Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 20:08:01 -0400 From: 1908@pipeline.com To: Milo Hyson <milo@cyberlifelabs.com> Cc: tlambert2@mindspring.com, Paul Robinson <paul@akita.co.uk>, Bill Moran <wmoran@iowna.com>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Re: Helping victims of terror Message-ID: <Springmail.105.1000426081.0.61946900@www.springmail.com>
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What if someone picked up a table and threw it at your toe? Would a research scientist in the middle of the woods ask "why?" Milo Hyson <milo@cyberlifelabs.com> wrote: > On Thursday 13 September 2001 08:51 am, Terry Lambert wrote: > I think the general consensus of the American public is that > we don't really give a rats ass about their _excuse_, since > their actions were militarily unjustifiable, having been carried > out against predominantly civilian targets. I would have to agree here. Most Americans don't really care about the other side of things. The last person anybody ever blames is themselves. It's always somebody else's fault. If you stub your toe on a table leg, you get angry and yell at the desk. "Ow! God damnit, piece of shit." You never think to yourself, "We'll that was stupid of me. I should have been more careful where I was walking." One of the things I leared in my school years is that people in this country are not encouraged to know the reasons behind things. We're taught procedures and conventions and told this is the way things are done. We're not taught the reasons why nor are we encouraged to find out or, heaven forbid, figure out a different way. I encounter this on a daily basis. I'm a research scientist, so my job is asking why. I get paid to turn things upside down and backwards and figure out if the way things are being done is the best way possible. Most of the people I encounter in life could care less about such things. They're happy to blindly follow procedures and conventions, even when they cause inconvinence and discomfort, because it's easier than stepping back and asking, "Isn't there some other way?" I have to be fair though. There are times when people do want to know the reasons behind things ... when things go wrong. If there's a car accident, they want to know why. If terrorists attack the US, they want to know why. However, they're rarely equitable about it. They always seem to have some pre-conceived notions they use to discount certain theories, generally because they find those theories uncomfortable and don't want them to be true. Your son falls off the bleachers at school, breaks his neck and dies. What do you do? Sue the school. The bleachers are unsafe. Never mind the fact that your son thought he was superman and tried to fly across the schoolyard. After all, he's just a kid. All of this may simply be human nature, but that still doesn't justify it. We have the capability to be better, to think before we act, to step back and realize what effects our procedures and conventions have on the world. -- Milo Hyson CyberLife Labs, LLC "Everyone wants a better world, as long as someone else does the dirty work." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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