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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

rshow55 - 07:41pm Oct 5, 2003 EST (# 14356 of 14369)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

For a long time, a readers discussion of Repress Yourself By LAUREN SLATER http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/magazine/23REPRESSION.html . . . http://www.mrshowalter.net/Repress_Yourself.htm was available on the net - and so was a Reader Discussion section on Slater's article.

I've made the part of that Reader's discussion that is a linked summary of posts on this thread available http://www.mrshowalter.net/Reader_Discussion_'Repress_Yourself'.htm

Early on in http://www.mrshowalter.net/Reader_Discussion_'Repress_Yourself'.htm , there's this:

"We need logical tools, and human insights, that make closure possible, and agreements resiliant, to a degree that they haven't been before. . . .

" People believe what feels right. But after enough evidence - enough care . . . we almost always, almost all of us, feel right about the same things. That's the "logic" behind human logic - and very often it works very, very well.

"People know a lot more than they admit they know - (or know that they know) - and a good thing, too. But when consequences are great enough - it is practically and morally important - every which way - for people to carefully, cautiously, but effectively face their fears - and face up to the things that they do - and know that they do.

Summarizing the section set out in http://www.mrshowalter.net/Reader_Discussion_'Repress_Yourself'.htm in a part of the Reader Discussion I didn't repost - there's this:

"The issues of repression and other kinds of unconscious or semiconsious processing are important when we think about the decisions that people make, the reliability of those decisions, the biases, conscious and unconscious, that may have been in play in the formation of those decisions - and practical and moral consequences. Psychologists and psychiatrists have much to say here - and perhaps the most important thing - logically - is that humans are fallible - even leaders - that repression - deception - self deception happen .

Everybody knows that? Sure. For safety, we need to know it better.

What works is a key question - in the complicated context people live in. We all function with enormous amounts of unconscious and semiconscious processing - and life would be unthinkable otherwise. When it matters enough - we can sometimes examine it, and sometimes improve it. Baseball coaches, shrinks, ordinary people, all know that in some ways that work for them.

rshow55 - 07:41pm Oct 5, 2003 EST (# 14357 of 14369)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

I think the last two paragraphs of Repress Yourself By LAUREN SLATER http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/magazine/23REPRESSION.html . . . http://www.mrshowalter.net/Repress_Yourself.htm make key points:

"Within the expression-versus-repression debate lurk ancient, essential questions and the oldest myths. In the fifth century B.C., Socrates claimed that an unexamined life was not worth living. Score one for the trauma teams. Around the same time, however, Sophocles described how a raging Oedipus, on a quest for knowledge, gouged out his own eyes when he finally learned the terrible truth; he would have been better off never asking. Score one for the Ginzburg findings. . . . Freud once defined repression quite benignly as a refocusing of attention away from unpleasant ideas. Of course there are times, in an increasingly frantic world, when we need to do that; repression as filter, a screen to keep us clean. So turn away.

"But run away? Therein lies the litmus test.

I haven't chosen to run away.

In the Reader's Discussion - husserl0 - made an important point : ( 09:20pm Mar 10, 2003 EST (# 155 ) :

The political argument cant be discounted. The idea of endorsing repression to deal with problems is a slippery slope. Where does it end? Does repression get utilized to deal with political questions as well? Do we repress all elements that touch our lives to eliminate interference with our goals and plans? If blacks resemble to us phantoms of the night should they be eliminated from our local, our schools and institutions? Because women elicit feelings associated with sex, do we force them to wear concealing clothing? Since, history is a record of man's tragic flaws and failings, do we censure and control access to information? Isn't repression in fact a violation of our psyches first amendment right?

There are problems in this country with repression in several senses of the word.

Including the repression that says - "don't question leaders when they lie. "

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