Mike: a warmonger is one who forcefully advocates the killing of however many people it takes to ensure that one's self-interest is served.
Therefore a fishmonger is one who forcefully advocates giving fish to as many people as necessary to ensure one's self-interest is served. Sounds like a Pacific feasting culture, no?
Semi-seriously, Mike, I should introduce you to Yost's Universal Law of Humanity, which states:
>*In every group, the bottom 20 percent hold back the top 80 percent.*< EXAMPLES:Why is public school boring for kids? The bottom 20 percent holding back the rest.
Why do human beings have wars? The bottom 20 percent holding back the rest. CAVEAT:This is NOT an elitist doctrine. If one were to gather the 1,000 most intelligent and educated people in the world to solve a pressing problem, the bottom 200 would hinder the rest.
One sees this phenomenon in all aspects of human endeavor.Even movies show it. Take a zombie movie. The bottom 20 percent of zombies are bumping into walls, getting trapped in phone booths, and accidentally tripping the faster, more goal-directed zombies chasing the humans. Likewise, the bottom 20 percent of the fleeing humans usually stumble or make some tactical error that allows the zombies to kill them and menace the other 80 percent of fleeing humans.
As go zombies, so go nations. Take our most serious problem, which is not war or global warming, but nuclear proliferation. I doubt this issue will be solved because the bottom 20 percent will continue to try to acquire and use nuclear weapons; meanwhile, the 80 percent will be forced to maintain nuclear weapons because of the unreliability of that bottom 20 percent.
Muddling by, Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
