Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
We are, sadly, entering a new age of conformity. Aligning yourself with what main stream society thinks is correct is now more important than anything else.The response of course is that "bad behavior should never be excused, regardless of ability!" which leads to a losing argument in which we try to say what kind of good excuses what kind of bad. But this presupposes the conformist stance: that fitting in with the norms is the default behavior, and violations of it must be explained.The Hacker culture from which everything we have today in tech arose. Which is the culture that Stallman arguably helped create. The culture which makes this site "Hacker" news, is one in which doing something interesting is more important than anything else. The presupposition from this more iconoclastic view is: why aren't you doing something interesting? Adhering to norms because it's the "safe" thing to do is the true aberrant behavior.It's a shame too since now of all points in human history we need more radical thinkers and people who are willing to question the status quo, which btw is inherently unsustainable. But maybe it's this fear that leads us rushing back to deep moral systems likes religious fantastics when their faith is questioned.