>From: "J. R. Molloy" <jr@shasta.com>
>Reply-To: extropians@extropy.com
>To: <extropians@extropy.com>
>Subject: Re: camera tech for crime prevention
>Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 00:27:17 -0700
>
>Phil Osborn has written,
> >I could go on for some length, but the bottom line is that there are vast
> >and profound differences in culture and philosophy that make certain
>kinds
> >of relationships difficult or impractical in certain cultures. Fukayama
> >does the subject a lot more justice than I possibly could here.
>
>Do you think culture accounts for relationships more than relationships
>account
>for culture? Or do extended relationships become culture? Does this have
>anything to do with geography? If so, how? If not, why call it Eastern
>culture?
>
>The power to corrupt comes from the desire to do so, not from the magnitude
>of
>the power. It seems to me that people pretend that "power corrupts" so that
>they
>don't have to take responsibility for their own corruption (however weak).
>
Actually, I suspect that it does have to do with geography. Europe and
especially Greece was extremely lucky in that for an extended period the
broken geography and poor military technology and small populations combined
to allow the luxury of great cultural diversity in close proximity, as in
the Greek and Italian city states. China did not have much of that luck.
The vast Chinese armies of the warlords made it foolhardy to allow much
freedom or forget for long about having a huge military.