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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 08:03am Sep 16, 2001 EST (#9167 of 9171)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I think there are some facts about human behavior, clearly on show now, that need to be understood. They are serious, and understanding them would make a lot of problems, insoluble now, soluble.

Mankind's Inhumanity to Man and Woman - As natural as human goodness? http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b085/0

We need to have sense enough, and discipline enough, to make things better, not worse. That may take some fighting - - but flailing around, propelled by bad assumptions and gusts of emotion, is a terrible idea now.

Empathy is key.

But it has to be an empathy tempered by knowledge of how human beings are, what they cand do, and how bad, as well as how good, they can be.

Hitler was as much a member of our species as Mother Theresa. Abraham Lincoln may uplift us, but Curtis LeMay was American, too. And our committments to LeMay's principles, these days, can sometimes seem stronger than the ideal statements that we remember from Lincoln.

rshowalter - 08:25am Sep 16, 2001 EST (#9168 of 9171)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Mankind's Inhumanity to Man and Woman - As natural as human goodness? http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b085/0

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My sense is that, terrible as this may be, the absense of empathy for OUTSIDERS is natural, just as empathy for members of one's own group is natural, a part of human instinctual equipment.

To think of OUTSIDERS as people, and not dehumanize them, takes teaching - and a kind of teaching that doesn't always take. But to avoid wars and opressions, and to permit the complex cooperations of civilization, people MUST learn, and must be expected, to deal with OUTSIDERS as human beings.

The most basic human instincts, I fear, go against this. Dealing with an "outsider" the instinct-based reflexes are to dehumanize, to exclude, to withold information from, and to misinform - just the proper things in dealing with an enemy who is a military threat, so that threat can be minimized.

But this pattern of dehumanization and misinformation is also just the thing to make the outsider into either a victim, or a real threat, when more humane responses could have done much better.

http://talk.guardianunlimited.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b085/9

You don't think people have a natural brutal streak, and I'm saying that they do at the level of instinct. One could check data in sociology, and construct experiments. It seems to me that brutal performances, in situations where civilized accomodations don't exist, happen with monotonous regularity. And that the level of brutality that occurs can be gut-wrenching, and all too often is.

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Because people are so warm, sensitive, and accomodating to people WITHIN their groups, one can look at them, and put together a "noble" picture.

These same people may be utterly merciless to outsiders.

A big point I'm trying to make (that doesn't hinge on the question of what's instinctive, so long as brutal group exclusion is widely and easily taught) is that horrifically immoral, gruesome, behavior, that can easily and rightly be called "evil" from a distance, can be entirely natural behavior of normal, healthy human beings.

We have every reason to want to change that sort of behavior, and find ways to avoid it having free play.

We may have a better chance of doing that, if we aren't surprised by it.

rshowalter - 08:30am Sep 16, 2001 EST (#9169 of 9171)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

We shouldn't be surprised by it in either others or ourselves.

It means we have to be careful, and deal with the world as it is, and with people as they are, carefully, and with a sense of how fragile the good and beautiful things in life can be.

That doesn't say we don't have to fight. It only says we have to be careful how we do it, and careful not to provoke situations where the ugliness is explosive and uncontrolled.

Especially now, with weapons of mass destruction "laying around" that could easily destroy everything humans care about -- and kill us all.

Want to have a sense of how ugly that would be?

Look at the acts of September 11.

Multiply.

rshowalter - 10:19am Sep 16, 2001 EST (#9170 of 9171)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

lunarchick 9/16/01 5:14am . . Maslow's hierarchy of needs is vital to remember.

It is sobering to remember how much of human life, and logic, goes on below level 4, where empathy enters.

How much of American politics, and military function, goes on below that level.

At the same time we remember how rich and warm much of American life is, with connections that go all the way up the pyramid, and with much discipline and beauty.

The terrorists, monsters thought they may be from many perspectives, were living lives where the full pyramid of their needs was active, and integrated, in the service of the acts by which they destroyed so much.

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