From: Stirling Westrup (sti@cam.org)
Date: Mon Jan 31 2000 - 02:57:21 MST
Emlyn wrote:
> Bob Owen wrote (amongst other things):
>
> > You see, it isn't really necessary to implement a social policy of bad
> > memecide; just don't interfere with their self-destruction. If you want
> > progress, you need winners. Losers are merely collateral damage. It's
> > not a question of reveling in this -- one soberly accepts it as an
> > unavoidable cost of doing business. I do question whether it ought
> > to be deductible.
>
> The basic problem with the self-destruction of the losers is that the "self"
> part seems less than evident on inspection. One observes rather often that
> the destruction wrought apon an individual or organisation is not self
> inflicted, it is inflicted quite explicitly by another more powerful party.
>
> Something else that I take issue with is that the "Losers are merely
> collateral damage". We are not at war. These losers are for the greatest
> part actual people, and losing can mean all kinds of suffering, up to and
> including death. There is no greater good which is served by the destruction
> of the weaker by the stronger, except perhaps that of the system itself; a
> measure by which, surely, and individualist could not stand.
>
I have to agree with Emlyn here. Those beings who are being controlled by self-
destructive or other-destructive memesets are *ill*. We've passed the point of
allowing someone to die because they've caught influenza or measles and just
aren't strong enough to fight off the infection. Why do we then condemn those
who've been infected by dangerous memes and aren't strong enough to cope?
--
Stirling Westrup | Use of the Internet by this poster
sti@cam.org | is not to be construed as a tacit
| endorsement of Western Technological
| Civilization or its appurtenances.
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