1st May 2008, 1:45 PM
I think that the "traditional" version is the messed up "one person in charge of everyone else" form. That I'm opposed to.
Yeah, I really don't care if something is old or not, if it's new or not, just if it actually is good for us.
"Chinese medicine" (and I'm not talking about chinese MRIs and heart transplants, which aren't "western" at all, what a racist viewpoint that science is a "western" concept that those far eastern people can't grasp) for example may be thousands of years old, but if it doesn't work, I don't care. That just means it's a thousand year old scam, which happens to be endangering species like tigers.
Kingship has been around for a long time too, but I wouldn't recommend it as a policy of government. For some reason though, all fantasy novels seem to really get all romantic over the idea of a noble lineage and finding someone's "birthright to rule". Seriously it's an epic story, but I'm pretty sure at some point I'd have to say "Princess Peach, what have you ever actually DONE for your people to deserve to live in a big castle? Don't you just spend half your time being kidnapped by every threat we've ever faced?". Oh, and King Bowser is even worse of course. I mean he's constantly sending his troops to invade the mushroom kingdom but has no good strategy for actually taking over, the troops aren't well trained, half of them are unarmed, and he never seems to want to admit defeat. If he spent half the time he did just trying to take care of his own people maybe his land wouldn't be a barren rocky wasteland eternally covered in night. Oh yes, he's a terrible father too. What ever happened to the koopa kids?
Sure we may be the result of genes and their blind mutations and selection through the ages, but that doesn't mean our "goal" in life is to serve them. That may be in their best "interests", but who cares? We can rebel against them, and there's no particular reason not to. Genes have no capacity for forsight after all, and many species have gone extinct because they evolved into a dead end and the niche shrivelled up. That's just how it happens. Natural selection only acts on what will cause the greatest survival of the genes in the present moment. The concept of taking a hit to survivability in a minor way now in order to drastically improve the survivability in the future doesn't work in evolution. However, we humans for the first time are actually capable of forsight and gene manipulation. We can do better than nature, and should. Evolution may be a wonderous process intellectually, but it's really not something anyone should draw ethics from, and we can do better.
So yeah, things being old don't make them better. Neither does them being new of course.
Yeah, I really don't care if something is old or not, if it's new or not, just if it actually is good for us.
"Chinese medicine" (and I'm not talking about chinese MRIs and heart transplants, which aren't "western" at all, what a racist viewpoint that science is a "western" concept that those far eastern people can't grasp) for example may be thousands of years old, but if it doesn't work, I don't care. That just means it's a thousand year old scam, which happens to be endangering species like tigers.
Kingship has been around for a long time too, but I wouldn't recommend it as a policy of government. For some reason though, all fantasy novels seem to really get all romantic over the idea of a noble lineage and finding someone's "birthright to rule". Seriously it's an epic story, but I'm pretty sure at some point I'd have to say "Princess Peach, what have you ever actually DONE for your people to deserve to live in a big castle? Don't you just spend half your time being kidnapped by every threat we've ever faced?". Oh, and King Bowser is even worse of course. I mean he's constantly sending his troops to invade the mushroom kingdom but has no good strategy for actually taking over, the troops aren't well trained, half of them are unarmed, and he never seems to want to admit defeat. If he spent half the time he did just trying to take care of his own people maybe his land wouldn't be a barren rocky wasteland eternally covered in night. Oh yes, he's a terrible father too. What ever happened to the koopa kids?
Sure we may be the result of genes and their blind mutations and selection through the ages, but that doesn't mean our "goal" in life is to serve them. That may be in their best "interests", but who cares? We can rebel against them, and there's no particular reason not to. Genes have no capacity for forsight after all, and many species have gone extinct because they evolved into a dead end and the niche shrivelled up. That's just how it happens. Natural selection only acts on what will cause the greatest survival of the genes in the present moment. The concept of taking a hit to survivability in a minor way now in order to drastically improve the survivability in the future doesn't work in evolution. However, we humans for the first time are actually capable of forsight and gene manipulation. We can do better than nature, and should. Evolution may be a wonderous process intellectually, but it's really not something anyone should draw ethics from, and we can do better.
So yeah, things being old don't make them better. Neither does them being new of course.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)