"Joe E. Dees" wrote:
>
> Date sent: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 05:41:41 -0700 (PDT)
> From: mark@unicorn.com
> To: extropians@extropy.com
> Subject: Re: Cryonics propaganda...
> Send reply to: extropians@extropy.com
>
> > dwayne [dwayne@pobox.com] wrote:
> > >We as a species spend FAR too much time and effort trying to work out
> > >how to reduce ourselves back to beasts, and not enough time trying to
> > >improve ourselves. Which is, I feel, the main problem with the gun
> > >thread, I'd rather the effort went into making people better than
> > >working out how to keep bad people away.
> >
> > Only a few big problems with that one:
> >
> > 1. Who decides what's 'better'?
Well, I'd say "you do", personally.
> The courts and psychiatric boards can decide who are well enough
> to keep and bear (those who are never convicted of violent crimes
> or judged mentally incompetent), and who we are better off kepping
> guns from (those who are).
As opposed to what I am saying in my point above: we're not adult enough as a society to be allowed such dangerous toys (like owning a pistol or a rifle will make it possible to overthrow the govt, hahahah)
> > 3. What if those 'bestial' aspects of human personality are actually vital
> > to its future development?
I don't want to live in such a society if possible.
> > I'm not terribly surprised that most transhuman
> > developments come out of a country which supports 'bestial' ideas like
> > competition and self-reliance, for example.
Sure, but where do the researchers come from? Other countries.
> > 4. If people become 'better' then why shouldn't they own and carry guns?
Why should they need to threaten others to be left alone?
> If they became better, why would they need them, and if they
> remain vulnerable to the plagues of vilent aggressiveness and
> insanity, how can we trust those who have been documented as
> succumbing to same?
Exactly.
Dwayne
--
mailto:ddraig@pobox.com http://i.am/dwayne
"the cricher we kno as dwayne is only the projection
into our dimension of something much larger and
wirder."
---clae@pa.ausom.net.au
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