Change of heart

[d-dog]

Upon further reflection, I have decided that my stance on Bridge Day 2002 is flat-out wrong. Readers may recall that I felt the demands made by the BDC for extraneous personal information on jumpers (Social Security numbers, in particular) were egregious and unnecessary. I felt that now was the time for the BASE community to take control of its own destiny at BD in West Virginia, and if that meant staying away from the 2002 event to demonstrate our willingness to make sacrifices in the name of maintaining our freedoms and protections as American citizens and as central attractions for BD, so be it.

Now I have seen the error of my ways.

Rather than wasting my time with self-important blather about individual freedoms, privacy protection and, heaven forbid, digressions into thoughts on American governmental institutions and how they have evolved from the early days of our country, I will do the right thing.

I will stay at home and watch my TeeVee. I will be a good corporate consumer. I will vote for political candidates that have the prettiest TeeVee commercials, and the ones that run most frequently. I will believe EVERYTHING I am told, especially when told things by entities that have a vested interest in shading the truth to serve their own ends.

Perhaps most importantly, I will recognize the primacy of appearance. After all, if I gripe about an over-reaching BDC proposal to gather information on BASE jumpers, people might think I am an unstable, conspiratorial, paranoid freeq that sits home watching for UN-owned black helicopters easdropping on my thoughts. And what people think about me is the ONLY important thing - the TeeVee taught me that.

Appearance is everything. Normalcy is the only goal. Appearing Normal is the Prime Objective. I will appear Normal by never asking questions, by never thinking for myself, and by being a docile herd animal that is easily and cheaply steered by others.

Finally, and most importantly, I will lash out at anyone with the temerity to stand out from the crowd. Anyone that questions my own passivity is, by definition, abnormal and should be ostracized. They are a danger to Society and cannot be trusted. The best way to handle them is to make fun of them - the TeeVee taught me this too.

So, I apolgize and hereby grovel for having the nerve to step out of line. It will never happen again. I am a Good Corporate Citizen. I will work hard to earn money so I can buy crap I don't need. I trust my government, no matter how tyrranical it might become or how illogical its actions. I will categorize any dissent from the TeeVee Normal picture as unstable anti-government ravings. I will submit to any indignity to prove how Normal I am.

I will go to Bridge Day and allow myself to be used as cheap entertainment for the beer-swilling masses, and I won't rock the boat when there because that would not be Normal.

Excuse me now, but I have to go watch my government-mandated 4.5 hours of daily TeeVee to be sure my thoughts continue to be Normal. I will no longer be posting on the BASE Board as the internet is subversive and not Normal; TeeVee is all I need to guide me on the path to eternal bliss via loss of self.

Many thanks to those who took the time to point out my wrong-headedness. Without you, I'd still be a questioning patriot and what's worse than that! Heck, I think I'll quit BASE right now until Nike and Disney decide it is 'cool' and then maybe I'll do it again. In the meantime, it's too non-Normal for my tastes, thank you.

Peace through Ignorance and Denial,

D-d0g
ddog@wrinko.com
www.wrinko.com

[guest]

>Many thanks to those who took the time to point
>out my wrong-headedness.

I do what I can.

>Without you, I'd still be a questioning patriot and
>what's worse than that!

Not much, I'll wager.

>Heck, I think I'll quit BASE right now until Nike and
>Disney decide it is 'cool' and then maybe I'll do it
>again.

Solomon decided it was cool. Energizer decided it was cool even before that. No kidding -- I saw it on TeeVee. Plus RealTV shows BASE all the time, so it's got to be at least as normal as BMX and sk8boarding.

You just gotta watch different TeeVee shows, that's all.

[crwper]

It's a shame you think the only alternative to your own views on privacy is to be a government puppet. It's a shame that you think so little of your fellow human beings as to imply that being a puppet will make you "normal".

When you look at the world around you, do you really think you, and those who share your views, are the only ones who are capable of thinking idependently?

I find it ironic that one who so obviously believes in his own personal freedom has so little respect for the independent thoughts of others; that he would imply anyone who thinks differently than he does is a sheep.

I respect your view of things, but I think it's unfortunate you felt you had to cut down those who disagree with you.

Peace... through diversity.

Michael

[d-dog]

Just joshin' ya - don't be mad. If we can't laugh at ourselves, who will do the laughing for us?

I am my own most convenient source of amusement, as always.

Hahahahaaaaaaah,

D-d0g
ddog@wrinko.com
www.wrinko.com

[crwper]

Very good to hear, my friend.

Michael

[Skinflicka]

Michael,

Looks like I'll be in your neck of the woods next week. We can go tear it up and argue about Bridge Day. I'll give you a holla at the weekend.

I won't be going this year for 2 reasons:

1) We've already torn it a new one this year and by October I'll be sick of the sight of it (oh crap, I've named a site - Duh!).

2) There'll be skydivers there and they'll wear purple romper suits & try to hold hands with you.

D) I can't count.



:* Skydiving porn icon



Skin (the synthetic redneck)

[guest]

"Beer swilling masses" ---- they serve beer at BD? aye caramba. and to think I've been wasting time jumping.

[crwper]

Sweet! We're looking forward to it!

Michael

[guest]

Peace...through diversity.

Yugoslavia has/had diversity
Afghanistan has diversity
West Bank, Gaza Strip, Israel has diversity

diversity-division-divide

How about we try some unity instead?

[guest]

Excellent!

Can you snort it?

A gram of unity and a rolled up 10 dollar bill please.

Improvise - improve - home improvement TV show.

Wow! It works.

Does it come in pink?

:-(

[crwper]

The conflicts you refer to have all been instigated by a group who is seeking to unify the world -- by someone who believes they are "more right" than someone else.

Unity is not a stable situation. You change one person in a unified group, and it is no longer unified. Diversity is quite stable. You can change several memebrs of a diverse population, and it's still diverse.

Show me a conflict which was caused by diversity, and not by the desire to eliminate that diversity.

Michael

[d-dog]

Without diversty one is dealing with a monoculture, and monocultures are very susceptible to catastrophic crash due to a minor fluctuation in environmental conditions. Diversity is the key stepping stone to "robustness," and in general robustness is the most fundamental characteristic of all known life.

Robust systems respond well and adapt to change and fluctuation. A system cannot be robust without diversity.

Those who attempt to eradicate diversity because their world-view tells them that they are right (God says so, or whatever), are antithetical to life on this planet. Belief systems that preach the necessity of forced unity behave identically to biological viruses. They kill off competing strains, and eventually cause massive systemic crashes because they exist only to spread themselves further; that is how they have evolved - fundamentally parasitical.

Nearly every organized religion spreads in identical quantitative patterns as biological viruses, infecting new adherents and demanding of new hosts that these hosts, in turn, go out and infect others. "Infection" here is synonymous with the elimination of diversity and the creation of monoculture.

Woah, talk about off topic from BASE! Sorry, this is just a research interest of mine and it doesn't take much for me to hop on the soapbox and start gesticulating wildly about robustness as it relates to the "culturesphere."

Peace - through diversity,

D-d0g
ddog@wrinko.com
www.wrinko.com

[imported_Tom Aiello]

Just to get a little more off topic:

In the modern context, “Diversity” loses its procedural meaning and assumes substantive content. “Diversity” does not refer to a range of views on a disputed question, but rather entails enlisting in a regiment of ideological causes which are identified as being “diverse.”
- Dinesh D’Souza

Careful what you call "Diversity", it may not look like the other guys diversity at all.


And one more thought from some one far more intelligent and eloquent than I:

Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.
- The United States Supreme Court

People who disagree with you aren't uneducated, stupid or just plain wrong. They simply disagree with you.

[d-dog]

Yes, I agree that any substantive term can be stripped of its meaning and become an unhinged signifier with no signified. This often happens in bare ideological combat, viz. the "diversity battles" and political correctness of the 1980s. Point well taken.

That said, when I use the term I do so more in the context of quantitative diversity, of non-trivial difference that manifests both in thought AND in action - not always in the strict biological sense of genetic diversity, but not far removed from the sentiment nonetheless. Real diversity should make one stand back in surprise, wondering how something so clearly different could be so. . . there.

Anyway, my blather risks veering off into content-free lala-land so I'll stop at once. I just think that, while "unity" as a concept has such purity and is so tempting to the Western mind as an utopia of efficient, clean, ideal being, diversity in all its messy exuberance is the objective reality of how life functions on our planet - and how life seems to be organized more generally in a mathematical sense.

And, for some of us, diversity (the real kind) hits close to home. We are different from societal norms in ways that make some classes of our society hate and attack us, persecute us, try to eliminate us. So there is a self-interest component in our constant hammering on the importance of diversity since for us "diverse types," survival depends on continued tolerance of diversity!

See also the book "Biological Exuberance" for some interesting practical and philosophical discussions of one type of biological diversity.

Peace,

D-d0g
ddog@wrinko.com
www.wrinko.com

[crwper]

You're going to have to explain to me in very simple terms how one person can be more diverse than another...

Michael