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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 03:27pm Apr 20, 2001 EST (#2439 of 2441)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

If minds are tied up with too many lies, these minds are, in practial ways, not only more degraded than they might be, but also stupider. The same could be said of societies.

I found myself wondering about the suicide bombers the Palestinians field. -- How many of these have molested their sisters? Something that may be very common in the culture. And how many have been put in psychological states where much cannot be admitted, and extreme forms of psychological blackmail are possible? And matters of routine within the culture?

I wonder, especially with the "promises of 76 houris" sold to these people (often, I have little dout, sold convincingly by other people who, putting the matter gently, have some doubt about the stories.) How much corrupt motivation is involved? My guess is that the answer is "a great deal" and that it makes the emotional adaptations for achieving peace hard to get to.

And hatred easy to instill, and to aim at the whim of deeply dishonest "leaders," religious and secular.

Looking at the world, one sometimes wonders "how can this human group perform so badly, in terms of the needs of its people?" It may be that hypocrisy and lies, much more common than usually thought, paralyze people. And whole peoples.

That is a very practical argument for increasing truth. That is an argument for how practically important a consistent morality, capable of honorable conduct, actually is.

It is an argument for finding ways to achieve secular redemption where "stark justice" is simply not to be had.

That has to happen, with the real people involved, as they actually are, from where they are, situationally and psychologically.

rshowalter - 03:42pm Apr 20, 2001 EST (#2440 of 2441)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b085/1 Some human behaviors, supported by whole societies, involve what seems to me to be an unbelievable degradation and oppression of women - rape, exploitation, and passive consent to terrible acts in countless places.

The New York Times has commented about "Honor Killings" where a woman is murdered by her father or brothers for acts that are seen as besmirching the family's honor, including committing adultery, defying a parental order to marry, being seen in public with a man or becoming the victim of rape. Only by dehumanizing women can this happen. And yet it is common, and even widespread.

Another story, one of a number about involuntary prostitution, is Russians launch crackdown on 'sex slave' traffickers by Amelia Gentleman http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,396402,00.html This horror could only go on if MANY people let it happen, as they have, and if MANY men are prepared to exploit prostitutes who are obviously unwilling - if men are willing to pay to rape women on a routine basis, as they apparently are.

In Thailand there are now more prostitutes (many children for the tourist trade) than monks.

There is behavior by the Israelis that is shameful and wrenching. There is much behavior elsewhere that is shameful and wrenching. The AIDS pandemic, in many ways, has shown mankind at its truth-evading, responsiblity evading worst.

Gutwrenching behavior. And looking at the Middle East, on both sides, and looking at nuclear weapons, and looking at much, much else, there is plenty of such "gutwrenching" behavior.

rshowalter - 03:43pm Apr 20, 2001 EST (#2441 of 2441)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Is this sort of thing the Hobbsain state of nature, the natural way people deal with each OUTSIDERS?.

It seems to me that it is, and that the needs of complex cooperation and peace take morally informed, careful building of more decent patterns. If this is so, degradation is the natural thing - decency is a matter of culture, that may depend on the insistence of groups of people on humanly decent conduct.

This idea isn't quite the same as the notion of "original sin", but it seems right to me. . . . .

What I'm saying makes human ugliness unsurprising, but may make it more understandable, so we can deal with it better, and make the world a less savage, warmer place.

Men are physically more powerful than women, and women necessarily carry reproductive burdens men do not face. Decent power relations cannot be "natural" in the Hobbesian sense - they have to be based on conventions and the conventions should be chosen so that they fit the needs of the people involved.

With the coming of an ideal of female equality in the workplace, these conventions must be carefully rethought, and negotiated into being.

Concerns about morality are very practical. If we are to adapt to change, or to cooperate effectively, it is both economically and emotionally essential that we have some moral consistency.

That, in my view, is one of the most essential reasons for getting rid of nuclear weapons.

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