From: Randall Randall (wolfkin@freedomspace.net)
Date: Sat Jun 01 2002 - 18:56:32 MDT
Phil Osborn wrote:
> I have often wondered how it is that people get so
> upset over some catastrophy today - like the 25% rate
> of AIDS infection in Zimbabwe - but not if it happened
> ten years or a hundred years ago.
Problem is, if it happened a hundred years ago, it didn't
matter as much.
When I read about someone screwing up her life in the
present, it's saddening. If I read about someone
screwing up their life in Roman times, it isn't, really,
since I know that no matter what, that person had a
very limited time anyway. It isn't any MORE sad that
they shortened a life from possibly 100 years to merely
20.
The reasons that "Saving Private Ryan" (e.g.) disturbed
me as much as it did was that the scene on the beach at
Normandy really happened, and killed a lot of people who
otherwise might have made it to the singularity. It's
hard to care about things like the USian Civil War (e.g.),
since there was so much time between it and any possible
singularity that it's hard to imagine that anyone then
could have survived long enough.
-- Randall Randall <randall@randallsquared.com> Crypto key: randall.freedomspace.net/crypto.text ...what a strange, strange freedom: only free to choose my chains... -- Johnny Clegg
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