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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?
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(7809 previous messages)
rshow55
- 09:51am Jan 19, 2003 EST (#
7810 of 7811)
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.
But I didn't want to displease my mother and father, either
- they loved me, and I was sure I loved them, too.
I was stumped. I started taking long, unsupervised walks at
night, usually after 2:00 in the morning, in a crowded, middle
class row house neighborhood - to think things out. Hiding
from everybody, in every way I could figure out to hide, and
still take the walks, for reasons that seemed very good at the
time, and still do.
I felt I had to take those walks - and found I enjoyed them
very much , though I had to hide them from everybody - and
they were scary in spots. I felt very alive, but scared and
worried. I didn't know it at the time, but I'm pretty sure I
needed glasses, too. I've taken a lot of walks at night, over
the years.
At the time, and later, too, I was trying to be the very
best little boy I could figure out how to be - and was stumped
about some things, though it seemed to me that I was a
very good boy in a lot of ways. It seemed to me that I was
living in a very fascinating but threatening world. Some
people thought I was a pretty smart kid, and that seemed
possible to me.
I made the best choices I could, lived with them, and
handled my exceptions the best way I could, as they came up,
with as much foresight as I could muster. I was messed up in
some ways, pretty straight in some others. Very concerned
about fighting - and not proud of fighting, either, though
maybe I was more proud of it than I wanted to admit. And more
angry than I wanted to admit, as well.
Anyway, I found, to my amazement, that I was able to keep
on living - and sometimes not do so badly - and sometimes have
a very good time of it -- through a series of calabrated,
precarious, but still usually stable solutions. Every one of
them involving contradictions, switched on and off a
controlled sequence, and with weights controlled, too. There
were some awkward blow-ups every now and again, for one reason
or another.
rshow55
- 09:52am Jan 19, 2003 EST (#
7811 of 7811)
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'm going to collect my courage, eat breakfast - and see if
it still makes sense after breakfast to set out the oldest
dream I remember (I don't dream much) - a dream that plainly
involved repression, and some other things. Maybe I won't have
the courage. Some things about that dream are very dark.
Maybe too dark to set out in public. People, all to easily,
can dismiss me as a human being - and I hate to risk that.
I'm feeling stressed, but hopeful. It seems to me that
the chances of some truly good solutions to the problems of
war and peace in the world are taking shape. It is hard for me
not to be hopeful, looking at the way some things are laying
out. A lot of people are stumped - and ready to "settle for"
what they actually need - in ways that can be excellent for
almost everybody involved. Though things could easily blow up
badly.
If we acknowledge the shared space we actually have,
and build some more in areas that ought not to offer any
problems for anybody involved, we can find stable solutions of
disciplined beauty.
It seems to me that we're well on the way to that.
New York Times on the Web Forums
Science
Missile Defense
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