Re: NANFA-- Bluenose shiner news

Jeffrey Fullerton (tcmajorr_at_westol.com)
Fri, 19 Sep 2003 15:10:50 -0400

> We have already
> passed Huxleys "Brave New World" by far. And people themselves are the Big
> Brother.
>

You have that right Steffan. The Tyranny of Majority Rule.
Though I think you've got part of it reversed- in comparing collectivism
and individualism- collectivism is the more primitive, regressive
system.

Technology aside, a big part of social control has always been guilt and
so remains. Whatever you want to prohibit- just tie it to guilt- like
the socialist ideologue Elsworth Toohey in Ayn Rand's "Fountainhead"
said about not letting people be happy- or Gregory Benford's essay on
Negative Utopias- "social regulation thru guilt".

Be it smoking, drinking, gambling, sex, drugs & rock & roll you'll hear
endless sermons on why it's bad and some folks will get hot under the
collar if you come out in opposition to the inevitable proposal to
regulate or prohibit the activity in question and you'll get a really
serious guilt trip. Like how many times have you heard that fishkeeping
is not a right?

In the short run, and in bad times when people tend to regress to the
primitive egalitarian state- techology can be abused to sure up the
system and subordinate the individual to the so called 'collective
will'- which in many cases is nothing more than the consensus of an
elite group or special interests. But in the long run, technological
progress tends to empower the individual as well as improve the overall
human condition.

I'd say more but I'm already too far off topic.

Jeff

"For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the
Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He
does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some
dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he
watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has
at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of
his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from
him".

Benjamin Franklin
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