Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   OTOH, some of those people *are* greedy bastards who only think about
> > themselves and would sell their own grandmother if it was legal and there
> > was enough profit involved.

> That's true. On the other hand, environmentalists often don't have too 
> much trouble making people starve or die of disease to protect the 
> wildlife or the mosquitoes. And I'm always amused at the "pro-life" 
> folks willing to murder people to save a fetus.

> I think you'll get nasty selfish people everywhere. They're still people.

  The problem is not really your ideology, but how extremist you are.
No matter what the ideology, if you take to an extreme, bad things will
happen.

  Most ideologies have a root of rationality to them. Almost every
idology started from a good and right idea. However, when taken to
an extreme, when the ideology becomes an obsession, when the people
supporting that ideology start believing it's the *only* correct
solution to every problem, that's when things start going bad.

  I have always wondered why humanity likes extremes so much. The
typical story goes like this: First someone gets an idea, good or
not, which gets widely popular, and at some point the ideology is
taken to a far extreme, causing irreparable damage. Later humanity
as a whole starts realizing the damage it caused and then try to
fix it by going to the other extreme. The problem is that it's, once
again, an extreme, and they just end up doing as much damage as the
original problem did.

  Another common problem seems to be that people always need someone
to hate, someone to blame, someone to be accused of all the problems,
someone to be recipient of their extremist hatred. During the entire
history there has always been a group of people, often chosen quite
randomly, which has got its turn in being this scapegoat and receiver
of all the hatred. Sometimes the group of people is completely innocent
and the hatred completely unjust and prejudiced, sometimes the group
of people is not completely innocent, but their crimes are hugely
exaggerated through fear-mongering.

  Sometimes some people would like to do something about it and try
to push the "can't we just all get along" ideology. The hippie movement
is a very good example of this. Sadly, even the hippie movement can be
and has been taken to an extreme, with all the negative repercussions.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message