- Good day to all of you dear viewers. Today we have with the uttermost distinguished Professor Victor G. Anthrax’s prominent assistant Professor Stareling Duodenum, who has volunteered to participate in this analysis of the disputed Professor Svinhufvud’s senseless claims in his Manifesto of Shortness. Welcome to our channel Assistant Professor and distinguished Scholar Esq. Stareling Duodenum.
- I am very thrilled to be invited to the best of the best of gnome channels, the Gnomevision!
- We are so pleased to welcome you. What is your opinion of the Manifesto of Shortness?
- It is my pleasure to give you an overall analysis of the contents of the Manifesto tells us that we’re dealing with a deranged person here. These thoughts, if you should call them that, paints us a picture of a mind in utter decay.
- Oh, these are harsh words! Is it really that bad?
- The person who put the Manifesto together lives in a fantasy world and have very little of connection to the real world, where all the rest of us live and prosper.
- In what sense is he out of touch with reality?
- He or rather he and his co-workers have an idea of shorter or rather minor people, in size, use less of resources, and therefore it would improve living conditions all over the planet if people just were smaller. The conclusions are that smaller people, the more amounts of resources for all.
- That sounds logical to me…
- The idea has some logic in it, but, and there is a big BUT – let me give you an example: In the eleventh Century the agricultural technology to harvest and grove rice was improved in Song Dynasty China. This made it possible to have three rice harvests per year instead of just two. The result, however, was not improved living conditions for all, as the population increased from little more than 100 million to almost 200 million. Reasoning in analogy with this we can assume that a painful change of everybody’s body size, just will increase the population and actually decrease everybody’s perceived wealth. I can show you statistical evidence that this is a common truth in lots of areas of human and gnome societies. The last edition of Gnomostatistics 2008 tells us that it might even be worse in gnomic societies.
- That sort of shatters the whole line of reasoning in the Manifesto, doesn’t it?
- It most certainly do! But there is more. Sociologically speaking, the changes of society that is proposed in the Manifesto is well-known in human history and social development. You see these changes every time someone wins a war and conquer some piece of territory and tries to assimilate the population living there. For example, as the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453, they enforced a type of rule in the Empire that meant that Muslims had a lower tax rate and easier access to higher education and could less effortly make a career in the bureaucracy of the Ottoman Empire. Of course people who wanted to become wealthy, prosperous and important in Ottoman society thus converted and became Muslims. This was a rather benevolent change of society, but if you compare it with the social changes of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Spain, the Soviet Union and Pol Pot´s Campuchea, it may be done in a less humane way. And in all the above examples the aim was the minds of people which was the target. Svinhufvud’s Manifesto aims at changing their bodies and reproduction capacity. Therefore this is actually worse than anything we have seen yet.
- Oh that sounds nasty! Sinister guy this Svinhufvud fellow, isn’t he?
- It gets worse! On a philosophical level we have one important issue here – and that is the right we have to change the lives of people against their will. Assume we have a very small and confined village, isolated from the rest of the world. The people who live here are relatively homogenic considering their norms and values. They decide to live in an environmentally sound and sustainable manner. Everybody has to transform their lives according to these standards. There is nothing wrong with this as long as the village council has the consent of everybody, and if somebody is in opposition have to possibility to move away, or influence the political order and rules of the village. This is difficult enough in a small village with people that think and act in the same manner, but if you increase the size of the community and make slightly more heterogenic, then it will be much more difficult to uphold justice and equality.
- I see, and your point is?
- This operation of Svinhufvud is an attempt to shape and construct an utopian society. The ones who are going to impose their values upon others is supposedly smaller or shorter people. But what if just one of these smaller existences wants be bigger and longer? After all the knowledge of how to do that is well-known nowadays! Should we deny this one individual this opportunity? Do we have the right to do so? Svinhufvud obviously don’t see any problem here and he just want to correct one mistreatment with exchanging it with another…
- What is your suggestion?
- We can’t afford to listen to deranged people like Svinhufvud anymore! Just because he shortened his arms legs and achieved a better life doesn’t mean that the rest of the world would be happy using the same method! Or to paraphrase William Shakespeare, from Hamlet as Polonius is listening to the rage of the Prince: “Surely this is madness, but yet there is method in it!”
- We hereby thank Assistant Professor Stareling Duodenum and turn to this evenings News…
- I am very thrilled to be invited to the best of the best of gnome channels, the Gnomevision!
- We are so pleased to welcome you. What is your opinion of the Manifesto of Shortness?
- It is my pleasure to give you an overall analysis of the contents of the Manifesto tells us that we’re dealing with a deranged person here. These thoughts, if you should call them that, paints us a picture of a mind in utter decay.
- Oh, these are harsh words! Is it really that bad?
- The person who put the Manifesto together lives in a fantasy world and have very little of connection to the real world, where all the rest of us live and prosper.
- In what sense is he out of touch with reality?
- He or rather he and his co-workers have an idea of shorter or rather minor people, in size, use less of resources, and therefore it would improve living conditions all over the planet if people just were smaller. The conclusions are that smaller people, the more amounts of resources for all.
- That sounds logical to me…
- The idea has some logic in it, but, and there is a big BUT – let me give you an example: In the eleventh Century the agricultural technology to harvest and grove rice was improved in Song Dynasty China. This made it possible to have three rice harvests per year instead of just two. The result, however, was not improved living conditions for all, as the population increased from little more than 100 million to almost 200 million. Reasoning in analogy with this we can assume that a painful change of everybody’s body size, just will increase the population and actually decrease everybody’s perceived wealth. I can show you statistical evidence that this is a common truth in lots of areas of human and gnome societies. The last edition of Gnomostatistics 2008 tells us that it might even be worse in gnomic societies.
- That sort of shatters the whole line of reasoning in the Manifesto, doesn’t it?
- It most certainly do! But there is more. Sociologically speaking, the changes of society that is proposed in the Manifesto is well-known in human history and social development. You see these changes every time someone wins a war and conquer some piece of territory and tries to assimilate the population living there. For example, as the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453, they enforced a type of rule in the Empire that meant that Muslims had a lower tax rate and easier access to higher education and could less effortly make a career in the bureaucracy of the Ottoman Empire. Of course people who wanted to become wealthy, prosperous and important in Ottoman society thus converted and became Muslims. This was a rather benevolent change of society, but if you compare it with the social changes of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Spain, the Soviet Union and Pol Pot´s Campuchea, it may be done in a less humane way. And in all the above examples the aim was the minds of people which was the target. Svinhufvud’s Manifesto aims at changing their bodies and reproduction capacity. Therefore this is actually worse than anything we have seen yet.
- Oh that sounds nasty! Sinister guy this Svinhufvud fellow, isn’t he?
- It gets worse! On a philosophical level we have one important issue here – and that is the right we have to change the lives of people against their will. Assume we have a very small and confined village, isolated from the rest of the world. The people who live here are relatively homogenic considering their norms and values. They decide to live in an environmentally sound and sustainable manner. Everybody has to transform their lives according to these standards. There is nothing wrong with this as long as the village council has the consent of everybody, and if somebody is in opposition have to possibility to move away, or influence the political order and rules of the village. This is difficult enough in a small village with people that think and act in the same manner, but if you increase the size of the community and make slightly more heterogenic, then it will be much more difficult to uphold justice and equality.
- I see, and your point is?
- This operation of Svinhufvud is an attempt to shape and construct an utopian society. The ones who are going to impose their values upon others is supposedly smaller or shorter people. But what if just one of these smaller existences wants be bigger and longer? After all the knowledge of how to do that is well-known nowadays! Should we deny this one individual this opportunity? Do we have the right to do so? Svinhufvud obviously don’t see any problem here and he just want to correct one mistreatment with exchanging it with another…
- What is your suggestion?
- We can’t afford to listen to deranged people like Svinhufvud anymore! Just because he shortened his arms legs and achieved a better life doesn’t mean that the rest of the world would be happy using the same method! Or to paraphrase William Shakespeare, from Hamlet as Polonius is listening to the rage of the Prince: “Surely this is madness, but yet there is method in it!”
- We hereby thank Assistant Professor Stareling Duodenum and turn to this evenings News…
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