At Sat, 12 Feb 2000 12:55:10 -0500 (EST), [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>On Sat, 12 Feb 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> At Fri, 11 Feb 2000 11:49:02 +0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>
>> >. If ever there was the ideal society,
>> >then such little call would there be for these devices of confusion.
>>
>> The only ideal society I can think of where " little call would there
>be
>> for these devices" would be one brought into being via genocide on
>the
>> scale of nothing we have ever seen. Hardly anyone I am familiar with
>> would consider a society where there is no privacy, nor need for it,
> ideal.
>
>Perhaps I'm being dense.
Oh, I doubt that.
I'm sure it is I who is being dense.
>Consider the situation were people mature
>to the point where laws against, say, murder are irrelevant because
>murder NEVER happens.
Surely societies that had no martial art, no legislative process, no
bad stuff have come and gone in the past. No doubt they will in the
future. This sort of utopian existence occurs on tribal levels, on a
broader scale, problems arise.
The Dali Lama is one heck of cool guy. Why is he in exile? Mebbe
he isn't a good enough person as a leader, or maybe someone
else took advantage of his good nature to make a land grab. Mebbe
in order to have more Dali Lamas we should nuke the land grabbers
then the world would be a better place for the children.
> Clearly this situation is closer to my ideal society
>than one in which we a) need to punish murders b) need to deter others
>from murdering.
Clearly.
On maturity. Should there be a standard of maturity? or does it spring
unbidden from the hearts of man. Who is supposed to set this standard, or
will
it be done by unanimous consent. Or is a clear majority of 2/3rds enough,
what
do we do with the dissenters. Maybe as long as we have dissenters, we just
aren't good enough, and that's the direction we need to examine. Total and
complete, without reservation, homogenous like-mindedness.
How do we get there?
>Given that, it seems to me a society in which cryptography and locks
>are not needed because privacy is respected with such absolutivity as soon
>above is also closer to my ideal.
It's a good ideal. There is some argument that at least one standard of
measure
of quality of "way of life" is the amount of effort one is willing to expend
in
protecting that way of life in order to assure its continuance. against,
,
well, if we are all perfect now, against entropy perhaps.
There is an ill-defined causality that is known as the law of unintended
consequences.
This has been expressed as the "best laid plans, et al." Its never so much
what
one can predict as what one acting with finite knowledge and imperfect understanding
fails to predict. Even laboratory mice exhibit some uniqueness on occasion,
and at
a small enough scale, are in fact individuals. Now, maybe that is our current
imperfect technology, which will improve with time, or maybe it is just
"nature".
History has shown us that in the past, societies have been ruled by some
form of
government, as in a governing body. On a tribal scale, this may take the
form of
a council of elders. On a regional scale, it usually takes the form of who
ever is the
baddest group around imposing their will on those who cannot resist. With
some notable
exceptions, this has been the way of things for some time.
Now for a universal scale, if we are all to be perfectly mature, some traits
are going
to have to be left aside. Right now, the expedient thing to get rid of is
the desire to smoke
cigarettes, write hacker code, (unless it's for the gubbmint), the desire
to be skilled at arms,
the desire to be an individual and such. It we could get rid of these compulsions,
we could
move on toward a more ideal society where such laws as those posted and
pending
wouldn't be needed.
There are other traits that are less than desirable that must be dismissed
in order for us
to mature. The tendency to loose ones temper while operating a motor vehicle,
and all sorts
of other things. Now, this may be the result of poor gene structure, bad
choice of parents. Or
it may be the result of environment. Eugenics is the answer to the former,
Governmental control
and education from the embryo stage forward may be the answer to the second.
In the case of folks who don't like these ideas, we do after all have the
neutron bomb.
We people folks, have a way of trying to modify or pound our environment
into our
submission if possible. This is sorta known as the instinct to survive.
The higher
the density of biomass, the more evident this phenomena. Our rain forests,
so
beloved of the cultured, educated, deeply-concerned illuminati, are seething
masses of cold-blooded horror and violence down to the viral scale. It's
a constant
test to see who is the bad-ass. Continuing to live with a shot at procreation
are the stakes.
Hammering it all into submission seems like a good idea. Doing it with wisdom
and care is
the tricky part.
In current times, in these here UN-tied States, the line between survival
defense and murder has
been blurred into oblivion. In your country the statistics are clear, the
more ideal your
society gets, the higher the violent crime rate soars. In this age of reason,
this 20th century,
some 57million peoples died as a result of external initiation of force
(homicide, war, governmentally
sponsored genocide programs) in Europe, over 100million in greater Asia.
There seems to be a trend, the more ideal an idea is, the greater the bloodshed.
I think this is called, the Ends Justify the Means.
>Of course, infringing on the individual is never my intent; perhaps
>you can show me where the above and/or my ideal is well.. less than
>ideal?
I don't have any problem with your ideal, its a nice ideal, a fine ideal,
it's the achieving of
it that seems to be the sticky part.
>
>Michael J. Graffam ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
>"Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine."
> Henry David Thoreau "Civil Disobedience"
Nice quote,
cheers
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