Quote Originally Posted by jaegerhund View Post
Thanks James for your response:

To me what's the point in being regulated and protected if you never really live ?-- what are you saving yourself up for ?--- so you create some highly regulated safe little utopia -- what? --with the concept that you are going to live forever? Bullshit ---- it is all just a means of controlling people with a father knows best attitude. The rarest thing in this world is a true individual along with a government that protects the freedom of that individual -- even the freedom to do himself harm.

What Mark is talking about is such a rare and knew concept- a small government that is told what to do by the people and is non-intrusive --but it taps into what it really means to be a sentient human being ---- who's able to experience all things for better or worse and to regulate himself --- as in Mark is a one of kind creation who can only define himself through his self-regulating actions not by governments made of other humans --- why give other humans such power over you? -- do you think you're worth so little and are incapable or maybe you think others are incapable and worth little? Maybe this has more to do with how you assign value to a human being --- is he capable or not? --- is he a virus or a marvelous creation? No matter. I'll define myself anyhow.


Justin

Justin,

I think I understand what you're saying. I agree with the idea of personal freedom and choice - it would be interesting to see what would happen (governmentally, I mean) if that principle was allowed a natural development. Actually, and I'm not trying to deliberately be a pratt here, I think there are some (or maybe a lot of) philosophical texts that deal with this - the French guy Michel Foucault did some interesting stuff on power that's probably pertinent.

But I wonder whether anything along those lines can happen with a democratically elected government - invariably people differ in views and attitudes, and if you're on the losing side in an election, democracy means you have to live with other people's ideas about how you're governed...is that too simplistic???

James.