From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Jun 16 2000 - 00:02:35 MDT
James Rogers and Mike Lorrey wrote stuff about the socially calming
benefits of gun ownership in response to my comments about:
>> > a bunch of soccer thugs in Britain
>> > They just lerrrrved smacking and bashing
>> > the shit out of other people. Their blood was up, it boiled with rage and
>> > delight, they had flow and peak experience.
I foolishly ended this post with a throwaway remark about personal weaponry.
The guys said:
>> Perhaps populations that "pack heat" have more evolved level of maturity,
>> or at least personal responsibility, than those that don't. One thing is
>> for certain: broadly armed populations definitely select for these traits.
>An armed society creates an implied threat that shuts up loudmouths,
>tones down the emotionally heated, and essentially spontaneously
>organizes a polite society.
Well, that's a relief. And here I was supposing that I'd drawn attention,
by analogy, to something deeply worrying about a future where, say,
nanotech minting provides much of the essentials of life very cheap or
free, where AI displaces most of the brain-based jobs, and where many
healthy young people will be stressed by the lack of extrinsic meaning in
their otherwise comfortable lives.
Damien
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:29:13 MST