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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Father Terrence who wrote (17270)	1/29/1998 11:40:00 AM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 108807

Terrence, you have essentially made the argument here that because only a scientifically superior culture will be able to devise a means of redirecting asteroids away from the earth, everything that culture does is justifiable. Even if we accept that as fact--and there is a part of me which is easily convinced by the anti-technology arguments of the Unibomber, who was brilliant even though we was mentally ill--why is it that this superior technology develops on a base of sheer brutality? Speaking of asteriod deflecting, that will almost certainly happen with nuclear weapons. I believe this is a very mixed bag, and that it is just as probable that we will destroy all life with them as save ourselves, and I think this is the double edged sword of technology. It seems to me that what happened in America is that a group of extremely superstitious, judgmental and self-righteous settlers decided that they were acting in God's name, and under that irrational banner, systematically destroyed an existing culture over a long period of time. I believe a truly advanced conquering people would have absorbed what the Indians could teach them about living light on the land, and honoring nature, and devised some fair way of coexisting with them. Instead we slaughtered them, killed 15,000,000 buffalo, broke almost all of our treaties with them, and destroyed those who survived by sending their small children off to boarding schools where they were not allowed to speak their languages or learn their history. After all, the Indians preferred living in our wild country. There is still plenty of that left, between the two coasts. Did we have to be barbaric? What does that say about our "advanced" civilization? Not much, in my opinion.