02-11-2022, 09:55 AM
(02-10-2022, 02:21 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: As a millennial whose job has been threatened by other millennials on several occasions due to doxxing, I wholeheartedly agree. Imo, the ideal goal is not "consensus" so much as functionality: agreeing on enough of the basic rules to live in a country with a working legal system, but pretty much leaving people alone after that.
We need a consensus on government that (1) nobody is ever going to get everything that he wants through governmental largesse (Earn it somehow!) and that nobody is going to get the shaft all the time, as was so with slaves (or worse, Jews in the Third Reich). Ideally government gives most people more than they put in, and does not enforce crony capitalism or overt subjection.
We also need a consensus on what the essential morals are. It should be obvious enough that safety of the person and respect for non-oppressive property rights are essential if life is to have meaning and that there be some semblance of prosperity. Murder, rape, robbery, arson, child molestation, and human trafficking must be out of the question. Sobriety and erudition are to be cherished. This said, one can derive much the same basic rules from Moses, Confucius, and the Buddha. Empathy and integrity are virtues, and cruelty and dishonesty rend a community.
America does not adhere to any single tradition, but different sub-groups have their own valid traditions, at least for themselves and in dealings with others. OK, the rules of the barrio are not that different from those of Chinatown.
We have technologies that people have put to perverse use. What technology, from firearms to automobiles, has not been put to some vile use? Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker did multiple bank robberies that would have been impossible without both automobiles and firearms. Doxxing is one possible abuse of the technology of the Internet. So what can anyone say except "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.