Re: Privacy (was RE: FYI: MEDIA & Greenpeace

Twirlip of Greymist (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Sun, 8 Dec 1996 13:26:25 -0800 (PST)


On Dec 8, 11:13am, Wade Cherrington wrote:

} I have serious reservations about this sentiment. The problems
} of violence don't come from lack of adequate means of communication, but
} rather the refusal to communicate on a meaningful, productive level,
} invariably stemming from an initial refusal to think at all.

Violence can also come about from fundamental incompossibility of
desires. Babylon-5 example: Londo and G'Kar understand one another
perfectly, or could do so with minimal effort. They clash not because
of a lack of communication, but because both serve their people, and
both perceive the interests of their people as clashing with the other.
If there's anything they don't understand, it's their own long-term
interest. They don't need telepathy, they need a collective boot to the
head.
(Currently being provided.)

Privacy is a right I claim for myself, like physical integrity. It
takes effort to establish and maintain, but so does life.

The instincts I throw out are the ones I can explain and whose
justifications I don't like; or those which clearly conflict with my
established interest. Privacy does not do the latter, I don't have a
good reason to dump it, and since I'm not sure why I _do_ feel so
strongly about it, I'm inclined to think that there is a good evolved
[not genetic] reason for it which I haven't reproduced yet. So I keep
it.

Merry part,
-xx- Damien R. Sullivan X-) <*> http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix

Piety, n: Reverence for the Supreme Being, based on His supposed
resemblance to man.
-- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_