: : C'mon Stuart, do you really believe you need to shed blood to understand yourself? What does it teach you: that you're capable of taking a life? Some lesson.: That's a good point a mate of mine, now he was a little weird right enough and we fell out after a violent fist fight upon his joining of a British nazi group, insisted on snaring a rabbit once, now I've snared before because it stops the foxes going to live in the fields around my house and means my brothers pet rabbits are safe.
*Grumble Grumble* I hope, Lark, that when you say "snare," you're not referring to the device which constricts around an animal's neck and slowly strangles it to death. Anyway, even if you're not using that, stop it, for pete's sake. At least the foxes are eating the rodents around your bro's house, and besides, it's not their fault your brother keeps rabbits (share the world, share the world).
: Now john was the man until he actually caught something, it was a little small rabbit and he actaully felt really guilty (I didnt because it had miximitosis and was going to die anyway), although I dont think that was the kind of lesson Stuart had in mind.
: :How about refraining from taking a life? That will teach you far more than shedding blood for some amorphous link to your inner savage.
: True.
: : Concern for others is also a positive value, and that concern ought to include the willingness to make a sacrifice for the greater good.
: I'd just put in that Stuart didnt realise that my interest in survivalism is rooted in a will for cheap eco-living and communitarianism which are kind of independent of his dependency on food corp. values.
I agree with you; there's warm and fuzzy survivalism, which I favor, and there's the right wing black helicopter variety, which I don't.
: :How many Americans have to die by handgun for you and other conservatives to sacrifice your right to have a handgun? Is your right to carry a small lethal weapon worth more than the tens of thousands of lives taken by these evil things?
: Good question.
: : I don't see the European countries which have strict gun control falling into tyranny; what I do see is that they have far, far fewer handgun deaths, and their streets and homes are safer. Do you think in Europe people express their road rage by taking their guns and shooting others?
: Good point but then their are nations like Switzerland that combine brilliant social and community sentiments with a smart welfare system and freedom to own assault rifles and they have remarkably little deaths.
Yes, but I'm talking about handguns, not rifles. It's hard to hide a rifle in your coat pocket or glove compartment, but handguns just make it easier for, as Elvis C. once sang, another person to take a little finger and blow you away.
: Possessive individualism, anti-social sentiments and capitalist ideology are as much to blame for the deaths as the weapons.
Agreed. Also, cowboys in Montana, for example, fail to realize that their support of handgun ownership (on the argument that there's not much handgun-related death going on in their neighborhoods) condemns city dwellers to high levels of handgun violence. Will these cowboys make a sacrifice for the sake of urban (read, non-white) lives? So far, the answer is no.
: :Remember, Stuart, responsible gun owners are not criminals -- until they shoot someone in rage or recklessness, that is.
: Good point.
: : "Infinity's Shore," by David Brin.
: Is it any good?
It's GREAT! But it's also the 5th volume of a two-part trilogy. The first is "Sundiver," then "Startide Rising" (my personal fave), then "The Uplift War," after that, he took a few years off and recently put out "Brightness Reef," then "Infinity's Shore," and the last one just came out, but I don't know its name.
Cheers,
MDG
