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This is a totally open question to anyone. It serves no great purpose. I'm just curious to see the answers, and may or may not comment in return.
What of consequence do you and I have in common? What are our major differences?
Be honest, think hard, answer seriously, and never be afraid to say "I don't know."
Remember: "He who knows, and knows that he knows, is a wise man. He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool. But he who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a scholar." (Aristotle, if memory serves. But at this time of night it probably doesn't.)
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I saw you and Cymru again at Seatoria- I remember the fun we had cooking - the mushroom morongo dish was awesome. I always think of you both as a couple of the most decent, and incredibly resilient people I know.
Of consequence? I think so. I care about y'all.
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that Mushrooms Marengo were prepared for Napoleon- but the concotion sounded less than appetizing ( they threw in everything but the kitchen sink). Yours is much better, and yes, guaranteed to repel idiots!
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Now I'm curious about the "real" thing ....
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I'd say we have a belief in the fundamental liberty of mankind in common.
I'd also say we have a lot of differences over what that means, especially in application.
I'd say you probably place more emphasis on gun rights more than I do, though we both agree that most forms of gun control are bad.
I think we disagree heavily on just how false modern economic scarcity is :)
We do have diagreements on such things as the death penalty, 'welfare', and the inherent value of work (meaning labor, in this case.) But your views are reasonable, and perfectly valid for a given set of circumstances.
We may or may not agree on the value of 9mm as a good round, I don't remember who was always against me in that debate.
We both agree that 1:1 substitution of habanero for most other peppers is bad.
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Care to enlarge upon that? I'm not quite certain what you mean.
We both agree that 1:1 substitution of habanero for most other peppers is bad.
"Tastes ... like ... burning!"
I still can't believe I brainfarted that.
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I hold a very strong belief that our technological global group of civilizations (is the PC enough?) is capable of housing, feeding, protecting, and administering health care to the full population of the planet.
(I also have strong evidence to indicate that higher standards of living lead to fewer children per family. So that preliminary argument against letting africans live is out tha window.) (And it's not your argument, it's a 'general' one I have heard. I'll have a lot of these commentaries, mostly confined to end notes.)
Many people disagree with this, generally with an argument that "x (most often health care) is too expensive." (end note 1)
I *further* hold a strong belief that this can be accomplished without enforced labor, and without the presence of the modern idea of a work ethic.(end note 2)
Which translated VERY roughly to- there's nothing wrong with not going to work.
So, where I've gotten the impression we disagree is on two point related to my statement- though my statement wasn't terribly clear. And I could easily be wrong about one or both!
1: I don't think that there is much, if any, *real* scarcity (end note 3) left in the world in the realms of basic decent standard of living and security type stuff, right.
2: I don't find anything particularly atractive or necessary about what most people include in the phrase 'work ethic'. Yes, I think anything worth doing is worth doing well, but that's not the same as the modern idea of a work ethic meaning choosing McDonald's over welfare to feed your kids. (for example, I'm not aiming at anyone who reads this.)
Or maybe I'm tangenting off into some tetrahedral lala land :)
None of this is aimed at any one individual, least of all unixronin.
End Note 1: expensive in dollars charged does not equate to expensive in terms of wealth used, or human effort expended. This should seem self evident, but many people do confuse money and wealth.
The argument that medicine needs to be expensive so that people will do it or research it doesn't seem valid to me in the context of an abundance based society for reasons that logically follow.
End Note 2: humanity is a very complex system. It is safe to give an example such as agriculture. Many people, if LEFT FREE of full time multi decade obligations such as a factory job, manning the desk in the VA, or whatever, would enjoy farming for several seasons throughout their lifetime. It is *effort*, but it is not *work* in the modenr sense. Sort of like how a Yoga Camp isn't work, though it can strees the muscles plenty.
We have the ability to farm truly massive amounts of food with very litte effort, and this can even be done sustainably and without the use of oil based fertilizers, for what it's worth. So, the 10% of humanity that feels like spending a few periods of time farming, combined with the persons who, for whatever reason (religious, spiritual, stress related, whatever) choose to farm full time, can feed the world without enforced labor.
Similar arguments apply to wiring telephones, shelves library books, delivering medications, whatever.
Yes, there are some areas where a serious commitment over time is necessary to acheive sufficient skill to perfom a given 'career'. Doctors, warriors, and aeronautical engineers are very good examples. But there are far better ways of motivating people who are attracted to that sort of lifestyle than money. Prestige, of course, counts in any abundance society. Probably even more so than in ours. There are many more motivators, though the internal ones (pride, spiritual, or whatever) are probably the most powerful.
End Note 3: I find that the vast majority of scarcity in standard of living material to be false. Like California's big energy crisis a few years ago, it's primarily a result of people creating scarcity - or 'managing' scarcity, to make money, or to extend and maintain power over others.
from burning food in the fields to feeding millions of unneeded cattle grain, to working harder to build coal plants than to put windmills on telephone poles (see r.b. fuller for the math on that, it's *amazing*) we do it all!
We do it with knowledge and information, with firearms, with medicinal drugs.
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No argument. It's not a problem of resources, it's one of distribution, will, and - frankly - greed.
I don't think that there is much, if any, real scarcity (end note 3) left in the world in the realms of basic decent standard of living and security type stuff, right.
See previous observation. :)
Really, I'm not sure I see where you think we differ on this.
The big trouble is that we got into this rut of (a) believing, in many cases, that huge amounts of money -- more than one could ever possibly spend in a lifetime, or in a dozen lifetimes -- are inherently worth having for their own sake, whatever it takes to accumulate such hoards, and (b) that it's a good idea to let people who think that way govern your life and how you live it. Of course, once you get enough people into that trap, it's a difficult one to get back out of. The conspicuous-consumption economy has its own sort of economic gravity well.
We've had several tries at breaking away from the idea during recorded history. I don't know how many more tries we'll have to have before one succeeds. In the long run, it's to everyone's advantage to get everyone out of the starvation/poverty state, and ideally to enable everyone to be a net producer of resources. However, in such a world, it would probably be very difficult for individuals to become conspicuously filthy stinking rich relative to the vast majority, and so the individuals to whom that is important will probably do whatever they can to prevent it from coming to pass.
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I sometimes get the impression we do, but that could be channel leaching from others, or maybe even something going back to the period prior to 2001. i think we have both had some worldview restructuring in that time. i know i have!
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Hard question
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A set of Celtic knotted dragon wedding bands, The Silly Goose, The Dread Pirate BigNum, and Wen the Eternally Surprised.
On a less solid note, trust.
What are our major differences?
Certainty in aspects of our life.
Be honest, think hard, answer seriously, and never be afraid to say "I don't know."
I know this one thing to be true.
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Outlook on life is of more consequence than any of the above, and there are some interesting similarities and differences there, political and the like. On the whole, though, I think there are enough similarities of the "Meh, don't ask me to explain it in _words_" [handwave] type that we get along. And that's the important thing.
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The quote, I believe, is from the Talmud.
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And I must note that there are Masters of my acquaintance before whom I, too, am but a chela. All things are relative.
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Things, of little to no consequence, that we have in common: a fondness for Elric and good Irish cream whiskey.
What are our major differences: National origin, political leanings, state of residence, too many others to mention...