Back in the days I met people who were fundamentalist vegans, calling themselves “straight edge” – we lived for half a year in the same building till we could not stand each other anymore – Some people would boycott what the other was doing/liking/listening to because somewhere it conflicted with the ethics of one of the Vegans.

We stopped listening to music together (because %recordlabel% was supporting the exploitation of children somewhere), we stopped cooking and eating together (because %shop% supports the destruction of rice fields somewhere) and so on.. everything had a problem that made it unethical/impossible to reach common ground

Now you could ask yourself why this happened.. were the fundamentalists too fundamentalist? They would not be fundamentalist, then, right? <<--- edit: maybe ideologist/ideology would be more fitting - thanks Were we too "corrupted" by society to accept their point of view? In fact, everyone had sound arguments and reasons for what he was doing, yet our shared apartment that was started on the premise of "Hey, you people are cool, we meet at many parties, lets live together" The two emails I received on the techinc mailing list regarding hitb and the reputation of techinc painfully remind me of that time... Probably the katholics/protestants felt similar like 500 years ago.. we all know how that ended ;) Heck, the entire civilization we currently live in has been like that and I still don't like it but you know what? Democracy may be inherently bad it it is still the most common form of "how to piss the least people off and still manage to keep the show going". This system is powered by public reward for things done well (salary, media, etc.. ) and punishment for things not done right (penalties, fees, court, jail, public shaming, exclusion from the "club") Again, I don't think it is the best system to have but all the alternatives cause only more fragmentation and dissent.. do we want that? Shall we continue as one block of awesome people standing together or shall we just let it fall apart because we don't like the hair of the other person? (*glances at Mitch Altman and giggles*)