At 12:42 22/05/99 -0400, psypher wrote:
>...in no sense can our civilization be said to fulfil the criteria
>for symbioses. We have constructed a hierarchy propagated through
>force to maintain the priviledge of a tiny segment of the global
>poulace much to the detriment of the rest. In a symbiotic system
>organisms live in close cooperation to the benefit of all involved.
>...in no sense can our civilization be said to fulfil the criteria
>for symbioses.
In a /partial/ sense, it can. IE sometimes people's relationships with others are FAIRLY symbiotic, other times they're NOT VERY symbiotic AT ALL. The relationship between a rapist and his victim, incidentally, is pretty much totally unsymbiotic, and check out the intense reaction triggered just by mentioning the word to a bunch of rationality-loving, educated modern westerners.
>We have constructed a hierarchy propagated through
>force to maintain the priviledge of a tiny segment of the global
>poulace much to the detriment of the rest.
Too absolutist, man. If the few have always benefited at the expense of the many, then the many should get progressively worse off as time goes by, predicting that most people in modern Britain (say) should have less food/property/freedom than most people x-hundred years ago. Erm, and I reckon most people now/here have better access to food, better medicines, better life expectancy/quality than they did in the middle ages. If the many now have more than they did back in the day, then surely they're gaining from The Deal, in which case there's at least partial symbiosis going on somewhere.
DP