 
To: "Jon C. Slenk" 
Cc: +dist+/afs/andrew/usr/js9b/Public/camc.dl@ANDREW.CMU.EDU,
        Thomas_Price@KANGA.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Re: yeah 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 06 Oct 92 16:13:54 EDT."
              
Date: Tue, 06 Oct 92 17:32:42 -0400
Message-Id: <5480.718407162@KANGA.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU>
From: Thomas_Price@KANGA.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU


> I mean, if we make use of things which
> come about from the larger community, are we not condoning it?

I'm not interested in condemning anything except for specific practices
whose hurtfulness in clearly definable. There is no such thing as 
the "larger community"; there's a patchwork of millions of different 
activities. 

I want to start activities that are self-evidently beneficial
and useful to their participants. I don't want to define these 
activities negatively with respect to the "larger community"; I want
to define them positively with respect to various goals. Then, whatever
it takes to achieve those goals is good, barring obvious things such as
patronizing sweatshops.

"Condoning" is a bad concept, in my experience. "Facilitating" is a better
one. We can't facilitate the larger community since there is no such thing;
however, by interacting with the world-at-large we are going to facilitate 
various activities directly and a whole host of activities indirectly. I say
let's make certain that our direct influence is never in contradiction to
our principles (like eating fast food and perpetuating beef-cattle culture)
and forget about the indirect activities (like what the Mutual Fund does
with our capital while it's making money for us -- that's too big and vague
a problem to worry about).

Tom

******************************************************************************
         Tom Price  |  tp0x@cs.cmu.edu  |  Simplicity, simplicity
******************************************************************************
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