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From: gadfly@ihlpa.UUCP (Gadfly)
Newsgroups: soc.misc,misc.misc
Subject: Re: Poor People/Lazy People
Message-ID: <2047@ihlpa.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 14-Oct-86 10:14:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihlpa.2047
Posted: Tue Oct 14 10:14:17 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Oct-86 07:27:40 EDT
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--
> in response, gadfly says:
> *My* ethical system that demands "this obligation"?  You say this as if
> it had to be some bizarre cultist dogma.  I'm a Jew, and my religion
> specifies 613 obligations in some detail.[etc]
> 
> Correct me if i'm wrong, but you seem to imply that anyone with any sense
> of ethics in their yuppie, designer brains is a Jew (or at least
> acknowledges these 613 specific obligations of which you speak).
> The person who responded (and me) is asking not why you feel that *you*
> have these obligations, but why you feel that they are self-evident
> to anyone WASOEITYDB, and whence comes your right to impose said 
> obligations by force on one who does not share your view of them.
> -- 
> jeanne a. e. devoto

Well, I've certainly stirred up a hornet's nest here, haven't I?  A
number of folks have gotten on my case over both the style and content
of my assertions.  As to the former, this is a public forum with a
large audience.  I have an obligation (no, not one of the 613) not
just to present my perspectives but to entertain.  As Humphrey Bogart
put it, "All I owe the public is a good show."

As to the latter, I'll restate my case a bit less flippantly:  We all
have obligations to other people and society in general.  This is simply
axiomatic.  If you don't believe it, I certainly can't force you to,
and I wouldn't want to try.  There are, as I have noted previously, a
number of tantalizingly different ethical philosophies--you have quite
a banquet to choose from.  I do not proselytize for any particular one.
But if you reject them all, then you're adopting the yuppie credo:
"The one who dies with the most toys wins."  And then I really pity you.
Tell me, O ethical egoists, just what do you think life is about anyway?

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