trc@houti.UUCP (T.CRAVER) (07/19/83)
Response to Larry Kolodney on cooperating with China: Larry, I'm sorry if you think I was talking in circles - I merely accepted the justification *you* gave for cooperating with China in the first place (only for the purposes of argument), and showed the logical implications of it with regard to cooperating with Russia. It was precisely, and only my goal to show that the justification you gave precluded your conclusion. Your new justification seems to be that "cooperation" is the only way to prevent a nuclear war, and so survive as a species. I have already stated my reasons for rejecting the morality that that is based on - which seems to be a variant of altruism that one might call "specie-ism". Since you are making the positive claim - for specie-ism - I suggest that you provide some evidence that it is a valid moral base. No one else has. As to the interdependence of the world being demonstrated in foreign loan defaults, those loans are based upon exactly the sort of moral system you seem to support. Would you have us simultaneously believe that those loans are an example of good cooperation, and yet that their failure is an example of the need for more cooperation?! In fact, you have provided a much stronger argument against cooperating with Russia, China, El Salvador, or any such government - namely that they heavily repress fundamental human rights. Cooperating with them implies sanction of those actions. Nuclear war is a possible evil - but *real* evils are taking place now. If you are convinced that evil is so powerful a part of human nature that we have no alternative but to cooperate with it, how can you even hope for a chance that we can avoid the evil of a nuclear war? Yes, cooperation would save billions of dollars of US defense spending, but at the cost of how many perished lives, sanctioned by the US? And that is even assuming that they deal honestly with the US. How likely is it that a nation that cannot be trusted with the lives of its own citizens can be trusted with the property and lives of US citizens? Finally, you implied in closing that I was guilty of "putting up straw men to blame the ills of the world on." I object to this, because if you read my note, I do not think you will find that I present *anything* in it upon which I blame the ills of the world. I have, in other notes, given evidence that much of the blame lies with the moral system of altruism. If you wish to show that that is a "straw man", you will have to describe what it is that you think that the "straw man" was intended to draw attention away from. Then you will have to provide some evidence to prove that your idea is pertinent to reality, and that mine is not. Tom Craver houti!trc