society

Pay your damned taxes, deadbeat

“Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of Society, as it is for him to make land originally. Separate an individual from Society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire… He cannot become rich…. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him from living in Society; and he owes, on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilisation, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”

Thomas Paine – “Agrarian Justice”, 1797

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30 year-old virgins

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Shakespeare’s Sister has a great post (Who’s Afraid of Virgins?) critiquing this wholly lame Salon article on the “tragedy” of virgins in their 30’s.
I don’t have a huge amount to add to the subject, other than “what she said” but I wanted to link to it because I know several people who would find the subject matter interesting. And I’d point out that the fact that I know several people who would find the subject interesting sort of reinforces the point that Salon’s take is pretty damn lame. And I’d also point out that the idea that someone would run screaming if they found out their date was a virgin is pretty simplistic and shallow, too. The cite some examples of guys who “backed off” — they were jerks, and probably not worth wasting time on anyway.

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The Edge Annual Question — 2006

WHAT IS YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA?
The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?

This year, the third culture thinkers in the Edge community have written 117 original essays (a document of 72,500 words) in response to the 2006 Edge Question — “What is your dangerous idea?”. Here you will find indications of a new natural philosophy, founded on the realization of the import of complexity, of evolution. Very complex systems — whether organisms, brains, the biosphere, or the universe itself — were not constructed by design; all have evolved. There is a new set of metaphors to describe ourselves, our minds, the universe, and all of the things we know in it.

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