You Are The Product Of A Mass Atrocity

Peter Atterton, professor of philosophy at San Diego State University, has a thought-provoking if not particularly cheering opinion piece in the New York Times.

In "Do I Have the Right to Be?" Atterton posits that "All of us are alive today thanks at least partly to some mass atrocity that was committed in the past. This is because war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and ethnic cleansing invariably affect who is born after them."

Is the ability to see the depressing side of life a prerequisite to being a philosopher?