Word: benignity
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...belief that while words and images are powerful tools that make us think, it is by our own free will and volition that we choose to act. Thus, free expression, even expression that is repugnant to the majority of society, is tolerable precisely because words themselves are benign. Speech can encourage positive change but can just as easily evoke our most animalistic tendencies and encourage us to act out of greed, malice and spite. Ultimately, though, we make our own decisions. As responsible and rational human beings we determine when and how we act. Accordingly, when injustice occurs we indict...
...killings, and the ethnic cleansings in Kosovo may be a way in. A tribe of haters in Serbia and an ad hoc tribe of haters in Colorado have a dark kinship. Both discover self-worth by hating an enemy. Both define themselves in opposition to "the other." Both appear benign for long stretches of time and then seethe and explode in a murderous fury...
LUCAS: Star Wars is made up of many themes. It's not just one little simple parable. One is our relationship to machines, which are fearful, but also benign. Then there is the lesson of friendship and symbiotic relationships, of your obligations to your fellow-man, to other people that are around you. This is a world where evil has run amuck. But you have control over your destiny, you have many paths to walk down, and you can choose which destiny is going to be yours...
...praised as a wondrous educational tool, and in some respects it is. Mostly, though, it appears to be a stunning advance in the shoring up of biases, both benign (one's own views) and noxious (other views). Whether anyone's opinion is changed by the Web is an open question, though of course the same could be said of Balkan politics and air strikes. A six-month debate on an Environmental News Network forum www.enn.com/community/forum) about agribusiness, organic farming and Monsanto's genetic engineering of plants, began in September with sweet reason: "In the U.S. only...
...innocent enviro wandering the Web--or an innocent black-hearted polluter--learns to click skeptically. Brave souls who reach www.radio4all.org/anarchy/fakes get a list of "anti-environmental" groups, most of them with wonderfully benign-sounding names: the Abundant Wildlife Society of North America, the California Desert Coalition, the Evergreen Foundation, the Environmental Conservation Organization, Mothers' Watch. Maybe most of these really are benign. Dunno. I check out the National Wetlands Coalition, a big-biz coalition against wetlands, and the Global Climate Coalition. The cover of this last org has been blown for some time. It's a consortium including...