>Cher ami,. there is a sserious intellectual problem
>here and you are not addressing it. I don't dispute
>that there are such thingss a needs and maybe even a
>hierarchy of them.
>But I am very suspicious of puritanical pronouncements
>by people who purport to know what they are outside
>the broadest and roughest mesaures.
Justin,
Let's stop for a moment and look at our assumptions. You are assuming that it is a problem and you are assuming that it is serious. Why those particular assumptions? Mike is making other assumptions. I am making yet other assumptions. So is Doug. Are your assumptions right and mine wrong? Based on what? On an analysis that begins again from your own assumptions. Shall we go around and around this circle forever or can we hold that "problem" in suspension and ask whether it is actually a problem (in that it has a solution) or may instead be a paradox *that has no solution*.
What is "puritanical"? Is that an ethnographic description of a particular way of life or is it a derogatory term derived from some features of that way of life that you and I don't care for? Why is "puritanical" a demon term for you but "commercialized" the corresponding term for me? Are we faced with some stark either/or choice between compulsory hairshirts or force feeding by Madison Avenue?
The Sandwichman