I > > > > I still maintain that almost all of us harbor connotations to 'need' that > make the locution, "Your cancer exists, therefore it is needed," > objectionable. I > do understand the argument that the start of the cancer was necessitated by > certain prior biochemical events. But there is too often a shadowy > connotation > that if something is "needed" it is good, condonable -- too often for us > ever > to agree to call a cancer "needed". If an airplane crashes in an urban > area > and "the result" is the destruction of a dozen houses and a school, it feels > > alien to accepted usage to say either the plane or its crashing "needed" to > destroy the school. We might say natural laws necessitated the ruin of the > school, but we'd shrink from saying they "needed" it. > > The words "it was God's will" creep quietly into the mind with their banal dismissal of whatever catastrophe they refer to and their simulcra of comfort. They needed it, I will say, the next time someone says that to me. Kate Sullivan
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