From: "Spike Jones" <spike66@attglobal.net>
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001 7:16 PM
> There *must* be hordes in Afganistan and other oppressed places
> that would dance for joy if the Talibn is overthrown, like the munchkins
> when Dorothy dropped the mortgage on the WW of the W. For instance,
> what of all the Afgan gays? They must be quietly terrified over there,
> waiting waiting waiting for *someone* to come along and end the
> nightmare. What about the women with some inkling of freedom?
> What about the intellects? The nonreligious?
>
> Seems to me that the thing we do so very well today is information
> management. There should be some way to use our information
> handling skills to rip away the veil of ignorance and oppression. I
> just dont yet know how to get the message to them that there really
> really are no houris waiting, that houris were invented by some cowardly
> cleric to convince the young men to lay down their lives for a political
> cause, while the clerics enjoy the *real* virgins at home in this life.
> How do we break it to them? spike
Here's where *culture* is crucial. There have been oppressed people
throughout history and before. But the initiative to rebel effectively
against oppression seems to be deeply rooted in culture. By contemporary
Western standards, in most places and times human females have been terribly
oppressed . Why did it take until just yesterday by historical standards --
and only in the West -- for women to stand up and say "we're mad as hell and
we're not going to take it anymore!"? I'm sure you know the old joke about
what women have half of and what they have all of, the point of which shows
all too clearly that huge numbers of people can be held in bondage to a
position of inferiority *if they believe that inferiority is their lot in
life*.
It's a culture war.
Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
http://www.gregburch.net
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