From: rclarke@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: Why freedom of information must be garenteed!!! [sic]
Date: 3 Sep 92 17:46:50 GMT
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

In article <1992Sep3.143224.7344@news.acns.nwu.edu>, myboy@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Lewis Murtaugh) writes:
> In article <JABBERWK.92Sep2113543@rigel.cs.pdx.edu>, Justin G Bailey writes:
> 
>>> Wake up and smell the coffee, rclarke!  'The poor conquering the rich' is 
>>> nothing more than an idealistic dream that would sabotage itself within the
>>> first months of its life.  Rich or poor, it's all still people, and people
>>> are greedy, conniving, self-serving animals.  Social Darwinism is THE world
>>> order, never mind Mother Teresa.  What happens once the ruling class, 
> 
> In article <1992Sep2.224305.7284@ac.dal.ca> Ethan Clarke replies:
> 
>>The number one difference that I can see between animals and humans is that
>>humans are civialized and animals are not (no spelling flames please!).  To
>>be civilalized means that you can act above what Mother Nature wants and
>>change your behavior.  If we can't do that then why don't we just get rid of
>>all intelectual things and go back to hunting with our hands and teeth.
> 
> I never thought I'd say this, but I agree with Ethan here.  Humans are not
At last!!  I was wondering if I should bother continuing this as all I was
getting were flames.
> completely slaves to their evolutionary past.  If we were we would still be
> living in kin-selected tribes where everyone is more or less related to
> everyone else.  If one looks at human history, one can trace a societal
> evolution paralleling the biological one:
> 
>  families  ==> clans ==> tribes ==> ethnic groups ==> nation states
> 
> In each step, the group that humans identify themselves with gets increasingly
> larger and increasingly divergent in terms of genetics.  Certainly, even in
> countries like the U.S. and Canada, people still identify themselves with
> ethnic groups (hence racism, the Quebec separatist movement, etc.), but in
> times of war, for example, almost nobody refuses to fight because their ethnic
> identity is more important to them than their nationalistic identity.
> 
> Animals rarely move beyond the "clans" stage, if they even make it that far. 
> In almost all animal societies that I can think of, such as bee hives, packs
> of wolves or apes, etc., the individuals are relatively closely related.
> 
> I think Ethan Clarke's general idea of a revolution solving our problems is
> naive, but if it would work then I see no reason to disparage it.  Mother
I may be living in a dream world but it a lot nicer dream world than the one
that we seam to be heading for now.
> Nature fucked up when she gave us our brains, because she accidently freed us
> from our evolutionary bondage.  We can now look at our societies, and say, 
> "this is bad for the nation as a whole," and at least try to fix it.  Maybe
> someday we will outgrow even nation-states, and look on all of humanity in
> the same way we look at our own families.  Until then, Ethan's call for
I try to do that myself (I not perfect at it) and hope that others do as well.
> revolution remains a mere dream, but just because we can't do something now
> doesn't mean the idea is bad.  Nor should we assume that just because nature
> makes us selfish and xenophobic that it is *good* for us to be like that.
If you don't have hope that things will get better then why bother living?
> 
> "Send not to learn for whom the bell tolls/It tolls for thee."
> (or something to that effect)
> 
> --
> Charles Murtaugh
--
Ethan Clarke
---
Rclarke@AC.DAL.CA
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk,alt.zines