"We make the modern error of dignifying the individual. We
do everything we can to butter him up. We give him a name,
assure him that he has certain inalienable rights, educate
him, let him pass on his name to his brats and when he dies
we give him a special hole in the ground. But after all,
he's only a seed, a bloom, and a withering stalk among
pressing billions. Your individual is a pretty disgusting,
vain, lewd little bastard. By God, he has only one right
guaranteed to him in nature, and that is the right to die
and stink to high heaven."

 -Ross Lockridge, American author, 1898-1962

he has only one rightguaranteed to him in nature, and that is the right to die
and stink to high heaven."

Well I guess he did that in 1962. (after imposing his ideas on the rest of us for 64 years).

But that's what some authors tend to do
 

A bit of a lightweight reply I know, but it is just after a long weekend.

The value of the individual can be seen in 2 ways.

First, if an individual is without value, then how can there be any value in a large group of individuals? In order for all of humanity to mean something, all of humanity has to mean something. If you don't "dignify the individual" then no-one has dignity...

Second, we all know lots of individuals (including ourselves) and know their worth. That everyone else doesn't recognise this (because they don't know them), or that we don't necessarily see all the worth of every other person, doesn't mean they have no inherent worth - just means none of us have room in our heads for 6 billion people and enough salient facts about them.

The idea he's describing - where each person is worthless (because there are billions of others) and so we should act accordingly and consider ourselves undeserving of anything beyond a pit to rot it, would be a horrible world - we value ourselves, and we value others, and so as a society we build up those "dignities". Looking back into time, if you go back far enough we lived like animals (because we were essentially a very clever naked ape), but we've rather improved on things since then.

"without purpose, we would not exist"

We'd exist.. we just wouldn't do much.

That reminds me of something I was thinking about a while back - how much would you have to limit someone's options before they stop doing anything at all?

Like, if you lock 'em in a cell with nothing to do, they would still be plotting escape, or studying the cracks in the walls, or watching a passing ant or something.

In a full-on sensory deprivation tank... still going to be wriggling, especially if you're there against your will.

Floating in a formless void... hell, there's still plenty of void to explore, and maybe some of it is less formless.

I think you'd pretty much have to put it to the point where they cannot possibly do anything at all, before they'd stop doing stuff. Hence the strongest human drive, above mere survival or reproduction, is the urge to do something, even if it's really boring and pointless.

Actually SK, you wouldn't need to go very far... It could be a normal situation, but you just need to deprive them of hope....

You'd only act when you think your actions will lead to a (favourable) result

Hmm.. I guess being all "broken-spirited" does mean you lose all motivation to do stuff.

It sure does, S-K.

Yep... that's the stuff depression is made of

I just can't stop doing anything. At least I'll think about doing stuff...

Well you're obviously not broken spirited/hearted, Nat_L  

hehehe yeah, exactly

Natanael .... If you had more H you'd be like me

Why?

BTW: Do you know anything that I can install on my new laptop? I get bored easily...

Because add a "h" to Nat_anael and you have Nathanael ... lol

Psychos!

Install on your new laptop?? Like what?

Shareware FTW! Ah bring back 1998!

Missing the good old days Nate?

I am! I love the crippleware, scouring serialz databases ... altavista, opening up EXEs in a hex editor and following a 30-step hack process, changing system clock all the time, finding hidden reg info files and searching the registry

Wow... the only thing I understood there was "I am!"

no wai! ur a g33k too ... or did you get ur feet wet with 2.0?

does "winsock" mean anything to you???? *prepares to gasp*

Did you never crack open your msdos.sys and wonder at what all those X's were for?

(before we had the internets to look it up)

Shareware FTL! FOSS FTW!

Registry hacking and system setting changes FTW!

GEEKYNESS FTW!!! xD

(I only got lost at "winsock", and I never studied the non-readable contents of the system files I opened...)

winsock = + ?

And yes, I'm a 2.0 initiate

I didn't have too much to do with Winsock - I just remember bits and pieces of it while doing a month of work experience in 1998 for a local ISP ... it was ugly

I'm still not wiser as to what it is....

LOL it was some sort of complicated protocol or supporting mechanism for getting Windows to talk to a dial-up connection; configured in a text file

That was also back in the day when we used dial-up strings like s=1&u=4 and all that

Ahhh... dial up....

feels like so long ago, though it hasn't even been a year since I left it behind

LOL

So you still used dial-up just last year? Mohahahaha... *evil laughter*

Yep!

[insert even more swedish sounding evil laughter]

LOL!

I didn't think a Swedish evil laugh was different from any other!

No? I can record my laughter! xD

Okay!