To clear up a point - I believe a much more intelligent human being, i.e., a more rational one, is necessarily a more empathic human being. Intelligence, I believe, must include improved compassion for all life including one's own. Without empathy, you're nothing more than a fairly cunning brute and predator. Those people are dinosaurs. Improved respect for one's own life, if one is behaving more rationally, leads to greater respect for ALL life. The most intelligent people I've ever known were also great empaths. The point is proven time and time again. Look at the most admired people in human history. Practically all are considered geniuses in their field and all had great empathy for their kind and many for life of all kinds. I think it's clear - great intelligence and great empathy are inseperable. Having said that, it follows that a sign of low empathy is also a sign of low intelligence. It will certainly take a great deal of time, but those traits are on their way out of our species. Human history illustrates as much. I don't believe it could have been otherwise. Evolution demands it.

LOL Lynne love it!

It seems the Chinese that treat their girlchildren so poorly are both sexist, ill-educated, and short-sighted. But that is not the one-child policy itself; that is just one response to it. A lot of Chinese love having one child; their pets get the Chinese words for "brother" and "sister" in Chinese households; and no-body on the mainland knows what the Chinese for "aunt" or "uncle" is because there are none there.

I honestly don't think China would have survived the last thirty years without this policy. They saw a population catastrophe coming and had the centralised authority to apply a crude but effective solution.

Yes, the dearth of females you mention is presently occuring, in case you were wondering, with many odd side effects on neighbouring countries and the Thai mail order bride industry. On the other hand, a wonderful renaissance of male homosexuality is also strangely present at the same time in China, so mother nature has a fabulous way of making do for a lack of women. Maybe Beijing will host the next Gay Gaymes with much glory to the nation?

I suggest you separate Chinese patriarchal "culture" from the one-child policy itself. Suppose for a second that the United States had 2.95 billion people instead of the present 295 million? That's a lot of thanksgiving turkey. Or suppose Australia had 200 million instead of 20 million it has presently? We Aussies would probably have water rations all through the year instead of just for summer! Or imagine if Canada had ten times more Canadians - actually, no, don't imagine that.

But when we look at China, with 1.3 billion people, we simply see the future of the human animal. Humans will continue to breed to the maximum possible level, no matter what anyone says or does, until civilised central controls on the human breeding program are installed. The Chinese merely exercised longsighted common sense, a quality which our honorable Chinese overlords are masters of.

As to psychopathology and paedophilia, I am afraid we don't know a whole lot about these conditions yet. Despite half a century of study, we still don't have much idea about what they are or how they work. Frankly I think your educated bromides on what they are seem like nothing much more than promising excuses. Seriously: we just don't know a whole lot about them yet.

But may I suggest, again, separating people who suffer from these conditions (psychopaths, paedophiles and their victims) from the condition which oppresses them?

What I am proposing is that the conditions of psychopathology and paedophilia are like mental illness is now, and may be treated so in the future - a fully treatable and "okay" problem to have, which is at worst embarrassing.

It would benefit countless people to have their condition "turned off" by medications long before it damaged anyone else's life. If a three year old is diagnosed with the genes for psychopathology then it is easier to help than when a thirty year old is jailed (or, worse, becomes CEO!) for the consequences of his illness.

I label these conditions evil simply because they ruin the offender and victim's lives and character, not because I think the people are intrinsically bad.

Peace and laughter,

Paul Bard.