From: Emlyn O'Regan (emlyn@one.net.au)
Date: Wed Sep 13 2000 - 06:07:58 MDT
Samantha wrote, and Joe dees added to:
> >You know, I temper my love of tech with a deep love of humanity and
> >desire to see the race advance and to include everyone in the benefits
> >that are so obvious. But I don't know how to include or reach some of
> >the people out there. How do you reach someone who doesn't want to be
> >reached and is bent on your destruction (to the extent they know about
> >you and can get away with it). How do you reach the 60+% in the US
> >whose primary core beliefs revolve around utter fairy tales? I run into
> >statistics such as that nearly 50% of college grads in the US never read
> >a single book after graduation. Totally incomprehensible to me. Nearly
> >a different species. Or claims that a huge portion of the population
> >never achieves the state of mental development known as formal
> >operations. How can such people be reached with the truth of what is
> >now much less what is coming? How can these people be trusted to vote
> >on technologies they cannot begin to comprehend or even conceive of?
> >How can we reach them and gather their vote instead of leaving it to the
> >Creation Coalition or worse?
> >
> >And, if they can't be reached, how do we proceed in such a way that they
> >don't stop us and most likely doom the species in the process?
> >
> An excellent and superb question, and one that can be not only abstractly
and theoretically, but also concretely and empirically, addressed. How
indeed do we keep the neanderthal troglodyte juggernaut of saurian
conservative reactionism from derailing our progressive evolution to a more
enlightened emerging future?
--- Well, I don't think you do it with rational arguments and science. Probably you need to use a purpose built dogmatic doctrine, designed to basically keep these people feel calm and comfortable. A purpose built religion would do a good job, although we are not really in the business of religion. Better to create a startup venture, new economy style, by partnering with an established religion; maybe one of the older versions of Xtianity which is suffering declining numbers. We could work with some mainstream religious scholars to put a high-tech twist on Jesus' better stuff, and turn armageddon into a singularity in messianic clothing. It could possibly go a long way, and I bet you'd get some funding (corporate?) to help build such an institution. Or else we could just bolster the general morass of PR/marketing/advertising telling everyone that it's all OK, just buy stuff and be happy, because everyone's rich (even the people who aren't). The best bet is to pacify/neutralise those who would otherwise oppose, and work on gaining the support of the people who are likely to be helpful. There's a big libertarian sentiment & technophilic sentiment on the net; possibly that could be manipulated into a huge extro sentiment. I think the religion is a goer myself. All this marketting guff is not specific enough; people want something solid to believe, something which tells them what clothes to wear when they get out of bed in the morning, the best way to brush their teeth, what side of the street to walk on. A manual of the right way to live your life. It's doable. Emlyn (I hate myself. Aargh. But this is, like, a joke, you know?)
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