From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Fri Aug 16 2002 - 06:05:04 MDT
lcorbin@tsoft.com once again made one of his trademark valuable contributions
to this thread with his incisive riposte:
> Gigantic indoctrination machine? Robbing people of their
children? Is he from Earth?
Perhaps, like myself, various extropians have been asked this of themselves
when expounding some of the ideas discussed in this forum. In my experience,
such reactions were common when (for example) I tried to discuss ideas from
Drexler's _Engines of Creation_ and Moravec's _Mind Children_ to colleagues in
the late 80's, long before I had heard of extropy. (I stumbled onto both books
in (iirc) 1986 at a downtown bookstore, was unable to afford them both, bought
the Drexler and went back next week for the Moravec. Perhaps other extropians
can understand my excitement at this exposure to what was then (at least among
my colleagues and friends) extremely radical ideas, as well as my frustration
in getting reactions similar to Mr Corbin's statement above when I tried to
talk about such. A frustration that continued till I found like-minded folks,
like those on this list.
But I digress.
As to Gatto, maybe he's from Prussia. Perhaps Gatto's theory would be less
threatening if we examined first a Prussian model for society instead of
simplistically writing off Gatto as another wacko conspiracy theorist, a view
Mr Corbin continues to harp.
I noted previously that I thought my summary wasn't all that great. And that
it lacked key information as to the 'why' of events in american educational
theory and practice. Chapter 7 of the Gatto book is all about Prussian history
and their movement towards a 'administrative utopia'. Chapter 7 is a quick
read and can be found here:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/7a.htm
I suggest that those interested read the chapter before reading Mr Corbin's
inevitable reply, which it seems to me (based on experience with his debating
style so far), will involve picking out the most volatile sentence from this
chapter, strip it of all context, and twist it to use as yet more evidence
that Gatto is a wacko conspiracy theorist. (Reviewing Robert Anton Wilson's
essay on 'The Thinker and the Prover' in _Prometheus Rising_ may also help in
parsing whatever Mr Corbin will say next.)
Thanks, -Mike
---- This message was posted by Michael Wiik to the Extropians 2002 board on ExI BBS. <http://www.extropy.org/bbs/index.php?board=61;action=display;threadid=52767>
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