Oops, only sent this to the sender initially. -----Original Message----- From: Philip Hart [mailto:philiph at SLAC.Stanford.EDU] Sent: 04 December 2003 22:37 To: dragaera at dragaera.info Subject: Re: OSC on the virtues of writer's block >Rather I should say that it seems to me people have a set of mostly >emotional viewpoints on what's right, and >that they effectively practice their religion and politics accordingly. Sorry, I've been away from email for a while (dead Primary master drive). I see both religion and politics as 2 attempts to solve the ethical dilemma. I can't remember the name for it, but it's the old one that goes as follows: If everybody contributes to a society, each receives back many times more than their own contribution and thus logiocally everybody should contribute.....BUT if you DON'T contribute and everybody else does, you are even better off.....However if everybody does that, everybody loses. Seems to me Politics and Religion are both attempts (neither terribly successsful) to get everybody to contribute so that everybody is better off. Mark