Very nicely put Mike.
If the "stability people" were to take a breath and really look "out
there," they'd see that everything in this world is killing and eating
everything else at all levels. This is not conjecture; even if you eat a
cabbage you have to kill it. Make you uncomfortable? You bet... But these
people only have to open their eyes to see that this world is truly a
slaughterhouse. Even the bacteria inside us are having a field day and
will continue to do this until we dissolve.
P.
At 04:09 PM 8/22/2006 -0400, you wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Harry Veeder" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Vo]: New Segway Products
Mike Carrell wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Philip Winestone" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Vo]: New Segway Products
"If the goal is a combination of stability and instability that is a
disgusting mix
of opportunism and pragmatism."
Nope - it's called "life".
==========================
Exactly so. There is an excellent book, "At Home in the Universe", which
persuasively argues that Life, as a dynamic biochemical process, exists in
the non-equilibrium zone between statsis and chaos. If you want order, try
prison. A gun-toting Segway has an ancestor celebrated by a statue in
Ukraine, three rearward-pointing guns mounted on a horse-drawn carriage,
which was a decisive weapon in some war or other.
Living orgasnisms are in continual contest with the unfolding Universe. No
static, "safe" solution exists, even for a nation, for the external world
continually changes and that which does not change with it will die.
Mike Carrell
Wow, Does the author of that book actually use language like "Living
organisms are in continual contest with the unfolding Universe"?
======================================
No, that phrase is my own, but it conveys the thrust of the argument in
the book. To me it is obvious that organisms from bacteria to men cannot
each get all they want all the time, so there is a 'contest' of sorts. Nor
does the universe we all live in remain constant but evolves, or unfolds,
what ever word you want. Amid this 'contest' there is also mutual
dependency and cooperation, for no member of the ecosystem can exist apart
from it, so altruism wins in the end. It is dynamic, and any attempt to
freeze it into some kind of idealized utopia will result in death of some
sort. A surfer riding a tube, a bubble of froth on a breaking wave are apt
metaphors for Life in the Universe.
Mike Carrell
