SILICON SOAPWARE wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway from Bubbles = Tom Digby = bubbles@well.sf.ca.us http://www.well.com/user/bubbles/ Issue #52 New Moon of April 15, 1999 Contents copyright 1999 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of "fair use". In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I get a cut of the profits. Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback. If you don't want to read about the mechanics of this, skip down to the row of asterisks (****). 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I do that one manually. ********************* "My eccentric uncle just died, and I don't know what I'm going to do about all his money." "What's the problem?" "He kept it in his mattress. Every so often he'd open up a little hole, stuff in a wad of bills, and then seal it up again. There's a considerable fortune there now, but it's too mushed up for me to count and I don't know if the bank will even touch it." "Lots of people keep money in their mattress and it comes out OK. What's so special about your uncle?" "He had a waterbed." ********************* Death and taxes. They're linked through that well-known line about the only sure things in life. And they've both been on my mind lately. Taxes are more or less on everybody's mind, since we've just passed the U.S. income tax filing date. Even if you're not in the U.S. and April 15 is just another day for you, you have to think about taxes sooner or later. And thoughts of taxes also lead to thoughts of what the money pays for, and whether some other form of government (or non-government) might be a better buy. Death has also been in the forefront of my thoughts. My mother passed away a couple of weeks ago, although in a sense she'd actually passed away gradually over the last couple of years. She would have been 90 in mid-June. She was Christian, so it seems appropriate that it happened on Easter Sunday, so she could join Jesus in his moment of triumph. ********************* And I've been thinking about spiritual matters the last couple of weeks. I'd noticed how the layout of most Christian churches is built around a one-to-many relationship between the priest or minister and the people in the pews. On the other hand many people, Christian, Pagan, and what-have-you, claim to have one-to-one relationships with their Deity. But how can there be anything like a one-to-one relationship, when there are many people but few gods (maybe only one)? The answer that came to me is that the relationship between individuals and the Divine isn't really one-to-one or one-to-many. It's Infinite-to- many. And the paradoxes surrounding infinity, which doesn't act like other numbers, allow the relationship to look like one-to-one or whatever else seems appropriate. Your God is always there for you, no matter how busy He or She may be with others. ********************* A few weeks back there was an X-Files set in a "Planned Community" with strict rules about things like what color you could paint your house or even your mailbox. That got me to thinking about the rights of small groups vs the rights of individuals or society as a whole. One possible way around some of the conflicts might be a system of enclaves, each mostly self-governing, with an over-government to regulate commerce and migration between them (as well as relations with whatever other nations may exist). The over-government would also protect individuals from abuses by lower-level governments. There would be essentially no Bill of Rights applying within individual enclaves. Each could be as draconian and as totalitarian as it wished, within two fundamental limits: Free emigration, and Truth in Advertising for immigrants. If an enclave wished to declare a common religion for all its inhabitants, strictly regulate the pleasures and temptations of the flesh, and set out pre-defined life roles that people would be born into, it would be free to do so. There are people who would prefer the security of such an environment to being left to drift on a sea of uncertainties without a compass. I'm not one of them, but I'm pretty certain many such people are out there. On the other hand, other enclaves might exist with no law beyond "Harm None". Again, there are people (probably including me) who would be happy there while others would not be. Just be sure that anybody who doesn't like a particular enclave is free to leave: Free in law, and free in fact, without economic or other barriers. This would be one of the few areas where the over-government could override local laws. This would apply even to those an enclave's laws label as "criminals". Whatever the punishment, the condemned would always be free to choose exile as an alternative, provided some other enclave agrees. Someone in jail for murder might well be out of luck for lack of takers, but someone is jail for refusing to take Communion would have a good chance of being accepted somewhere else. An enclave would be under no obligation to accept anyone wishing to enter. It need not take anyone who disagrees with its purposes or otherwise would not fit in. I see a number of problems I don't have immediate solutions to, but perhaps there's some solution I haven't thought of. One is birth. People would be born into some enclave or other and might well grow up disagreeing with it. At what age do they become free to leave? What say do their parents have in this? If enough of them are born into a particular locality and nobody else will take them, will they eventually start demanding that the rules be changed, even against the wishes of their elders? I think this is the main thing wrong with most present-day governments: People are born into a society with no say in how it was originally set up and no viable option of leaving, and friction ensues. Perhaps young adults from all enclaves would spend a few years in something like a cross between boarding school, the military, and the Peace Corps. When their time is up they get to apply to join whichever enclaves they think they'd fit into. And the one they were born in would be under no obligation to take them. Another problem area is the commons between enclaves. Would there be such a thing? If so, how would it be governed? If there is no common area but instead every inch of land belonged to some enclave or other, would there be some right of safe passage from Enclave A through Enclave B to get to Enclave C, even if A and C both disagreed with B on some point that would make such passage difficult? For example, what if A and C prohibited cutting one's hair while B forbade letting it grow too long? Would enclaves be required to waive some of their rules for travelers, provided they didn't linger longer than necessary? There are also economic concerns. Some job skills are statistically rare, and might not be marketable everywhere (Silicon Valley in general might be an example of this). What if the enclave you feel most at home in has no jobs fitting your talents? Can telecommuting take up some of the slack here? Possibilities abound. But are any of them viable? ********************* Thoughts of death in general lead to thoughts of suicide, even though that hasn't happened to anybody close to me and doesn't seem likely to. And the issue last issue was Time. Put those together, and it reminded me of something I'd thought of before as the height of folly: Some not- too-bright idealist hears about how common it was for people to kill themselves in medieval Japan, so she decides to go back there, rent a storefront, and set up a Suicide Prevention Center. Now let's suppose that time travel paradoxes aren't a problem. The effects of meddling don't show up on the timeline you came from, and from any point in the past you can come back to either the present you came from (so you're not cutting ties irrevocably) or the present your actions will have created (so you can see how you're doing, and if you've managed to create a better world, you have the option of living there). Thus from the point of view of that future society, the past is a good place to dump dissidents, and many go gladly. So anyway, something like hippies are In again, and this young woman, perhaps around college age but not as smart as most college students, decides to set up a Suicide Prevention Center in Ninja-Land. She learns the language via some kind of futuristic hypnosis or electronic helmet or some such, has some computer translate a few self-help books and print up a sign that says "SUICIDE PREVENTION CENTER" in medieval Japanese, gets inoculated against various diseases she might run into, changes some of her parents' savings into whatever coinage was in use back then, and sets out. How far will she get? There may be some concern about robbery, but not much. She can, for example, spend her nights in dinosaur-land, perhaps soon enough after one of the mass extinctions that there won't be anything around that's large enough to be a threat. Maybe that's her base camp while she's trying to find a place to live and set up shop in her target era. And maybe the actual time machine is an implant or something, so if someone attacks her or the local authorities try to arrest her, she can, from their viewpoint, just suddenly vanish. Did they have the concept of renting storefronts in whatever cities they had in medieval Japan? How many people were literate enough to read signs? Any problem with gender roles? Logistics: She'd want the place staffed 24 hours a day, but by going somewhen else to sleep she should be able to handle that. With no telephones, you can't set up a hotline. So people considering suicide would have to come in person for counseling. I suspect she'd get few takers. And how much ridicule would the idea of a Suicide Prevention Center have gotten back then? More generally, the original premise of cheap low-risk time travel and a society happy to dump its dissidents in the past regardless of the chaos that may ensue on other timelines leads to thoughts of some kind of story series. The Ninja Suicide Prevention Center might be a comedy, while others could be more serious. And don't forget all the myriad get-rich- quick schemes involving the stock market or selling modern technology to people in the past. ********************* Mother passed away two weeks ago, and the anniversary of my father's passing is coming up in a few weeks. So this seems appropriate for both of them. Lost? Child What did you say, son? Why did I cut what? Those flowers? Because they were there. We do need to clear this field before fire season. But you say they weren't a fire hazard like the dry grass So we didn't really have to cut them? Maybe not, but it was easier to go cutting straight through than to stop and think about it. If you really want flowers, you can buy flowers somewhere later. Quit worrying about that kind of stuff. Just forget all about it. Gateways for the Little People? You say if you relax in a field of wildflowers And let your eyes unfocus and your mind go blank You may suddenly hear music and song and laughter, And if you follow your ears and your heart They'll lead you through the flowery gate Into the land of the Little People, Whose cares are different and perhaps more to your taste Than the cares of this world? I'd better not catch you telling that to the neighbors. They'll think there's something strange about you. Quit worrying about that kind of stuff. Just forget all about it. We're almost half done. Let's take a break. Here's a tree we can sit under. Son, do you hear somebody singing off behind me somewhere? Are you going to meet them? What are you laughing about? Where did you disappear to? Son? Son? Answer me! Wherever you are, come back here! I am your father! Please come back and tell me If I really did just hear a faint voice Telling me "Quit worrying about that kind of stuff. Just forget all about it." Thomas G. Digby entered 1215 hr 4/29/92 -- END --