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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 - 07:28am Dec 25, 2002 EST (# 7016 of 17697)
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.

http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md01000s/DetailNGR.htm sets out Detail, and the Golden Rule , which was a Guardian Talk thread, and includes some of this in (#3).

I feel sure that I am a "child of nature" -- much less sure that I'm a "child of God." My faith in God is not at all strong. I'm a doubter. I don't think my maternal grandfather, who was a competent clergyman, would have been surprised or uncomfortable with that. A lot of people are doubters. Including, I suspect, essentially all the artists who wrote and approved Peace on Earth http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/25/opinion/25WED1.html - a masterpiece of humane and religious feeling - entirely respectful of religion, and all open-minded religious traditions.

My maternal grandfather, Robert H.. Herring, was a Baptist preacher in the rural South - born at the beginning of Reconstruction. He was no saint - and as a young man participated in some ballot stuffing that reinforced rigid segregation - a position that he lived and died supporting. There was much more to him than that. R.H. Herring died, after a long life, in 1955, when I was only seven.. He had read Darwin's Origin of the Species carefully, and his copy had many careful notes about it. He wasn't disturbed by Darwin - feeling, as many clergymen did then, and do now, that Genesis was a simple story for a simple people. He would have been entranced and uplifted by Of Altruism, Heroism and Evolution's Gifts in the Face of Terror by Natalie Angier http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/18/health/psychology/18ALTR.html and would have read The Origin of Religions, From a Distinctly Darwinian View By NATALIE ANGIER http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/science/social/24CONV.html with respect and pleasure - and without feeling dislodged in his faith. Here, as in many other places, some arguments from design and the argument from evolution can each fit what is known. "Butch" would have felt that you either had faith or you didn't - but that doubt was to be expected, and that no one could ever prove the existence of God. Grandaddy died when I was only seven, but he let me know he liked math - and after my paternal grandfather taught me some algebra, using a see-saw to review all the principles there are in basic algebra, grandaddy Herring told me that there were things called infinite series - and that they were magical - something that made an impression on me. I have some of his math texts (though not his copy of Darwin - my big sister, the college president, got that.)

I have been professionally concerned, for a long time, with human interactions. And the stability of human relations. I feel sure that these are key things to check, every which way, when stability matters enough to think hard about:

Berle's Laws of Power
Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs and
The Golden Rule

"Solutions" not consistent with these constraining patterns may work for a short time, or with great strains on parts of the human system involved -- but they are unstable.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs by William G. Huitt http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/regsys/maslow.html . . . especially the image - which sketches out human needs in a heirarchically organized system..

Berle and Maslow: MD667-8 rshow55 3/18/02 11:13am

I don't know anything about heaven - not even enough to hope for it coherently. But the main message Jesus brought for peace on earth , for secular redemption was the golden rule.

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