--- Wojtek Sokolowski <swsokolowski at yahoo.com> wrote:
> arguments. It is dispiriting. If intelligent and
> worldly US-ers have diffciulty thinking outside the
> box to reting their lifestyle choices, there is no
> hope for the rest of the American sheeple.
>
PS. I forgot to add that Jared Diamond in his book _Collapse_ gives a very comeplleting analysis of this rigidity of human mind to refuse to change its ways, even if it leads to extinction. It makes one think that the only way to change things is to whip people into compliance with policies that force them to abandon thier harmful ways.
That reminds me of the foot binding practice in China - with was literarily a torture for women, very painful, severely impaired thier mobility and very dangerous to health (soemthing like 20 or so percent woul ddie from inflections and other complications linked to foot binding.) Yet the nationalist government of Sun Yat sen had to issue death threats to force Chinese women to abandon this harmful and barbaric practice.
Forcing people into complinace seems to be the only way to make social changes, even for people's own good.
Wojtek
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