any evil that results from people’s irrational choices is inevitable until human beings themselves change, that is, change themselves.

Question: “But what about the drug addicts that get AIDS form dirty needles?” Answer: They won’t be reading this.

Just in case someone missed the Introduction to Autonomy, this is not a political movement or social agenda. The point is, you do not have to get AIDS, and you do not have to worry about those who do. It’s your choice not to get it, it’s their choice to get it. It is not our mission in life, or yours, to make others make right choices, nor is it our business to wipe up after them.