Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 10:43:13 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: ac199@hwcn.org Cc: "Jonathan M. Bresler" <jmb@FreeBSD.ORG>, pechter@lakewood.com, softweyr@xmission.com, freebsd-chat@hub.freebsd.org Subject: Re: FTC regulating use of registrations Message-ID: <7906.869679793@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 23 Jul 1997 12:53:21 EDT." <Pine.BSF.3.96.970723122651.17317B-100000@ppp6564.on.sympatico.ca>
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[jkh feels expansive before lunch] > Hmm... Does this apply to cats, too? ;-) Sure does. Wish I'd been at home when mine got knocked up rather than on the other side of the country on a contract. :) > Well, in Canada, its not a matter of "breeding to keep parity", but > "breeding to prevent from disappearing". If it weren't for > immigration, our population would be declining (and we're not even And why is there always this patriotic assumption that it would be such a bad thing? Populations have always moved around, the jet & ship age simply increasing the speed of that migration, and I think that the real problems stem from our attempts to stick to outmoded ideas rather than truly adapting to the pace of social change we're now experiencing. We are, in short, living in a state of extreme denial. I would argue that rather than arguing for the perpetuation of increasingly arbitrary genetic entities like "Canada", the most logical solution would be to simply de-emphasize the whole border concept and try to think of things more in terms of resources being moved to wherever they need to go, be those resources human or material. The fact that humans have historically formed attachments to geographic areas, subject to some of the odd location-based nationalism that comes with it, should hardly be viewed as an immutable facet of human existence and the fact that moving people around has been painful in the past makes it no certainty that humans cannot adapt (and with less pain) to a different lifestyle. In transition this is a painful process to be sure, and many of america's early nomads (largely people who moved around constantly during childhood) have paid the price of being nomads in a global society still poorly adapted to the idea of large-scale nomadism. We're getting better at it, however, and while many may bemoan the homogenization process which air travel has brought about (I.E. the "McDonalds in Paris effect"), there's at least some comfort in the fact that it's an inevitable step if you're looking at creating a global society where anyone can essentially come from anywhere else and find enough local anchor points (cuisine, language, etc) to be comfortable. I'm also not arguing against diversity, don't get me wrong - I'll be as sad as anyone to see the "pure ethnicity" of certain regions diffuse into discordant mosaics of every significant world culture on the planet, but hey - I'm also a realist. :) The "backlash" problem of immigration you point to, on a world-wide basis, is something which merely requires attitude adjustment - there are no real technical barriers to doing it and I think it's also something which we'll have increasingly less choice about as time goes on. Jordan
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