> This said, each person's list of what is merely cultural and therefore negotiable and what is foundational and of greater value, will differ. My list is bound to be more extensive than many. A moment ago I may have implied that TV and other entertainment technologies don't much concern me. In fact, I'm concerned by them quite a bit, because I rate creativity, a work ethic, and sensitivity to violence as super-cultural values, and the explosion of entertainment technology seems to have damaged all three to varying degrees. Do we therefore put a stop to TV, VR and their various successors? No, but we can't be willfully blind to their effects, either. Finding creative ways to preserve good values in the entertainment age will be one of my greatest challenges as a parent someday.

I do believe you've gotten right back to the root of this argument (at least, as I see it) - who is to say what is a "good" value? Who decides that it's wrong to show certain types of things on TV (or, at least, that there are better things to show)?

Unless I'm mistaken, this is really the point we've been arguing all along (again, it's the point *I've* been arguing about) - who makes the rules? When it comes to law, or even parent-child relationships, that's an easy answer - the government (or the parents) make the rules; it (q.v.) is there to do that.

But when it comes to thought, to discovery, and to knowledge, then who makes the rules? Most civilizations have a god who makes these decrees - witness God's demand upon Adam in the garden of Eden; Adam is not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for, as God himself says, "In the day that you eat of it, you shall die" (Gen 2:17). But we learn this to be false - for Adam and Eve do eat of the tree, and the LORD does not destroy them. To quote again, "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil" (Gen 3:22).

To take this a bit out of context, we see God putting restrictions on man's advancement, but man ignores them and eats of the tree. Then man suffers the corresponding setback that always comes with advancement - but he does not die, as was feared.

This is a fair model of scientific advancement; if anyone does not understand, I'll explain in more detail later - I am desperately out of time right now.

dkd1