27 Oct 2000 (updated 27 Oct 2000 at 18:43 UTC)
»
zaitcev:
if I do good thing, bad people compensate.
therefore bad state is inevitable. therefore I should do bad
thing.
hmm.. and I foolishly thought california has power
shortages
because individual californians use too much power. I
apologize for dragging
ivory-tower things like numbers and
causality into the equation. please return to
blaming your problems on arabs and indians.
lilo: but a change of opinion is
all that's needed to fix the problem, and massive shifts of
opinion do happen. they happen with the presence of
convincing arguments. the fallacy many people
presently make is that a citizen's only concern anymore
should be with the fulfilling of their own wants,
as opposed to the social process of arguing, establishing
and enshrining beliefs (including the belief not to
be subject to a particular law) as legal means to social
ends. these arguments cannot be based in terms of
individual wants by definition: if all we were
discussing was satisfying your "want" to get to work in
comfort and style, of course everyone would support
your position of buying a car. but we're not: there's a
social issue at stake and it's the issue of the expiration
of the natural world. this issue, like the broad issues of
national security, economic stability and social welfare,
demands addressing in the terms that concern it. in
particular, it demands analysis of causes of environmental
degradation and (consensual) application of
control mechanisms to achieve the broader end of
preservation. california has been particularly
effective in their application of this concept to
cars, far more so than my own province.
your comparison between "concern for social issues" and
"desire to assume control over others" is perhaps well
historically motivated, but the two matters are not always
the same. many
people who make arguments about social issues are
concerned about social issues, as issues, and are
only interested in arguing a point insofar as the point
seems important; whether the point gains them "power" is
frequently a non-issue.
the general systemic cause I was pointing out, and
continue to believe lies at the heart of our systemic
problem here, is that we are convinced of the necessity
of increasing the rate of economic activity for its own
sake.
computers are a non-issue; they are another surface effect
of this systemic cause, like paper, like television, like
sneakers and croutons and steel belted tires. they're all
effects, mere symptoms, of the conviction that maximized
economic activity is an end in and of itself,
rather than a mere means to satisfying needs.
this is an issue which only becomes more important
to discuss as the species becomes more powerful. how
important is it to increase the rate of production and
consumption, even if everyone's needs are already met? I
would venture the answer "not at all", but the discussion
has already been derailed into discussing why paper is
better/worse than PDAs. never mind that point, one is surely
better than the other but we still have too many of
both.