🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1990Nov8.205905.1627@oracle.com>, mfriedma@oracle.com (Michael Friedman) writes:
> In article <58697@microsoft.UUCP> rodvan@microsoft.UUCP (Rod VAN MECHELEN) writes:
> 
> >The nature of "man" is that we survive by virtue of our rational
> >faculty.
> 
> Give me a break.  The human race has amply demonstrated its capacity
> for irrationality.  

Yes.  The Crusades, world wars, idiot technologies promoted over
rational alternatives, I am aware of them all.  But it is not the
capacity for irrationality which has promoted our survival.  Perhaps
you do not understand a word in my statement, since you seem to have
concluded I meant all humans behave rationally at all times, when what
I said was that (to say it again) "we survive by virtue of our
rational faculty."

> 
> In fact, it's one of our most glorious traits.  People who die for a
> cause sure as heck aren't being rational.

It is most certainly irrational to die in the name of Mohhamed, or Christ,
or the Emporer, or the Flag, and there is no glory in it but only stupid
death and wasted lives.  People who live for a cause, who promote
the values of survival and sanity, who innovate and invent new solutions
to the problems of life, these are the rational ones, the ones to whom
humanity owes its continued existence, not the lost souls who die in
pursuit of identity.


> 
> --
> The passing of Marxism-Leninism first from China and then from the
> Soviet Union will mean its death as a living ideology ... .  For while
> there may be some isolated true believers left in places like Managua,
> Pyongyang, or Cambridge, MA ...   - Francis Fukuyama

Good!

OO
\/
Rod

(cambridge, MA!  That's a good joke, especially because it's so true!!!)