From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Tue Dec 24 2002 - 13:10:10 MST
>... terrifying harmony of freedom and
> oppression, productivity and destruction, growth and regression is
> pre-designed in this idea of Reason as a specific historical project...
> - Herbert Marcuse, 'One-Dimensional Man', 1964
> http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/
Is this our own Mr. Reason (reason@exratio.com)who
posts occasionally to extropians? Was Reason writing
about ideas way back in 1964? So what is this idea
of Reason?
My failure to grok Marcuse might be a vocabulary thing.
I read Kerouac's On the Road, which I really liked, and
Visions of Cody, The Dharma Bums and so on, but I was
definitely over my head when I hit Dr. Sax and the later
fantasy stuff.
I may attempt to translate Kerouac into a simplified
vocabulary, such as Newspeak. Consider the following
passage (page 172 of On the Road, Penguin paperback)
and its translation:
Kerouac: I walked around picking up butts from the
street. I passed a fish-'n-chips joint on Market Street,
and suddenly the woman in there gave me a terrified look
as I passed; she was the proprietress, she apparently
thought I was coming there with a gun to hold up the
joint. I walked on a few feet. It suddenly occurred
to me this was my mother of about two hundred years
ago in England, that I was her foodpad son, returning
from gaol to haunt her honest labors in the hashery...
Newspeak: Subject collected refuse tobacco. Subject
arrived at sea creature and starch root merchant
at GPS coordinates 37.4912 North 126.4783 West.
Female attendant appeared apprehensive. Female
attendant feared subject possessed firearm, feared
subject desired to obtain currency by non-legal
procedure. Subject proceeded. Subject underwent
mental activity indicating female attendant equals
maternal relative, time interval -6.14E9 seconds,
GPS coordinates 43 degrees North, 4 degrees West.
Subject equals male offspring engaged in unlegal
activity returning from correctional institution
for purposes of uncooperation with female attendant's
efforts to produce in form adequate for exchange of
currency sea creatures and starch roots.
spike
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