From: root (root@kal-el.netropolis.org)
Date: Wed Jul 22 1998 - 06:25:44 MDT
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> writes:
> A fair criticism, perhaps, but I still think the naive arguments
> against egoism aren't thinking hard enough or long-term enough
> in many cases: most of the arguments just blindly assume that
> if one commits a crime and is not caught, then there are no
> negative consequences to that act.
Besides the points in the rest of this post, the most important issue
here is that applied consistently, over the long term, a criminal
lifestyle increases the risk of being caught with every act. When you
are 'trying not to get caught' you are, as Rand pointed out, at war
with reality - which is a losing proposition.
To 'get away' with a crime, you have to make the facts appear to be
other than what they are, and since reality is an integrated whole,
and all aspects of it inter-related, there is no way to sustain a
consistent misrepresentation of facts over the long term. Indeed, the
very idea is a contradiction in terms.
So you WILL be caught out in the long-term. And the reality-split
within your own mind will produce paranoia, guilt, and eventually,
severe psychosis, as you try to win your losing battle against
reality.
I speak not only from a theoretical viewpoint, but from
experience. Been there, done that. I used to be a kleptomaniac in my
teens, pulled off the most daring heists, but today there's just no
way I'd swipe the most trivial of items even when there's nobody
around to see - it has a way of catching up with you!
-- --====--- ----------------------------------------------------------------- --=---=-- Ashish Gulhati| hash@netropolis.org |"Existence Exists" --=---=-- NETROPOLIS | 140 Sunder Nagar, ND-3, India | ~ Ayn Rand --=---=-- ----------------------------------------------------------------- --=---=-- Home Sweet Home --=---=-- -----------------------------------------------------------------
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