[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('charliebrownout', '
')Yes, no argument there. We should share with each other willingly. I've participated in groups over the years which aim to give to food banks and the hungry. It is a pitiful drop in the bucket, though.

I wish I had an answer. I love kids. I love my own and other people's. It hurts to think of the innocents starving and suffering just because people haven't figured out a way to share this earth with other people as well as other living things.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'T')he reason you and everyone else's genes have survived through the aeons to this day owes itself to some morally questionable behavior somewhere in your family tree. They don't call it survival of the fittest for nothing.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', '
')Tell them, Ludi! The good old "Survival of the fittest" bullcrap. Poorly understood in natural systems, and a rationalization for criminal, self interested behaviour, in human social systems.

[charliebrownout]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')

Morality is a zero sum game if you follow every act you make (or don't make) to its reverberations across all time and space. Everyone's a victim and a victimizer to some degree. You have to know where to draw the line as far as beating yourself up or beating other people up over what they do.

It's kind of like the microscope that Al Gore gets put under for his environmentalism. Everyone wants to measure every atom of CO2 that can be traced back to him. He's not allowed to be human.

[charliebrownout]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')I'm not trying to push a Gordon Gecko anti-morality. I'm just saying if everyone took a closer look at their lives they'd realize they aren't as guiltless as they seem. Ever won a job over someone else? Maybe that guy was in financial straights, and jumped off a bridge because he couldn't support his family.

In my case, I'm in an influential position of interviewing potential hires. So I've been instrumental in hiring two people, and NOT hiring a bunch of others. Was it my moral responsibility to find a way to employ these people even if I thought they weren't qualified? I was an "elite" to them.

Despite the welfare state, at some basic level everyone has to sink or swim and compete with eachother. It doesn't have to be with sticks and stones. Your heart can bleed all you want but you just can't avoid it.

[Ludi]

I personally proclaim myself a hypocrite!

<<<<<<still uses more resources than necessary to sustain life.

[Jack]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('charliebrownout', 'I') know, but there is just something about Mr. More-money-than-God talking about it as though deeply worried. If it were to happen, you know he'd be off in some ivory tower, surrounded by land and well-fed body guards.

[Jack]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('charliebrownout', 'T')here is a big difference between intentionally causing harm and accidentally causing harm--even if the end result appears similar at times.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('charliebrownout', '
')Regarding Gore, well, he's just a hypocrite. "Do as I say, not as I do" is a hypocritical statement. It really doesn't matter how you slice it.

[btu2012]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jack', 'Y')es, well fed guards who would be entirely willing to do whatever was necessary to protect their client.

[Jack]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('btu2012', 'O')f course well-supplied ivory towers would be prime targets for looting by desperate people. It's happened before during the fall of the Roman Empire. Guards didn't help much, often they figure out that they'd be better killing their master and sharing the loot.

Dream on.

Btu

[BigTex]

Instead of "survival of the fittest", how about "survival of the lucky"?

It seems to me that luck has more to do with it than anything.

There is, of course, the idea that chance favors the prepared, and that sort of thing, but when I look at how we got here in the first place, it seems like a road marked with a lot of good luck.

Our apparent "survival" as a result of our superior intelligence is probably going to look pretty silly in about 10,000 years.

The dinosaurs were quite well adapted to their environment--they were very "fit", but then everything changed and they all died. They were unlucky, not unfit.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('charliebrownout', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')I'm not trying to push a Gordon Gecko anti-morality. I'm just saying if everyone took a closer look at their lives they'd realize they aren't as guiltless as they seem. Ever won a job over someone else? Maybe that guy was in financial straights, and jumped off a bridge because he couldn't support his family.

In my case, I'm in an influential position of interviewing potential hires. So I've been instrumental in hiring two people, and NOT hiring a bunch of others. Was it my moral responsibility to find a way to employ these people even if I thought they weren't qualified? I was an "elite" to them.

Despite the welfare state, at some basic level everyone has to sink or swim and compete with eachother. It doesn't have to be with sticks and stones. Your heart can bleed all you want but you just can't avoid it.

[charliebrownout]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('charliebrownout', '
')Regarding Gore, well, he's just a hypocrite. "Do as I say, not as I do" is a hypocritical statement. It really doesn't matter how you slice it.

[charliebrownout]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', '
')
Even in cooperative models, Mos, the most qualified person to do a job, should be doing it. Some competition is necessary, and is a GOOD thing.

The American corporatocracy, has become increasingly dependent on the obsequiousness of proles (team players) working in a "star" system, that rewards "outstanding individual performance".

The ones who end up dominating are a bunch of loose cannons, who end up destroying the long term viability of their companies, for short term gains. The subprime banking fiasco is a perfect example of this. The same mentality has gripped the entire corporate structure. Read Barbara Ehrenreich's "Bait and Switch" as a primer.

You end up endorsing it, by seeing it in the wrong light. What is going on in the boardrooms of the Fortune 500, is much more a kind of retarded inbred aristocratic rule, represented by interlocking boards of directors, with a "visionary" greedy CEO presiding over dullards. The best of the best often aren't the first ones fired, because human resources excludes them from the get go, in favour of compliant team players.

[joeltrout]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('charliebrownout', '
')
I think Bush is the poster-boy for what you've mentioned. Being rich doesn't make you smarter, it just makes it easier to survive without being smart.

[charliebrownout]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('joeltrout', '
')
Haha. The US president is one of the most powerful positions in the world. Bush isn't president because he is rich and he sure wouldn't have gotten there if he was dumb.

Even if you dont like bush which I assume you dont. You can have respect for someone acheiving the position he is in regardless of whether you agree with all of his decisions.

Until you are president or CEO of a fortune 500 company dont dog what they do. You have no idea what they are doing.

joeltrout

[joeltrout]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('charliebrownout', ' ')but sometimes I wonder if they do, either.

[Ludi]

I don't respect George W Bush. I'm not a very respectful person.

W is an example of "survival of the lucky." He was fortunate to be born into a wealthy and influential family, and to be able to move from one position to the next in spite of not being very good at each job.

[joeltrout]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'H')e was fortunate to be born into a wealthy and influential family, and to be able to move from one position to the next in spite of not being very good at each job.