I'm finally getting back around to your original post, Damien:
In a message dated 6/14/00 10:46:33 PM Central Daylight Time,
d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au writes:
> This is the scariest aspect of where we are headed in the fairly near
> future, to me. Leaving aside the jovial reply of a Robert Bradbury, who
> would happily eat and upgrade the cosmos, there's a lot of thwarted or
> fucked-up monkey programming ready to hit the fan once most people have
> their bellies full and nothing much to do all day except play arbitrary
> games.
Assuming a period of relative plenty, but one in which there are large
numbers of relatively "natural" human beings (a fairly likely scenario, I'd
imagine), my guess is we'll see an increasing trend toward pseudo-tribalism
around fairly trivial symbolic values. We already see this with the example
you cite, i.e. the "fan culture" that thrives around professional sports. A
continued growth in extreme individual sports is another probable outcome.
To me, the big question is whether religion as a powerful tribal identifier
will persist into the age of nano-abundance. Given the large numbers of
people here in the U.S. who happily enjoy the fruits of science and
technology, while blithely espousing primitive religious beliefs, I can't see
that we can expect a "withering away of the faith". Nano-enabled religious
fundamentalism is among my two or three worst nightmares for the 21st century.
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
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"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
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