Re: Apple II and God (was Re: Notice to Scott Gamon)

[guenter@student.uni-kl.de (Marvin)]

pubpc1@library.ucla.edu wrote:
: Objectivists say that it is natural for individuals to be selfish.
: Here is the problem: a biological organism's natural state is dictated
: by its genes.

I am pretty bored by the tendency to blame the genes for all nowadays.
The environment has a major influence on a person, too. Look at the
different phases in a life.

In the school (at least in mine), the climate was very warm. Of course,
some people have been better than others. But there was no unfairness
because the class was something like a community. The punishment for
unfairness was Outing, perhaps even physical damage. :)

In the Army, there is the same group feeling. If anybody makes an
error, the whole group is punished. The group develops some form of
unity and everybody helps the other to keep the group strong.

On the other hand, the college is a very cold and egocentric place.
People are no longer punished when they hurt others, they get a reward.
You write your tests alone, not in a group. While this was the case in
the school, too, the stress and pressure in the exams forces a more
and more egoistic behaviour. Eat or die.

Why does the group effect not work in the college? Well, that's the
side effect of Vogon Poetry - learning tons of essentially useless
stuff, tied to your chair and bored to death. I recall the first year
in my college. People have complained when the lesson was bad. People
have been creative (not only in the creation of paper airplanes :)
People have still been able to have fun.

One of these extremely arrogant demigods have said that he won't
write slower when people don't understand the lesson - he writes
faster! A real Vogon commander doesn't care about evolution or the
health of his crew. After only one years the paper airplanes have
ceased flying.

In the tests, many of the creative generalists have been kicked out.
These stubborn specialized people who remained have masked their
lack of creativity and flexibility with arrogance. Others became
incredibly depressed by that unique combination of uselessness, boredom,
arrogance and stress. I have to admit that I belong to the second
category.

On the other hand, that horrible process can be reverted. Changing
your surrounding, accepting some opinions of others, reading a few
books in your spare time (if you reserve some for you) can all
trigger the balance. One of my profs visited some foreign colleges
which lead to a much more improved and motivated lesson. Warriors
can become peace prophets. Professional hunters start to preserve
the nature. Flaming inquisitors may start to repent. 
But you will have to break that vicious circle of boredom, stress,
arrogance, short sight, egoism and bureaucracy first.

The AppleII was a computer which was born out of creativity. An idea
which has been realized by a few enthusiasts. In the great time of
the Apple II, there have been more enthusiastic amateur programs and
good educational books been around than you can imagine.

On the other hand, the PC was and is always a machine which satisfies
mainly the needs of the manufacturers. Installing or programming them is
the hell. These machines are overpriced and as useless as Vogon Poetry
can be. To understand the real meaning of that, read a Micro$oft manual.

I think Charles Turley has become so controversial because he tries to
restore the "group effect" again. He is one of the few who wants to
see high quality products and the friendly, creative aura in csa2 again.
Of course, this won't be the easy way for these people who sell their
low quality products in an arrogant bureaucratic athmosphere. This is
in my opinion the main reason why Dr. Tom is what he is: Soft like a
cream pie to newbies, hard like a steel blade to the former programmers
elite who has gone PC long ago.

For more info about creativity, see Gerd Binning's book "Out of Nothing"
or so, about the invention of the raster tunnel microscope. Creativity
is an unstable thing, the more you are being forced to have it, the less 
will you have.

For more info about Vogon Poetry, see Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide! :)))

Special Note to Richard Bennett: Don't forget to flame me for the
following signature, I know it is large, but it was a real desire of
my heart to quote the following chapter: ;)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
"He couldn't quite remember what the dreams were         __
in fact but they had seemed immensely important |\/| /\ |__||  | | |\  |
at the time. They had certainly not involved    |  ||__||\  |  | | | \ |
this huge towering office block he was now      |  ||  || \  \/  | |  \|
falling down the side of.
All of that had come when some of the original
team had started to settle down and get greedy,
while he and others had stayed out in the field,
researching and hitchhiking, and gradually
becoming more and more isolated from the
corporate nightmare the Guide had inexorably
turned into, and the architectural monstrosity
it had come to occupy. Where were the dreams in that?
He thought of all the corporate lawyers who
occupied half of the building, all the `operatives'
who occupied the lower levels, and all the sub-editors
and their secretaries and their secretaries' lawyers
and their secretaries' lawyers' secretaries, and
worst of all the accountants and the marketing
department."

Need Apple II gs software? Visit ftp.uni-kl.de...

Visit the Vogon hold at http://www.student.uni-kl.de/~guenter/vogon.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------