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You sound like someone familiar with Dune2. Great game. So is Dune 2000. You may be more right than you realize. Did you consider some of the comments made by the Atreides mentat in Dune2? "your efforts...confirm all that is good and right." It's profoundly "tongue-in-cheek." It's telling us some of the miserable platitudes we tell ourselves as justifications for war. Next time you play Dune2 as Atreides, look more carefully at what the mentat tells you. I don't know about the mentats for the other houses, because I don't have much interest in playing as Ordos or Harkonnen. They have vulnerabilities that become very clear as you play. But read those mentat comments, keeping in mind what I've just said. If you haven't seen the cynical sarcasm in them before, you will now! One reason I stubbornly cling to my 98SE is because lots of games and utilities that were DOS-based are just not compatible with newer OSs, even with their compatability patching efforts. I won't give up some of my favorite stuff, just to have the newest thing, when the one I've already GOT works just fine. Except, of course, that people like me are being slowly squeezed out of things like newer versions of IE, Flash player, Windows Media, Java runtime, and tons more. I'll one day have no choice at all any more. Ticks me off, though.

The scholarship here is certainly well thought out, but, as sometimes happens with scholars, they concentrate on the forest, and ignore the trees. I'm very familiar with that, because of my own father, a Biochemistry professor. When I took high school chemistry, I brought my questions to him. He wanted to help me, but couldn't come down to my level, hard as he tried to do so. It only made me more confused. He was no help at all, but I adored him anyway! It isn't enough just to say that certain things are imposed on people from the cradle as "good" or "evil," and then to claim that that alone doesn't necessarily make it so. There's something more to it than that. When you tell a child he may not lie, you are teaching him generic morality. Religions all have their own moralities, which I am not including here. Generic morality is the thing which makes civilization possible at ALL. Without it, we'd all be living dog-eat-dog. I suppose a person can choose anarchy over civilization, but he wouldn't be welcomed in a civilized society. How can you have a civilization if anyone can lie to anyone at any time? Or kill or steal? Of course, they do lie, kill and steal anyway, but without a rule against doing so, there'd be pure chaos. For people to live among one another, interactions are inevitable, even desirable. Living in communities, rather than alone, confers many tremendous benefits to everyone involved. It comes at a price, though, and that price requires refraining from indulging in any form of behavior we please. We must now temper certain urges, for the sake of stability of our society. It was the origin of the Golden Rule. With civilization goes the question of how to keep people from killing one another on a whim. Before people can even begin to form communities, then, they must first agree on a few basics. Generic morality, group acceptance of certain things as good or evil must precede civilization. It is the "grease" which smooths out human interactions. Without it, friction would prevail, and the society would crumble. It is the nature of human nature that makes these rules imperative. We are essentially bestial, inclined to serve our visceral instincts, and some of them are distinctly unlovely. That might be fine as long as we don't try to live cooperatively. But cooperation has such huge benefits that people wanted to live together. But what, then, should they do about those bestial and visceral instincts? Merely being basic to our natures did NOT make them acceptable or beneficial to ourselves, particularly in a collective and cooperative setting. Generic morality tells us which of those instincts we MUST override, for the sake of living smoothly together. Those who don't would end up being kicked out. Nor are these generic moralities random. They must all be relatively the same, because they address the same bestial and visceral urges inherent in all of us, and seek to tone them down for the sake of the benefits civilizaton brings; i.e., for our OWN good, literally. The destructive instincts within us are universal, so the problems they'd cause are also universal. Therefore, for any society to succeed, it must recognize these universal conflicts and devise a way to keep them from destroying the society. Each culture may develop its own STYLE for controlling those urges in us, but they are still dealing with the same, universal, problem. It is a thread that binds all civilizations together, no matter how different they seem to be on the surface. They must ALL deal with the human inclinations to steal, kill, lie, take someone else's mate, etc. Those basics are things like not killing (except when attacked), not stealing, not lying, etc. Unless the bulk of the people involved adhere to these basics (and thus defining good and evil accordingly), they would not be able to live together. Period. So we can indeed say that certain things ARE good and evil, at least if you're looking at it from the point of view of civilization, and not some esoteric cosmological viewpoint. If civilization is desirable, then certain behaviors in people MUST be regarded as evil. Therefore, to have civilization at ALL, killing, stealing and lying MUST be accepted as evils. It is inescapable. Other things, too, like moving in on someone else's spouse. Things which are guaranteed to set people at one another's throats tend to be included in generic morality, no matter where you go in this world. We must either do that, and accept those basic moralities, or we can say goodbye to civilization itself. We can, of course, choose not to accept them, and try to live in civilized societies anyway, but we'll usually get in trouble if we do that. The only way to live without those basic moralities is to live as hermits, or in extremely small family-based groupings. Living with no rules at all. It didn't take humanity long at all to realize how destructive a rule-less society will ALWAYS be. If destroying your own beneficial civilization can be called evil, then it is only fitting that the destructive behaviors be regarded as evil, too. In the absence of religion, evil can be defined as "that which destroys." Good, then, would be "that which is constructive." The trouble is that most of us tend to define good and evil along religious lines. Those have nothing whatever to do with generic morality. Those generic moralities are indeed defining good or evil, unless we're willing to give up civilization. Because they are what make civilization possible at ALL.

Muslims who live in the west are the ones who first showed the cartoons to people in the Mideast, and started the whole uproar - intentionally. Those living in the West know our culture enough to understand what freedom of speech means. They also knew that, if they'd merely made a stink about it with peaceful, non-THREATENING protests, the world would likely have rallied to them with sympathy. But that wasn't what they wanted. Instead, they chose to make it an issue to kill over. Cultures DO have a right to be different, to have different values, etc. That does NOT mean any culture has a right to make death threats, go berzerk blowing things - and people - up, over some inane cartoons. There's such a thing as taking offense a bit too far. Yes, it's true that religion isn't about logic. Isaac Asimov once said, "You cannot reason with someone whose fundamental premise is that reason doesn't count." But other religions don't plan to take over the world and kill anyone who doesn't convert. If their cultures make it legal to kill someone over a teddy bear, and somehow we're supposed to accept it, because it's what THEIR culture and laws permit, who are they to tell us what we can and cannot publish within our OWN borders? Must their values supercede our own, even within our own countries? That's how it's coming down these days. Where is it written that tolerance must be a one-way street, always in THEIR favor? Besides, isn't Islam supposed to be that "great global religion of peace and tolerance?" Isn't that what we were all taught? Where's the peace? Where's the tolerance? When they come to our lands, they get maximally cliquish, and live in enclaves of their own, islands of "Islamic States" within our own. That doesn't exactly express a desire on their part to integrate into our cultures. So why do they bother to COME to the West to live? Everything about us is blasphemous, evil, revolting, to them. Yet they come, voluntarily - and in droves. Why? Remember Glasgow, then you get three guesses. They move into our countries, then reproduce like mad, with the single goal of becoming the majority, so they can change literally EVERYTHING. Legally. Failing in that, they're already in place for jihading activities, to take our countries over - from within. The reason there's so much official harrassment of those who take umbrage from what Muslims are doing - especially in our own countries - is simple enough: OIL. As far as I'm concerned, we should say, "SCREW the oil! Let's take a stand against bestiality first." You may notice that the West has no difficulty accommodating itself to any other religion. Only Islam is never satisfied, and only Islam demands more and more all the time, with violence a routine method of underscoring their demands. What would happen to ME if I got up in a protest and held up banners saying, "Death to the President!" I'd have the Secret Service ALL OVER ME. Yet Muslims can hold banners wishing death on lots of people, the Queen, Rushdie, etc., and nobody stops them. And they do more than protest; they kill. Their protests make specific death threats to specific people, a thing nobody ELSE can do in the free world. They're let alone, out of some silly notions of "religious tolerance" that we are all required to hold. So they can do things you and I would go to jail for doing. I don't see it. By what standard should somebody's religious rights be more important than my human and civil rights? They can publicly threaten us, but if WE held a protest against Islam, making the same kinds of threats, we'd be jailed. No, the problem is simply that Islam crosses ALL lines, and has no intention of becoming civilized. I'm not defining "civilized" by my own culture, but by the generic mores and values that make civilization possible at ALL. And killing people who don't happen to be of your religion is NOT being civilized. They offer no religious tolerance, yet they USE the religious liberties in our countries in order to one day deprive us of our OWN. And we're supposed to tolerate them while they do this? If you really want to understand what we're up against with Islam, try going directly to the "horse's mouth." READ the Quran and Hadith - they're free to download. Read them, cover to cover, and be patient with all the reptitious stuff and the name references that can easily confuse people from our culture. Then go online to Islamic prosyletizing sites and READ what Muslims have to say about their own faith. READ about Islam's history, too, to know how these two sects came about, and why they hate each other more than they hate US. Is there a more fair way to learn what Islam really IS? I'd also suggest you view "Fitna," a Dutch film which uses the verses of the Quran itself, the words and actions of Muslims themselves, to show us how dangerous Islam is to the entire world. Nothing is more fair than letting Islam and Muslims speak for themselves. Yet it's been censored. It's out there, though, and you can find it. Because until you do your OWN homework, you can't have an opinion of Islam; you can only have an attitude, gathered from second-hand sources. I doubt you would emerge from these studies with the conviction that Islam is a "great global religion of peace and tolerance," though. But it is what political correctness DEMANDS that we believe of Islam. In spite of the mountains of evidence that Islam itself is malevolent. It is those who have gone the extra mile, those who have studied Islam fully, in order to be maximally fair to Muslims, who are the people most in fear of what Islam IS. The more you know, the "scared-er" you get. It isn't the Muslims themselves who are always the bad guys; it's Islam. That is the source of the evil, which then blows the minds of Muslims and makes them slavishly obedient. You will also learn, directly from THEIR materials, that Islam is a religion OF males, FOR males and BY males. Islam has two purposes: to make males absolutely dominant over females, and to take over the entire world - and by ANY means whatsoever. That global takeover is the Prime Directive of Islam, toward which ALL good Muslims must work hard, at all times. Human life - even their own - is meaningless, next to serving Allah. A religion which cheapens human life - even of its OWN believers - is obscene and evil. Islam relies on the Quran - and on blowing minds - to gain an army of absolutely obedient zombies with which to conquer the world. And it worked beautifully for Muhammad. He invented the religion entirely to serve his OWN military goals. I don't think he had any idea that it would live after him and grow as large as it has. Nor, frankly, do I think he'd care much, except to the extent that it basted his male ego. The Quran can be misleading. It says at one point, "there shall be no compulsion in religion." This is often proudly quoted to us by Muslims when people say they convert by the sword. Yet they DO. The Muslims quoting it already know they're being misleading. How can they violate the Quran itself? Because in the Hadith, Muhammad himself converted by the sword. THAT made the quotation moot, and binding on no Muslim, from that day forward. They don't tell us THAT when they quote that passage, though, do they? Conversions by the sword have gone on ever since - and still do. Yet the Pope had to apologize (!) to them for speaking the truth. All Muslims are required to emulate Muhammad. That's what the Hadith is, a chronicle of his life and acts, for all good Muslims to use as their role model of a perfect Muslim. Anything in the Quran which is contradicted by a later writing, or a later act of Muhammad, may still appear in the Quran, but has been overwritten entirely. Muslims do not deny that this is so. They'd rather it didn't become publicly known, though. Yet it is WE who are the bad guys if we express our loathing of something like that. We're not "being tolerant." We're "Islamophobes," or "Xenophobic." Is it a phobia to hate any religion that makes slaughter, beheadings and abusing women a virtue? Is that how "bigotry" is defined? Must we NULLIFY our own values in order to respect theirs? And just where is any tolerance required OF Muslims, toward US? Certainly NOT in any Islamic State. Not even in our OWN lands. Because of OIL, they must be coddled, while we must be vilified and called bigots if we don't like it. I've STUDIED Islam since 1994. The more I learn of it, the more it stands my hair on end. So call me a bigot for being revolted by bestiality. Mea culpa. No other religion on the planet embraces bestiality. Only Islam. The attitudes of black hatred Muslims keep showing us makes it more than just a culture and religion that WE must adapt to somehow, through our own boundless tolerance. It makes Islam a threat to all of humanity. And they MEAN BUSINESS. How can WE adapt to it, except by opening our veins, and capitulating to them utterly? It's the only thing we can do that will make them stop being "offended." Because they're "offended" by our very EXISTENCE. If anyone should be doing the adapting, it would be them. It is they whose values are bestial and crude, devoid of value for human life. Why should we get down in the muck with people like that, tolerating, accommodating, even catering, to them? Must humanity, then, sink to its very lowest common denominator in order to obtain "peace"? Give me strength. Fortunately, though, I think the general public is slowly getting the drift. Thickheaded they may be, but even the average joe is beginning to wonder about these people. If Muslims wish to be bestial, they should all be required to live in places where there are only Muslims. They have no small inclination to tolerate anything at ALL about us. So let them live AWAY from us entirely. If they insist on living among us and spewing hate, committing "honor killings," circumcizing females and forcing marriages on them, fine - let them do it IN THEIR OWN LANDS. Not in ours. They should all be required to live in Islamic lands, where they can be happy campers. And then slam the doors shut, allowing no interaction between them and us. For good. And screw the oil. Humanity's existence is much more important. Won't happen, though. And so, Islam will win.

It's true that many people living in poverty have more children, and that a lot of the reason is that they presume that only a couple of them will survive to adulthood. If they only have one or two, and they should die of the many causes poor people are vulnerable to, then the parents could be even worse off when they get old. Look at some of the Chinese parents, with only one child, per Chinese law, who lost their only child in the earthquake and may now be too old, or too flattened and disheartened, to produce another. For those past reproductive years, their old age is already doomed. I live in Mexico and have had an empowerment project going with the indigenous Huichol for the past nine years. They now have their own nonprofit, which is a powerful tool for them. They are what might be called "endangered," because their water supplies have parasites and most are sick all the time. They have lots of kids, but the mortality rate is high, so their numbers are actually decreasing. Yet I've had some people say to me, sneeringly, that if they are so poor, they should learn how to use condoms. That's unspeakably ignorant and bigoted, in light of the realities here. It's especially disgusting, because American men didn't start using condoms themselves, even though they were "knocking up" lots of girls they had no intention of marrying, until AIDS entered the picture. THEN they started using condoms - strictly for their OWN protection. To them, causing pregnancy was entirely the girl's problem, not theirs. Which is, of course, lying to themselves, and they know it. Making a new human being is a matter which merits great concern and a powerful sense of responsibility - from both people. Wherever this isn't so, the culture degenerates. As our Western cultures have been doing for years now. In places like the States, people know they can keep their kids alive well into adulthood, so married couples don't need to make as many. And they also consider the costs of raising kids and only have as many as they feel they can comfortably afford. That doesn't keep lots of men from making new human beings "on the side," as it were. Another cause, too, is polygamy. In this overpopulated world, where one man can sire 40-100 children, is downright obscene. Then the male children will grow up and do likewise, and then their kids... If we could change how people look at sexual relations, we could control population without harsh things, like starvation, widespread disease, or war, to bring down our numbers. The problem is that almost nobody would want to DO it, particularly the men. What we really need is the reverse of polygamy: polyandry, it's called, where a woman has more than one husband. The men would be able to fully indulge their sexual needs, because a woman can "accommodate" many sexual acts in even one day. As long as both men are healthy and neither starts "whoring" on the side, disease isn't likely to become a problem, either. A woman can only HAVE so many babies in her lifetime. They could set up a plan which would insure that each man would be able to reproduce at least once. We can't bypass the innate human desire to reproduce. To do so would be unfair. Families would have more than one breadwinner. Children would have at least one male in the household to act as father, even if one or more of the others chose to divorce and seek different wives. Kids would no longer have to be raised, abandoned by their fathers, in penury. They could all have a stable family lifestyle. Trouble is, the men would go berzerk at the idea. They are raised to believe that sex is their birthright, that women can be used at will - at least when they can talk them into it - whether either of them is married or not. Males think they have a right to "spread their seed" or "sow their wild oats," and are not likely to appreciate having that absolute liberty taken away. Even for something that would serve their sexual needs quite amply. Polyandry, applied globally, would quickly bring our planet's overburden of humanity down, and in a very humane way. Nor is there any reason whatever that it couldn't be made to work very well indeed. It won't be done, though, and the only reason for it is: attitudes. I guess most people would prefer war, famine and pestilence over polyandry. It's the best option, yet it is the very LAST one anyone, or at least ALL males, would want to consider. Are you aware that there are places in this world where young boys grow up DREAMING of the day they can marry and have children to care for? It's true. The very idea of impregnating a woman and walking out on her would be appalling to them. These are indigenous people, who believe there is no immortality except through one's offspring. Therefore, it is the males who want marriage most of all! To die without issue is to die utterly. An unthinkable thing, in those cultures. We have the reverse attitudes in the Western cultures (some of the Eastern ones, too!), and they contribute directly to overpopulation. But they also hurt US. They definitely are extremely harmful to the children, who will grow up with the damage to their own values as a result of the harm done by being abandoned by their fathers, or growing up in broken homes, in poverty. We give sex all the priorities, and the resulting kids, though welcomed by married couples, are a darned nuisance in other situations. To address overpopulation, then, we must first address our own cultural ATTITUDES. We can't honestly pretend that there's nothing we can do about overpopulation. Because I've just told you a perfectly workable way it could be done. Now how do people feel about that workable way? Ahem.