From: Gregory Houston (vertigo@triberian.com)
Date: Sat Feb 15 1997 - 00:54:15 MST
Guru George wrote:
> But no marks for your anti-violence stuff. You like to be
> pragmatic, but it is distinctly unpragmatic to roll over and play dead.
I agree that it is not pragmatic to be a martyr, or otherwise and just
roll over and play dead. I do not imagine that we can end violence over
night, but I do think there are often non-violent alternatives that we
do not take the time to think about. In order to justify itself, our
military has to involve its self in warfare every once in a while. They
are going to jump right into without attempting to find a non-violent
alternative. Their jobs depend on it. If we question these things and
express our disaproval, then we will find that we are more often finding
non-violent alternatives where we would normally employ violence. This
would progressively lead to the attentuation and finally the
trancendance of violence. Our government truly does provoke violence. We
sold Suddham Hussein many of his weapons. Do you imagine that we did not
expect him to use them? Of course we did, and thus we had an excuse to
start a war. Our government supplies drugs to inner cities. This has
been reported in many newspapers lately. Our government fuels
unneccessary violence. Watching the media, it may seem as if violence is
necessary, but this is not the case. We can progressively overcome it,
and we will eventually, its just a matter of will we start now or later?
We would reduce a great deal of violence by:
1. Make drugs of all kinds legal.
2. Stop selling and/or giving arms to third world countries.
3. The United States should cease intervening in the affairs of other
countries entirely. We are not the third world police.
4. Add emotive education in our public and private schools.
5. Take 3/4 of the unbelievable sum we spend on the military and use
that for personalized criminal reform rather than sending people to
prisons as they exist today. [ A kid gets busted, not particularly a
bad kid yet, perhaps not too intelligent. The system sends him to
jail where he lives day in and day out with criminals, ominous
authority, and the torture of sodomy. That kid is going to change
from someone who made a mistake into a demented criminal. Lets stop
putting people in an environment which only magnifies their violent
urges. We have plenty of money to deal with this issue. Just take it
from the military.]
Then as individual's we can learn to discipline ourselves to first seek
alternatives to violence before resorting to violence. I have never been
in a physical fight in my life. How is that? Because I have never
threatened anyone, and when someone has shown me irrational signs of
violence emerging from them, I have hitherto always been able to help
them see reason, to bring them down.
-- Gregory Houston vertigo@triberian.com 816.561.1524
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