> This post was going somewhere, but I'm sort of tired and thinking about all this again is making me miserable, and I don't remember where that was. I guess I just wondered if anybody can come up with a good line of reasoning on why we should go around helping people who don't want to be helped. I don't really need a reason, but it would be nice to think there *was* one out there somewhere.

Looking at Sam's and famous's replies, I suppose I ought to have been more clear about what I was asking. There was never any doubt in my mind that helping the woman, in whatever way, WAS the right thing to do, and I would have done it no matter what.

I've been sitting here trying to think of a better way of posing my question, but in the end I think it comes down to wanting a total explanation of the nature of good and evil, and why we *know* something is right or wrong, so I guess I'll just leave it there. I suppose the answer is in terminology. A sense of right and wrong isn't based on knowing, but on feeling. I just wish I could find a way to explain this better, and why I find it so frustrating.

Call the original post a late-night rant after a bad week at work and it probably makes more sense than as a moral question. When I stay up too late, I spend too much time looking for the rational glue that holds the spiritual universe together, and invariably end up stuck to a messed-up half-finished project all over the bench.

Brunnen-"glue fumes get to me sometimes"G