From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sun Dec 22 2002 - 17:32:46 MST
On Sun, Dec 22, 2002 at 11:10:30AM -0800, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> >>1984 should be required reading for all extropians.
...
> Why? Reading the reviews I don't see much terribly extropic
> about the book. On the face of it, it isn't the type of thing I
> would normally go out of my way to read.
Orwell is worth reading because it represents everything we are against
- death, slavery, mindlessness and stasis. Reading it should fill one
with anger against the awful trapped situation in the fictional world,
and hope to change our own imperfect but infinitely more improveable
systems to something better.
A good dystopian novel shows a bad possibility, how it works and
sometimes even how the world got there. That is useful in guiding
actions to avoid it. Lightweight dystopian novels suggest improbable or
easily avoidable futures; good dystopian novels show dark pathways
opening invitingly in the near future or our culture.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:50 MST