If we were all so satisfied back then, why was all of this built? At some point a person looked around at a world that extended less than fifty miles from where they were born and said, "Is this really it?" They weren't satisfied, and they weren't willing to sit there and accept it. They built things. They created new technologies to extend their capabilities and reach. They adapted new ways of learning so they could discover more, learn more. Sure, it wasn't all from some great altruistic desire to be better. Some sought conquest, others money, but all of it came from a deep underlying lack of satisfaction with the status quo.
I don't want to be content in the way you describe. I like having a fire to learn more, to solve problems, to push the barriers. Sure, a moment or two to savor a new love is a good thing, but so much the better if I can have that time because I was able to learn four times as much in half the time.
Do you really think violent video games (or violent media in general for that matter) contribute that much to the violence in our society? A simple look at humanity's history disproves that. The human race has been cheerfully slaughtering each other since its inception, and it didn't need video games, movies, or music to drive it.
Yes, video games are entertainment and an expression of the creative thoughts of their developers, but they are also made because they make a lot of money. Violent video games make money for a very simple reason. We like playing them. It's not conditioning, it's hereditary.
If your goal is to stop violence from being considered a "socio-economic tool of advancement" or "cool", then I am afraid you are very much too late. It doesn't really matter, though; you lost that battle before we climbed out of the primordial ooze. These laws will do nothing but force many of the coin-ops out of business, and that will be a shame. If you make all violent games illegal they will simply go underground. If there is anything to be learned from organized crime it is that society will always find a way to buy what it wants.
There is no escape from the preconceptions, and even the enlightened are forced to view the world through the eyes of man.
It would not be possible to follow your process without my preconceptions, because even if I analyze each situation on its own merits (something I would encourage everyone to do) I must still come to a conclusion. To come to any moral conclusion I must make certain suppositions that I may never be able to prove as an absolute. So instead I am forced to rely on my limited knowledge and experience (be I a twenty-year-old or an eighty-year-old) to make the best decision I can, and live with the consequences.
Would you say the pro-life groups are wrong to kill doctors because of their ideals? How did you come to that conclusion? The answer is they follow what they think is right, and we follow what we think is right. In truth we may all be wrong, but it is all we have.
Yes, dogma is an evil, but its evil lies not in the belief but rather in the faith that the belief is an absolute were there are no absolutes. It closes the mind to gaining any additional knowledge, and stunts the mental growth of the individual (and sometime of the masses). This does not mean that we should not stand by our beliefs, but rather that we should be open to listening to and sharing with those of other beliefs as a way of enhancing and challenging our own beliefs. It is in this openness that both sides can grow, and perhaps find a common ground.
That is my only real point of advice here. Take the time to think about what you believe and how you want to proceed. When you have decided on a course of action accept the consequences of your decision, and know that you have done what you truly believed was that right thing to do. If you can do that, then you are probably in better shape than many here.
Which country's law should we respect? The law in the U.S. says that selling such items is completely legal. Under your flawed reasoning shouldn't the french court have taken that into account, and dropped the charges completely? After all, wouldn't that be respecting the democratically created law that the U.S. put into effect?
The internet is, as you say, an international medium. Therefore, any attempt to regulate it with regard to sites outside your physical jurisdiction is an attempt to force your laws on other sovereign nations, and this is flat out wrong. It is wrong when the U.S. does it, and it is just as wrong when the french do it.
The actual content that the site holds is really irrelevant to the issue. Possession of child porn is a crime in the U.S., and if you (while in the U.S.) download child porn from a site where the laws are more lax you are guilty of a crime and should face the consequences. I would not support, nor do I think it would be right, for the U.S. to attempt to bring the site owner, who is doing what is legal in his country, up on U.S. criminal charges. I'm not saying the U.S. wouldn't do it, I just saying it isn't right! In a similiar vein, if a french individual purchases an item with "racist overtones" then this individual must face the french courts. Yahoo, which resides in a place where the sale is legal, should be free from any external litigation.
Anytime a country trys to force its laws on another it is engaging in an attempt to dominate the world into following what it says is "right". Didn't Napolean already try this? As I remember, it didn't turn out all that well!:)
The technology isn't meaningless, it is the use to which we put the technology that is meaningless. Perhaps, I am not a good enough capitalist but I think we all need more than simple monetary gain to be able to live our lives "guilt-free". I am sure many of us have been in that situation when we haven't seen our family all week (or longer) and find ourselves called in to work on the weekend knowing full well that we have lost another chance to spend time with the ones we love. How much worse is it when you sit and realize that you are there in order to make sure that the sales reports get completed on time, or that the production planning team has the information they need to buld more product to make the corporation money. Somehow, when I equate the two, my career comes up short.
That is to say if my career purpose was simply to manage the systems of, or create software for, some corporation's bottom line. The truth is that I greatly enjoy using and creating tools that the technology boom has made availavble. It is a passion of mine (and probably a good many of you) to say the least, but in that passion I still realize that they are tools. It is how I use those tools that actually affects society.
Corporations wish to pay us a lot of money for our skill in using and building these tools, and I, for one, am willing to take their money. There are other uses for these tools, however. Creating and interconnecting society, helping those who felt alone find people with similiar thoughts and dreams, providing a open arena for the safe and free transfer of knowledge; these are the airy (and perhaps naive) purposes to which I hope to be a part of in some small way.
I believe that this is what many of us in this field are doing; collecting the money while keeping our eyes on our own dreams and goals. We want the ability to provide for ourselves and our family but we also wish to do more. Some will build systems for medical advancement, other for offering help for the the lost. While it may sound trite, we are only limited by our imagination. Given the skill of the people here and elsewhere within the field, I think we are going to do fine.
Slashdot Mirror
If we were all so satisfied back then, why was all of this built? At some point a person looked around at a world that extended less than fifty miles from where they were born and said, "Is this really it?" They weren't satisfied, and they weren't willing to sit there and accept it. They built things. They created new technologies to extend their capabilities and reach. They adapted new ways of learning so they could discover more, learn more. Sure, it wasn't all from some great altruistic desire to be better. Some sought conquest, others money, but all of it came from a deep underlying lack of satisfaction with the status quo.
I don't want to be content in the way you describe. I like having a fire to learn more, to solve problems, to push the barriers. Sure, a moment or two to savor a new love is a good thing, but so much the better if I can have that time because I was able to learn four times as much in half the time.
Do you really think violent video games (or violent media in general for that matter) contribute that much to the violence in our society? A simple look at humanity's history disproves that. The human race has been cheerfully slaughtering each other since its inception, and it didn't need video games, movies, or music to drive it.
Yes, video games are entertainment and an expression of the creative thoughts of their developers, but they are also made because they make a lot of money. Violent video games make money for a very simple reason. We like playing them. It's not conditioning, it's hereditary.
If your goal is to stop violence from being considered a "socio-economic tool of advancement" or "cool", then I am afraid you are very much too late. It doesn't really matter, though; you lost that battle before we climbed out of the primordial ooze. These laws will do nothing but force many of the coin-ops out of business, and that will be a shame. If you make all violent games illegal they will simply go underground. If there is anything to be learned from organized crime it is that society will always find a way to buy what it wants.
There is no escape from the preconceptions, and even the enlightened are forced to view the world through the eyes of man.
It would not be possible to follow your process without my preconceptions, because even if I analyze each situation on its own merits (something I would encourage everyone to do) I must still come to a conclusion. To come to any moral conclusion I must make certain suppositions that I may never be able to prove as an absolute. So instead I am forced to rely on my limited knowledge and experience
(be I a twenty-year-old or an eighty-year-old) to make the best decision I can, and live with the consequences.
Would you say the pro-life groups are wrong to kill doctors because of their ideals? How did you come to that conclusion? The answer is they follow what they think is right, and we follow what we think is right. In truth we may all be wrong, but it is all we have.
Yes, dogma is an evil, but its evil lies not in the belief but rather in the faith that the belief is an absolute were there are no absolutes. It closes the mind to gaining any additional knowledge, and stunts the mental growth of the individual (and sometime of the masses). This does not mean that we should not stand by our beliefs, but rather that we should be open to listening to and sharing with those of other beliefs as a way of enhancing and challenging our own beliefs. It is in this openness that both sides can grow, and perhaps find a common ground.
That is my only real point of advice here. Take the time to think about what you believe and how you want to proceed. When you have decided on a course of action accept the consequences of your decision, and know that you have done what you truly believed was that right thing to do. If you can do that, then you are probably in better shape than many here.
Which country's law should we respect? The law in the U.S. says that selling such items is completely legal. Under your flawed reasoning shouldn't the french court have taken that into account, and dropped the charges completely? After all, wouldn't that be respecting the democratically created law that the U.S. put into effect?
:)
The internet is, as you say, an international medium. Therefore, any attempt to regulate it with regard to sites outside your physical jurisdiction is an attempt to force your laws on other sovereign nations, and this is flat out wrong. It is wrong when the U.S. does it, and it is just as wrong when the french do it.
The actual content that the site holds is really irrelevant to the issue. Possession of child porn is a crime in the U.S., and if you (while in the U.S.) download child porn from a site where the laws are more lax you are guilty of a crime and should face the consequences. I would not support, nor do I think it would be right, for the U.S. to attempt to bring the site owner, who is doing what is legal in his country, up on U.S. criminal charges. I'm not saying the U.S. wouldn't do it, I just saying it isn't right! In a similiar vein, if a french individual purchases an item with "racist overtones" then this individual must face the french courts. Yahoo, which resides in a place where the sale is legal, should be free from any external litigation.
Anytime a country trys to force its laws on another it is engaging in an attempt to dominate the world into following what it says is "right". Didn't Napolean already try this? As I remember, it didn't turn out all that well!
The technology isn't meaningless, it is the use to which we put the technology that is meaningless. Perhaps, I am not a good enough capitalist but I think we all need more than simple monetary gain to be able to live our lives "guilt-free". I am sure many of us have been in that situation when we haven't seen our family all week (or longer) and find ourselves called in to work on the weekend knowing full well that we have lost another chance to spend time with the ones we love. How much worse is it when you sit and realize that you are there in order to make sure that the sales reports get completed on time, or that the production planning team has the information they need to buld more product to make the corporation money. Somehow, when I equate the two, my career comes up short.
That is to say if my career purpose was simply to manage the systems of, or create software for, some corporation's bottom line. The truth is that I greatly enjoy using and creating tools that the technology boom has made availavble. It is a passion of mine (and probably a good many of you) to say the least, but in that passion I still realize that they are tools. It is how I use those tools that actually affects society.
Corporations wish to pay us a lot of money for our skill in using and building these tools, and I, for one, am willing to take their money. There are other uses for these tools, however. Creating and interconnecting society, helping those who felt alone find people with similiar thoughts and dreams, providing a open arena for the safe and free transfer of knowledge; these are the airy (and perhaps naive) purposes to which I hope to be a part of in some small way.
I believe that this is what many of us in this field are doing; collecting the money while keeping our eyes on our own dreams and goals. We want the ability to provide for ourselves and our family but we also wish to do more. Some will build systems for medical advancement, other for offering help for the the lost. While it may sound trite, we are only limited by our imagination. Given the skill of the people here and elsewhere within the field, I think we are going to do fine.