From: Michael M. Butler (butler@comp-lib.org)
Date: Thu Nov 30 2000 - 23:15:15 MST
Yay, Samantha!
There are word lessons and *world* lessons. I am not a deathist, but
pace Eliezer, who wrote
>There are other ways.
> technology
>creates more wisdom through education and cultural self-awareness [than suffering]
Perhaps, but not all wisdom. And not all of what a person goes through
in the course of a long life in a body growing older is "suffering". But
even the suffering, some of it, produces character. I don't think
"education" would have taught me what it is like to do things I deeply
regret, and come to terms with it. I think that's part of what the
critic is driving at, too.
Maturation to Pak "Protector" stage, anyone? Even if it hurts, some?
Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> Alex Future Bokov wrote:
>
> > My god, that review... I keep hearing the same damn opinion echoed,
> > right down to the same cliche metaphors, from people who couldn't have
> > possibly met! Where is this crap coming from?! It just doesn't make
> > sense. Having exhausted all the rational explanations, I'm left with
> > the following theories:
>
> It comes from the same place our own opinions come from. There are
> always relatively conserving of the status quo forces arrayed against
> relatively expansionist forces of change. Indeed there is some need
> that it be that way. Why does it dismay you?
>
> >
> > 1. Aliens have infiltrated our culture and are spreading defeatist
> > memes, presumably to non-violently pre-empt competition.
> >
>
> Competition is one of many memes. One that is not the cure for all
> evils now and forever necessarily. In the Open Source world I see
> another word being floated, "coopetition". Cooperate where cooperation
> is the best choice or where there are common interest served and compete
> in other areas. Defeatist stuff has been part of human cultures from
> the beginning.
>
> > 2. Once a culture reaches a certain critical size a subtle, low-key
> > mass insanity (mass neurosis?) takes hold. CF fall of the Roman Empire.
> >
>
> Well, they in part got screwed by having much of their plumbing and the
> drinking untensils of the rich be lined with lead. Lead poisoning
> psychosis is not a pretty thing.
>
> As the pace of change accelerates more and more people will feel serious
> strain. Many of them will attempt to stand aside from the changes or to
> demand they slow down or go away. Many will choose between old
> religious values they once learned and having to cope with the
> increasingly complex real world. If you want to reach them perhaps you
> need to show them that this changing world is actually massively in
> their interest and that of their children.
>
> That article was not completely off. From a point of view of attempting
> to learn wisdom in the face of adversity (which many have learned to
> prize throughout human history) it seems quite perverse to simply
> eliminate huge swaths of the adversity thus making the wisdom of
> accepting it foolish. It is not difficult to understand how some people
> would feel this way.
>
>
> > 3. Humans have an inherent tendency toward self-defeatism and hatred
> > of success. Except us mutants.
> >
>
> No. Not except us mutants. We are all too human.
>
> > 4. Some religionists went underground and resurfaced as "modern" luddites.
> >
>
> Religionists have not uniformly been in a luddite or anti-progress
> camp. You can fine perfectly healthy religious fervor in many
> extropians. Except that many of us think we see how a true New Heaven
> and New Earth (if you will) can come to be.
>
> > Whatever the case, there's too many of them to enlighten. We'll soon be
> > overrun. The only remaining course of action is clear... let's re-read
> > Atlas Shrugged and start packing our bags.
> >
>
> Do you then assume people cannot be reached and cannot change? Where
> exactly will you pack your bags off too? You might want to develop an
> impervious force field before claiming a sufficiently large hunk of
> earth real estate for all of us.
>
> - samantha
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