Larry, Amos, LH, et al....

Sorry I can't stay in this debate in a more timely fashion, but I'm only online at work and have to do a catch as catch can. I also have limited reading time, so forgive me if I cover ground that's been covered before and I just missed.

As I said earlier, would that you were right. But I just can't see it.

First, I think the only absolute baseline of human nature is that we're social animals — we can't even survive infancy without some form of society, even if it's just core family.

Now, if we live in a society, we have to assume there will be different personalities involved. Some will want to lead, some will want to follow, some want to be left alone. Some will work hard for the common good, others for their own good and some won't work at all — preferring to use superior physical prowess to take the necessities from weaker members.

So somebody says, "Hey, we need laws to keep this from happening." So they make laws saying you can't take somebody else's lunch, because if you do society will take two lunches from you.

There will always be somebody who thinks the rules don't apply to him because he's too smart or too strong for anybody to stop. He'll go right on, until something more drastic than taking his lunches is required.

You can try convincing him that he would be happier if he'd stop the thefts/robberies and play by the rules; you can even offer to educate him and give him better housing and all kinds of other things.

But there will always be at least one who won't conform.

So you can lock him up, you can throw him out of the group, or you can kill him.

If you lock him up, it had better be for a long time — maybe the rest of his life — because he'll be absolutely convinced that you're just persecuting him and he'll need to get even when he gets out.

If you throw him out of the group, you have to set up some kind of perimeter defence, because he'll just come back to raid your fridges if you don't. And if he acquires a gun, you're really in deep shit. You either arm yourself, or you're at his mercy.

Now you could kill him and the whole problem would go away — for a while.

But there would always be someone who would want to take his place, who would be convinced he failed because he was too weak or too stupid or not ruthless enough.

You've got the same list of possibilities, only now you're dealing with an even nastier adversary.

You can reason with these people all you like, but I think in the long run the better solution is to kill them, one by one as they arise, until they all get the idea that operating outside the society is not going to be profitable or good for their health and longevity.

I don't advocate shoving my lifestyle or god or political system or whatever down anyone's throat, but I see no reason to sit idly by and let someone else shove his down mine. I'll resist, with whatever force is necessary.

LH,

I'm familiar with the eastern concept of the Great One and the spiritual planes to achieve it. It seems to me to offer no plan for getting there, only a penchant for defining problems out of existance — sort of "if I don't recognize it's a problem, then it will cease to be a problem."

Seems to me pretty fundamentally flawed, if we're talking about tangible existance. I can ignore the bus, but it'll still knock me on my ass.

As for the "duality" of love and hate — you missed my point. I don't think it's a duality, it's two sides of the same thing — absolutely inseparable by definition. You can't have love without hate and vice versa.

Just curious, have you read Noam Chomski or any of the other general semanticists? Always made a lot more sense to me than Atristotilean logic.

cheers,

david