[clue] Cory Doctorow - war on general computing [talk]

[David L. Willson]

New Year's Day seems like a good day to pontificate, and the thread is appropriately labeled, and nobody's asked me to STFU, so I'll have another go.

It seems to me like we've endorsed many sorts of laws and granted many sorts of powers to our rulers that have nothing to do with protecting one person from another. Laws and powers that, rather than protecting us from one another, allow us to pillage one another, starve one another, limit one another's autonomy, murder one another in fact, and preserve privilege for some, while utterly failing to protect others.

I believe our faith in the law, in enforcing the will of some on others, has cost us dearly in terms of freedom, and has caused us to participate in many things that can only be called atrocities.

Because we keep voting totalitarian. Because we keep deciding who should do what to our neighbors and with which weapon. Because one distrusts the other, is unwilling to forgive his faulty behavior, and believes, in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary, that suing him, bombing him, or legislating against him, will help the situation.

The litigator and the legislator are NOT our guardians! There's no profit for them in truly protecting us! In order to remain fed, they have to keep us at one another's throats, and believing that nobody actually cares about his fellow. They are the devils of our world, feeding on our hate, our distrust, and our fear. They bankrupt us, and gain power over us, because we refuse to believe in one another's goodness more deeply than we believe in force, and because we refuse to forgive or re-interpret any percieved injustice. We are too ready to believe that the other fellow is a villain, and it makes us fodder for the cannons.

I'd rather tolerate you socking me in the eye one day, and try to figure out why that happened with you or with you and some others we both respect, than create a law that says you mayn't, because I believe in you, and I believe that you and I, or you and I and our respected friends, can work it out better than you and I and the magistrate, or you and I and the governor, or you and I and our weapons. I don't believe you are a bad fellow. In fact, I believe you're doing the best you can with what you have, and further, I have made a commitment that nothing you can do will make me think otherwise about you. I'll live and die protecting your freedom to choose, even if you choose to sock me in the eye, say bad things about my lineage, and use Microsoft or Apple products. I believe that things between us can only get better, if we agree to make them better, freely.

David L. Willson
Trainer, Engineer, Enthusiast
RHCE MCT MCSE Network+ A+ Linux+ LPIC-1 NovellCLA UbuntuCP
tel://720.333.LANS
Freedom is better when you earn it. Learn Linux.

----- Original Message -----
> I have some. You have some. Every man I know well enough to say with
> confidence whether or not he has some, has some.
> 
> I infer from that, not without some trepidation, that every man has
> some.
> 
> I make an intuitive leap that honor has the same property that faith
> does. Even a very small amount, regularly exercised, can do great
> things.
> 
> David L. Willson
> Trainer, Engineer, Enthusiast
> RHCE MCT MCSE Network+ A+ Linux+ LPIC-1 NovellCLA UbuntuCP
> tel://720.333.LANS
> Freedom is better when you earn it. Learn Linux.
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> > 
> > > Men, freely associated and joined by agreements that are as
> > > binding
> > > as their own sense of honor,
> > 
> > There be the rub...where is the honor?
> > 
> > md
> > 
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>