Esteemed Colleagues:
An astonishing number of posts to this mailing list have appeared
lately because, apparently, there is a member of this mailing list who
is outraged that the OpenBSD distribution contains the source code to
a war game, and aggression is bad.
(And he expresses his belief using obscenities, but let us not comment
on the irony of that, it is too easy.)
It seems obvious that our aggressive instincts are not bad, because
they exist; and we would not have been given our aggressive instincts,
if we did not need them. Sometimes we need to kill animals that are
harming or threatening to harm our young, sometimes we even need to
kill other people, and anger is the emotion that facilitates our doing
that.
The truth is, though, that you actually can make a coherent argument
against our aggressive instincts, which, since the original poster
(whom I will call OP, because I didn't pay attention to his name)
seems to be too inarticulate to articulate, I will present myself.
We don't live in the world in which we evolved, because we have
created technology that has changed that world, so it is not
impossible that we have instincts which served us well in the world in
which we evolved, but which do not serve us well in the world in which
we now live. Anger is perhaps a good illustration of that very point.
When you are killing an animal or a person with your hands, or even
with a club, physiological arousal is helpful; nowadays, however,
most killing is done using tools for which we need a calm and steady
hand. Physiological arousal is unhelpful for that, in fact it is
detrimental.
The problem with this argument, which the OP could have presented if
he had the mental ability to do so, is that it doesn't matter whether
our instincts are still needed, because we have them. So, for
example, an unfaithful wife threatens a man's genetic survival,
therefore men get upset when their wives are unfaithful. An
unfaithful pregnant or postmenopausal wife does not threaten a man's
genetic survival, but there's no way you can persuade a man not to be
jealous when his pregnant or postmenopausal wife is unfaithful. Not
even with the best logic. We have our instincts, even in the situations
where we don't need them. There's nothing we can do about that.
Similarly, people like playing war games. Certainly some people like
it more than others, because there are individual differences in this
as in all other things; but people like playing war games. That is
why they exist (and we do not, moreover, live in a world where we no
longer need to cultivate the mindset that is developed by the playing
of war games; we still, very much, need to cultivate that mindset; but
it wouldn't matter if we didn't, people still like playing war games).
But what the OP doesn't get, is not just the invalidity of the
argument against aggression that he was too inarticulate to
articulate. Far more important -- to the rest of us, anyway -- is
that the OP doesn't understand that you accomplish nothing by posting
an article to this mailing list that complains about a component of
the OpenBSD distribution. That's not what this mailing list is for.
You can post an article pointing out that some component doesn't
accomplish its intended purpose in the best possible way (although
that kind of posting is also of little utility unless you provide a
fix), but an article complaining that the component shouldn't exist,
is pointless. No one is going to remove that component, because the
OP doesn't like it. His repeated postings (there have been more than
one) will accomplish nothing.
I do understand -- and even sympathize with -- the desire to complain.
Everyone likes to complain. I like to complain that whoever controls
the OpenBSD project is terrified of the ZFS patents, which I think is
pin-headed, and no one in the Linux or Illumos or FreeBSD or NetBSD
worlds is terrified of the ZFS patents, and said pin-headedness keeps
me from using OpenBSD for real work, because I work on multiboot
machines on which Solaris and Linux and FreeBSD and NetBSD are all
able to share, e.g., the same /home filesystem, because it uses ZFS.
I don't post articles complaining about that (unless the article is
mostly about something else, and I complain only briefly and in
passing, like I am doing in this paragraph) because they will
accomplish nothing. I posted one article asking about ZFS support on
OpenBSD, was told that it's not going to happen because the ZFS
patents are terrifying, and I accepted that. Complaining about
OpenBSD, on the OpenBSD mailing list, is pointless and stupid.
Posting endless responses to pointless and stupid postings, is also
pointless and stupid. The OP's original article was pointless and
stupid, but why are so many people bothering to point that out?
Just as the OP is not going to change OpenBSD, articles on the OpenBSD
mailing list are not going to change the OP. It's not my place to
tell anyone what he should enjoy, and although I think that telling
people like the OP how utterly witless they are is a waste of time,
it is arguably not a waste of time if you enjoy doing it. But can you
please do it in private e-mails to the OP, and not on the mailing
list? A lot of people, I think, would appreciate that.
Jay F. Shachter
6424 North Whipple Street
Chicago IL 60645-4111
+1 773 7613784 landline
+1 410 9964737 GoogleVoice
[email protected]
http://m5.chicago.il.us
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur"
