From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Thu Oct 12 2000 - 08:01:08 MDT
Technotranscendence wrote:
>
> On Wednesday, October 11, 2000 10:01 PM Michael LaTorra mike99@lascruces.com
> wrote:
> > "Michael S. Lorrey" retroman@turbont.net wrote:
> >> I find it odd that so many people in the world think that living is the
> >> most
> >> important thing, to the exclusion of all else. For me, liberty and
> >> intelligence
> >> are more important than life, as I would fight and die to resist any
> >> attempt to remove either from me.
> >
> > So it's no wonder your state license plate reads "Life free or die."
> You're
> > a man to match those mountains, Mike!
>
> I think while one is alive, one can always recover lost liberty and
> intelligence. One can live to fight another day.
No, you can't. There has been only one successful slave revolt in history:
Haiti, and look what happened there. Mass slavery causes a mass psychology
version of the Stockholm Syndrome, inculcating a subconcious slave master within
the mind of every slave, which they tend to pass down, to a greater or lesser
degree, to their children and later generations. It is not an accident that
those minorities who have suffered the most opression also exhibit
contemporarily the most distain for individual rights versus those (imaginary
ones) of the community.
>
> That said, though, the willingness to fight to the death to keep them has
> its merits. It raises the price of dictatorship.
Yes, would be dictators value their own hides far more than anyone elses. I
would put forward the proposition that 90%+ of those killed in military violence
over the last 20 years could have been avoided with the help of a few good
asassins. I can think of a handful to a dozen people off the top of my head
whose early deaths would have saved hundreds of thousands, if not a million or
two lives in this period. Asassination is highly underrated.
>
> Frankly, though, I'd rather get those who want to take them from me to die
> trying than to make some romantic gesture a la the Light Brigade,
> memorialized by Tennyson. (Of course, I'm not claiming the Crimean War was
> about liberty and intelligence.) Dead is dead. I'm sure Michael would
> choose that path too, though I'm not sure if either of us would be willing
> to go further. After all, talk is talk.
Depends. I would, of course, given the choice, choose martial action which
presented the least risk to my person. I prefer sniper work, for example, versus
trench combat. I do, however, have a record of putting risk out of my mind in
order to help save others, both in and out of the military. Romantic gestures of
suicidal missions I would prefer to avoid, however, given the choice only of
dying for no reason, or dying gloriously, well, as Heinlein said, your rank in
hell is determined by the size of your honor guard (i.e. how many of the bastids
you take with you). Being shot in the back while running like a bunny, or in a
firing line of prisoners, is not how I want to die or be remembered.
>
> That most people value just breathing alone more than liberty or any other
> thing in life is just a fact. This is why when most people are faced with
> an armed robber or rapist, they give in rather than resist and die.
Despite the proven fact (at least here in the US) that you are more likely to
die by not resisting. The meme of self preservation gets reinforced by
propaganda of individual disempowerment. Few slaves ever die in combat.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:31:35 MST