Keith Hudson wrote:
>
> Hi Brad,
>
> At 19:22 20/05/02 -0400, you wrote:
[snip]
> <<<<
> (Similarly, when terrorists blow away multi-billion dollar assets, we
> should look first at how we failed to construct our country in such a way
> that such defeats would not be feasible, and only as a last resort blame
> the terrorists for taking advantage of the opportunity we gave them.)
> >>>>
>
> Surely, you're not serious, are you? No conceivable society could protect
> itself against malevolence either from without or (particularly) from within.
I am entirely serious. Perhaps not fashionable or
politically correct, etc. But entirely serious.
Now, what I would like to see could not be done all at once.
But then we did not build the world we currently live in
all at once, either. If there were no condensed concentrations of
persons and capital assets, then there would be no places
where terrorists could get high leverage from attacking any
one point. Whatever its merits or demerits, Suburbia is
not an interesting target to attack with repurposed
commercial airliners DBA incendiary bombs. The World Trade
Center, however, was a terrorist's dream come true. So much
to blow up and mess up if they just hit a critical point in the
system. And "The Internet"! We saw how "distributed" it was
when Verizon's facility near the WTC went out of service.
Al Qaeda understands distributed processing.
Do you really think suicide bombing would be so
appealing if Israelis ceased to congregate in groups?
BUt I hear you saying: "Life is not worth living unless wee
can submerge our individuality in large groups." Which
leads to my second point on this point: Even if there
are no terrorists, persons who mass become less thereby,
so getting over grouping is a good in and of itself -->
not to mention that large groups are aleways
an epidemiological hazard (every crowd is
a germ convention, where, like businessmen
trading business cards, the germs trade DNA snippets).
No. I am entirely serious. The World Trade Center was
just sitting there waiting and tempting to be attacked.
All it needed was a "kick me" sign on its backside,
and some persons who were not "awed" by it.
Similarly, most travel is unnecessary, especially with the
advent of the Internet: Or is all the hoopla about
the Internet overcoming distance just so much
b-llsh-t which "we" say when it fits our
purposes and we say the opposite -- that there is no
substitute for being there in person, when that
fits our purposes? The Greek philosopher Parmenides
described most persons as "two-headed, thinking both
that what-is is and that it is not, at the same time."
"Oh! Bradford! You are asking us to cower and hide from
the evil ones! You are asking us to give up all the joys
we have in life! You are asking us to give up
traffic jams, getting coughed on (potentially
even eith tuberculosis germs!) in crowds,
and all the other things that
make life sweet!" No, I hope you
will come to find these things *beneath* yourself,
and therefore "Just say no" to them -- that
such cultural advance may
make things more difficult for terrorists is a
fringe benefit.
[snip]
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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