From: dalec@socrates.berkeley.edu
Date: Wed Dec 31 1997 - 10:42:23 MST
> From: "Warrl kyree Tale'sedrin" <warrl@blarg.net>
>
> >The word Brian means is "statist". However, the word in the
> >message he is responding to is "stasist". Rather different.
>
> No the word Brian means is "stasist" , read the article... ;)
>
> Brian
> Member,Extropy Institute
I didn't think you were confusing the terms stasist and statist myself,
*however*, part of my objection to the Postrel article is that *she* seems
to conflate the two herself. She implies at the beginning of the essay
that the metaphor of building a bridge to the future contains the implicit
assumptions that there is one right future and that only a Big State is
capable of building it. I simply don't agree with this. I think one can
retain the belief in the desirability of the political process of getting
people to work in concert to build a bridge to a better future without a
coercive state to underwrite the project. In fact, I suspect that without
the foresight and effort of a little conscious bridge-building we won't
arrive in a future we want in the first place. Postrel's injunction
seemed to me to be too "don't worry, be happy." In fact, the overall
spirit of the WIRED volume nudged in the same direction, despite its many
delights. I refuse to be tarred with the brush of either statism *or*
stasism just because I think it makes sense to think what we are doing.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Dale Carrico | dalec@socrates.berkeley.edu
University of California at Berkeley, Department of Rhetoric
_______________________________________________________________________________
If you want to tell people the truth be sure to make them laugh.
Otherwise, they will kill you. -- George Bernard Shaw
_______________________________________________________________________________
State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. -- Nietzsche
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