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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?

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rshow55 - 04:00pm Jan 19, 2003 EST (# 7818 of 7823)
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.

Here is the oldest dream I can remember. I think I was under five in this dream. I don't know if anything like this really happened. Here is how the dream went.

I'm interacting somehow with some kids about my age, tentatively trying to make friends, and somehow or other they gather around me, pointing fingers, jeering, and taunting in unison freak . . . freak . . . freak . . . freak . . . freak . . . . .

I feel tears coming on - contort my face - and rush at the group. The kids stop jeering, and scatter crying in terror. I grab a kid that I can get my hands on, a kid lot bigger than I am, but panicked. I take him down and start banging his head against a cement step.

I forget how many times I repeated the banging - but the problem that I thought about, as I was knocking this kid's head against the concrete in a repeating pattern was this. If I stop now - will he hurt me? Is this next shot enough - so that I don't have to fight with this kid any more? . . . . . I stop -- the kid stays still - - and I run away, fairly slowly, warily, and crying. The dream fades out . . . . I don't know if anything exactly like this actually happened, but it is a dream that seemed important to me - that I had a good many times - - and that dream corresponds to a serious fight, by the standards of sandbox society. I knew that. I knew that my mother, and other mothers, would feel that way.

rshow55 - 04:03pm Jan 19, 2003 EST (# 7819 of 7823)
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 didn't see, then, how I could avoid fighting, as I was, that young, in situations like that.

And didn't know how else to fight. I felt I had to win, in such circumstances. I still don't see that I had a lot of alternative - in the context of that dream. I don't know if the dream is at all realistic.

But I think the dream represented a problem that I had. My mother and father had a problem, too. It was a long time ago.

There are some senses - clear to me then - clear to me now - where I was absolutely responsible for what I was doing - and very much to be blamed. But it wasn't an easy, simple situation in every way. For me, or for the other kids, either. Or for the mothers and fathers. All in all, I think people did the best they could, mostly.

It seems to me that I always tried to avoid fights - at least, most of the time.

But it seemed to me that, the way the fights went - when I had to fight - I had to - - and it also seemed to me that if I got into a fight, I didn't dare lose it - and I had to try to act so that there were as few fights in the future as possible.

A time came when I didn't always run away from a fight. I didn't dare.

I don't like escalatory fights much. I know something about them - and I'm not especially sentimental about them. Or cocksure about my own virtue, either.

I think we need to make peace, and avoid fights, more effectively than we have in the past. I believe that we can do so. If we weren't such brilliant animals, we wouldn't be in the trouble we're in - but we wouldn't have a chance to get out of it, either. We need to take a bit bigger bite out of "the apple of the tree of knowledge" -- and lie a bit less. Not all ugliness can be eliminated - but we can get more order, symmetry, and harmoniousness - and a lot more comfortable results for people - than we have so far.

We're smart enough, and know enough - to do a lot better in situations that have been messing up badly.

lchic - 05:13pm Jan 19, 2003 EST (# 7820 of 7823)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

wow! Glad the kid in your dream was only virtual

lchic - 10:26pm Jan 19, 2003 EST (# 7821 of 7823)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

This SANDBURGism seems appropriate for here - enjoy:

I am the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world's food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing.

Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I have. And I forget.

Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember. Then--I forget.

When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.

The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.

CARL SANDBURG [ 'I am the People, the Mob' ]

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