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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 - 05:05pm Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9687 of 9706)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

And we're descended from hunting animals who hunted in a certain, very special way.

Teams of weak, physically vulnerable animals, very scared, working together in teams following leaders, and working based on ideas of "honor" .

rshowalter - 05:07pm Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9688 of 9706)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

As animals go, we are very brave. And have a tremendous tolerance for pain. And we will stand and die for our ideas.

Or kill "outsiders" who dispute them.

rshowalter - 05:09pm Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9689 of 9706)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

It is very easy to get different "teams" of these hunting apes into explosively uncontrolled, lethal fights.

Hard to stop it from happening, in fact.

lunarchick - 05:10pm Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9690 of 9706)
lunarchick@www.com

Mary in Moscow ... it's snowing ... and her perfect world is holistically and spherically contained.

lunarchick - 05:11pm Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9691 of 9706)
lunarchick@www.com

I'm sure Mary knew how to contain the 'Alpha' in male.

rshowalter - 05:12pm Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9692 of 9706)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Quite often, these fights involve territories, and "sensible animal things." But before things get really lethal, they involve "ideas." And an essential, human idea, is that "others" - - if they are "threatening" at all - - are to be feared, and excluded, and if necessary, killed.

It is easy to get "different" teams to feel morally "quite comfortable" killing each other. The Japanese knew how to do it, the Germans knew how to do it, the Chinese and Russians know how to do it, and we know how to do it, too.

rshowalter - 05:13pm Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9693 of 9706)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

And, for a lot of reasons, deterrance is unstable with human animals.

Explosive fights are entirely natural. It is avoiding them that takes care and thought.

lunarchick - 05:17pm Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9694 of 9706)
lunarchick@www.com

Mary would try to look for the cause of the problem, try and sort it, separate the parties. Then from the Malsow heirarchy she'd find them appropriate things to do, be that basic building .. or flying a kite into the higher realms of actualisation.

rshowalter - 05:19pm Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9695 of 9706)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

A really big problem is how painful and threatening it can be for people to have to change the connections in their minds . It is painful, it is hard, sometimes it may be impossible - - and a human being will fight to protect the structure of ideas in his head.

Whole groups will band together and will fight for ideas -- ideas that may be ridiculously wrong, from a distance. But the fighting is very real, and can easily be to the death.

lunarchick - 05:22pm Sep 22, 2001 EST (#9696 of 9706)
lunarchick@www.com

Mary and Walt would both have vision. Vision - the longer term projectile helps with goals.

The Vision of man may be written into the DNA and life, it's seven stages, be the steps of attainment.

Both Mary and Walt nurtured needs on the lower wrungs of Maslow .. yet .. the happy ending, the big picture .. that fitted into the Visionary Statement.

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