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Re: The Limits To Growth
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Subject: Re: The Limits To Growth
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From: mfriesel@ix.netcom.com
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Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 07:47:56 -0700
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Article: 16752 of alt.sustainable.agriculture
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Newsgroups: alt.agriculture.misc, alt.org.earth-first, alt.politics.economics, alt.politics.greens, alt.save.the.earth, alt.sustainable.agriculture, sci.agriculture, sci.econ, sci.energy, sci.environment, talk.environment, tor.general
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Organization: Netcom
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References: <328cec6b.3998814@nntp.ix.netcom.com> <AEB8AE12-8E54F@128.112.44.101> <E1Eorv.D3G@blaze.trentu.ca> <57j1am$6sc_006@pm1-83.hal-pc.org> <329D1C7B.7F67@ix.netcom.com> <57lf7e$7n8_003@pm6-67.hal-pc.org>
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Reply-To: mfriesel@ix.netcom.com
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Xref: newz.oit.unc.edu alt.agriculture.misc:6631 alt.org.earth-first:7097 alt.politics.economics:93991 alt.politics.greens:24182 alt.save.the.earth:26729 alt.sustainable.agriculture:16752 sci.agriculture:16532 sci.econ:61240 sci.energy:59366 sci.environment:113440 talk.environment:79380
charliew wrote:
....
>
> Fahrakkan is out for Fahrakkan - plain and simple.
I reply:
Then no more need be said on the issue.
......
Later charliew says:
>
> For once we agree on something. I'm glad. Incidentally, I am now raising
> two small children. I often have to deliberately suppress compassion in
> order to provide justice when my children don't follow the rules. Justice
> is not always pleasant, and it doesn't always involve spanking, but it sure
> is something that I would rather avoid. However, (and this is the most
> important point of this discussion) my children decide if justice is
> appropriate - I do not. Their actions alone either merit praise or
> punishment.
I note:
For the last decade or so (when I had more money than I needed) I made a
point of occasionally offering people $5 - $20 no strings attached. I
probably did this about 200 times. One girl working at a hotel check-in
counter took $5, she refused it the first time and said hers was the
only one in the hotel which could not take tips, so I told her it wasn't
a tip. A divorced Mormon woman living at her mother's with her teen-age
son at work took $20, and asked me four or five times if I was sure I
wanted to give that much money away. I'm starting to think that only a
fraction of the people whom we label criminals are really criminals as
we like to think of them - most may be very ethical people in their own
way.
>
> Why do I look at my children in this way? Because I view child raising by
> an analogous situation (stay with me here; the analogy will seem silly
> until you think about it). If you are flying a rocket to the moon, you
> normally have to make a mid-course correction during the flight. The
> sooner you recognize error and correct for it, the less fuel the correction
> will take. In human terms, a little bit of suffering now may well avoid
> enormous suffering in the future. In other words, I am actually trying to
> minimize the total amount of suffering my children must endure. It's too
> bad that most other people can't apply similar common sense to the legal
> justice system.
>
> Have a happy thanksgiving.
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