Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 18:51:11 EST From: consider the cowpies in the fields Organization: They neither spin nor reap, just decompose Subject: Re: FILLER: What Privacy Means to Me :) Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 14:12:08 EST :) From: Bill Lantry :) :) But as someone with *very* recent experience on this, I can say: :) :) Civilisation has much to do with the concept of being able to :) walk on the territory "of others" without being shot! In other words, :) carnivores and omnivores (forget those silly grass eaters... ;) :) reach a civilised state only when they agree to common space. are you trying to tell us that when you went walking out amongst the cows down there in slippery rock, a farmer most incivilly took a potshot at thee? So did you have to get buckshot or rock salt pulled out? :) The desire for privacy and exclusion is simply a sad remainder from :) our more primitive times... and it's shocking that such a thing :) still exists. :) :) Bill :) (saddened we haven't come further...) we've come so far already... and we've got such a long way yet to go... *grin* are "our more primitive times" personal, social, or otherwise to be misconstrued? actually, I'm not sure whether or not I believe temporally prior societies were necessarily more primitive--perhaps society is devolving under the pressures of overpopulation? For that matter, given the lack of clear ways to compare societies, the whole notion of "primitive" seems like a dangerous distortion. So, let's see...what if we said: The separation of "me and mine" from "you and yours" through exclusion, force, and other tactics in an attempt to demonstrate that "me and mine" are "better" simply because we aren't "those others" is a game based in the lack of understanding of the possibility of "win-win" approaches...and it is painful to realize that such a lack is still prevalent. nah, that loses something in the translation. How about: The desire to exclude betrays a fundamentally flawed approach to life in a modern social community...and it is shocking how common it is. what do you think? tink