I’ve been getting in a lot of trouble lately for a recent declaration I made to a group of nonprofit executives and board members. I emphatically stated,

If a person or a thing possesses life, it is better that, for a determinate period of time, this someone or something should be alive, rather than dead. And that, during that finite span and inherent to their animation, there is a hierarchy of needs that, if met, dignifies the life being lived.