From: Rick Knight (rknight@platinum.com)
Date: Wed Sep 10 1997 - 10:21:18 MDT
EvMick (from my home state) writes:
I've had friends die in Auto Accidents....should we ban Cars?
Unless you can demonstrate that your parents were forced to inhale the
noxious fumes of demon weed..(How Long was the literature available?
Do YOU beleive everything an Advertiser says?).then I say it was their
choice...(kinda obvious?)..a BAD choice...but sometimes people make
bad decesions...and suffer because of it.
Being free is tough...it means you have to be responsible for your own
actions. And benifit or suffer because of them.
You make good choices you might be another Bill Gates.
You make bad choices....you might die.
Call it "Evolution in Action"
Rick Knight responds:
Cars have been embraced culturally as a necessity, we blindly accept
the potential hazards (not only of the injury that can result while
traveling in them but the environmental hazards of the good ol'
internal combustion engine). Obviously, car safety is on a lot of
peoples' minds these last couple of weeks due to the Princess Di thing
(at least in Northern California that seems to be the case...).
Everything from photographers to drunk drivers to the lack of guard
rails in the tunnel has been attributed.
Cars are an excellent example of the personal and environmental hit
we're willing to take for the luxury of traveling faster than we can
go. I always use cars as an example when people come up quivering
over progress (like biotech for example, that spooks folks) I ask them
"Did you walk to work today?"
My parents fall into the intellectually and emotionally stunted group
of people if they were ongoingly willing to stay addicted to a toxic
substance. But when you have a future governor/president touting
Chesterfield Kings and doctors saying it was good for you and EVERYONE
doing it, and that type of mentality went on for years and years,
well, I guess old habits die hard. Even now when I see a "Got Milk?"
or a "Meat, it's what you want" or "Pork, the new white meat" ad, I
have to wonder how soon before those habits become associated only
with the ill-informed and uncaring for their own health and the
distribution of resources.
And as far as being another Bill Gates, if *I* were worth that much
money, I'd look fabulous! Give that man a makeover for Chrissake!
Blech!
My personal jury is still out on dying. It would be a crushing blow
to those that know and love me (hard as that may be for one or two of
you to swallow) but I still regard it as emancipatory. Guess that
"deathist" meme's still stuck in my old-fashioned head. Until more
profund logic combined with instinctual knowing supersedes it, it's
staying there and no anxiety is attached to it these days.
Rick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:44:52 MST