On 7/30/06, Barry B. Bean <bbbean@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I'm not prepared to abandon capitalism because youand Manuel don't see a
> problem with >software piracy.
Dear Barry,
I don't like when people jump to conclusions and certainly don't like
it when it involves misrepresenting what I say! You are entitled to
your opinions, (which I'm sorry to find a lttle simplistic and quite
reductionist), but you are not entitled to 'discover' things which I
have not said, such as that I have no problem with software piracy.
In fact, if you read my reply again, then you'll see that I'm not
trying to tell you whether there is a problem or not, that was not my
initial point, but how NOT to think and approach these issues. As a
sociologist with interest in criminology, I see every day that things
are more complicated than simplistic labels attached to things.
Apart the specific legalistic peculiarities, which can make a big
difference and you need to take on board (but are not my focus here),
I offered you the example of 'killing'. So that you can start
realising how important are the context, the changing meanings
attached to behaviours, the historically and socially different
interests and moralities involved, the processes of criminalisation
and decriminalisation according to the power of specific social groups
and other contigent social factors, the inherent debates and the
socially constructed nature of Law which all these do not simply
correspond to some natural, pre-existing or universal laws and
straight-cut morality!
I'm not going to expand more on this rather abstract analysis. But
that doesn't mean you, or anyone else, can ignore it and come with
some inflexible and simplistic conceptualisation of the world. In the
end of the day, insisting around one small tree when you (I hope not
intentionally), or generally we, ignore the forest, has no further
interest to me as a good discussion. And if we were as a society to be
satisfied with simplistic labels, then we'd have to close the
universities, go home, arrange for some politicians/new priests to
tell us 'this is evil, this is right' and just occasionally get out,
probably from boredom, for the ocassional witchhunting.
Finally, I'd like to add something else as food for thought. The great
sociologist Emile Durkheim argued that although large rates of crime
indicate a social pathology, it is also pathological to have a society
with no crime at all. A very interesting insight that can make people
think critically.
best regards
Christos
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