>> Subject: virus: Bequest
>> Date: Thu, 21 May 98 18:11:35 -0400
>> From: "Wade T. Smith" <morbius@channel1.com>
>> To: <virus@lucifer.com>
>> Reply-to: virus@lucifer.com
>
>> >So the meme you are worried about is not anti-butchery, or
>> >anti-communist, it is the [we-are-the-chosen-people] meme - [insert
>> cult/country/religion]
>> >are right, all others are by default, wrong. Thats the best thing about
being
>> an
>> >[insert cult/country/religion], you are always on the morally correct
side -
>> YES!
>>
>> Yes?
>>
>> And, Bill, you _really_ should be living in Cambridge....
>>
>> ;-)
>> The nice thing about a "freedom meme" is its anti-dogmatic, almost
> scientfically non-judgmental, morally/ethically neutral character.
>It doesn't prescribe what you must do with your freedom or proscribe
>what you mustn't do with it (this is tautologically the nature of
>freedom, by definition), it merely states that each individual should
>have all freedoms that do not interfere with the same freedoms
>exercised by anyone else, and where the inevitable conflicts occur,
>they should be resolved by equal and proportional compromise. It
>wears no altruistic blinders, however; the reason it is embraced is
>the benefit it grants immediately to the individual, and only
>subsequently (and mediately) to the society. It is a formal meme,
>with negligible content, and is well suited to permeate the
>emergently self-conscious, recursive psyche, which is programmed to
>transcend its programming; in other words, programmed for freedom. I
>am not worried about the freedom meme - I LIKE it, and the
>evolutionarily creative diversity of thought and action it fosters.
>It tolerates everything - except intolerance, and makes everyone
>slaves - to their own free wills and choices (though it insists on
>personal responsibility for their consequences, which is fine with
>me). Like a free market and laissez-faire economics, it is a
>synthesis of existentialism and ethical egotism, and works best
>(though not perfectly, or even perfectibly - the nature of
>open-ended, recursive systems is to be Godelianly imperfect and
>incomplete) hand-in-glove with participatory democracy.
>>
>> *****************
>> Wade T. Smith
>> morbius@channel1.com | "There ain't nothin' you
>> wade_smith@harvard.edu | shouldn't do to a god."
>> morbius@cyberwarped.com |
>> ******* http://www.channel1.com/users/morbius/ *******
>>
>