Re: Seeing Both Sides

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

At 5:17 am -0500 on 11/17/97, Secret Squirrel wrote:


> How quick we are to condemn those who step out of the "norm", no?  As soon
> as someone says something even slightly controversial, our inner censors
> rush in to separate ourselves from that person, to chastise him, to condemn
> him, regardless of the relationship we have developed with him in the past.

I find this particularly interesting in light of my treatment on this list
the past week or so. I point out that Tim threatens a federal judge, and
all shriek apostasy. I never knew there was cypherpunk orthodoxy until now.

It's vaguely refreshing to watch. Makes me feel positively radical.

> Once again, Bob wrote:
> >The world's foremost pseudomystical relativist cited to support an
> >absolutist position. The logic escapes me. But then, logic, much less
> >independent thinking, was never Foucault's strong point.
>
> Perhaps one way of looking at it is that if you can't see the black and
> the white, you're missing the whole picture.

Yes, but I'm not sure that people with a moral handle on their universe
can't see in shades of grey. I just said that relativism is, fundamentally,
an idiot's philosophy.

> After all, who would think that one would need to use an anonymous remailer
> and a pseudonym to express oneself in a free and open society such as ours?

Ironic, isn't it? If I had kept my criticism of Tim anonymous, I wouldn't
have to shovel out from the gales of protest, to mix a metaphor like a dead
horse.

Oh, well. Persistance breeds character, or some such Neitchean platitude.

However, I refuse to be shouted down around here when I'm right.

Armageddon ain't here yet, folks.

Hell, 1984 is still behind schedule, and, frankly, it'll never happen,
because the PERT chart for it is a spaghetti bowl, and because people are
out there, right now, writing code instead of putting a few hundred rounds
a week through their ARs and Glocks, holing up in the mountains, throwing
(metaphoric) rocks at the local gendarmarie, and keeping their lawyers on
hot-standby.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga


-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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