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Crimethinc: In Love With Love Itself
A true review in three parts.
RECIPES FOR DISASTER: An Anarchist Cookbook
By Crimethinc Agents Provocateur
RECIPES FOR DISASTER: An Anarchist Cookbook
By Crimethinc Agents Provocateur
1.
Blasting the axiom that you can't blow up a social relationship, Crimethinc's latest lexicon delivers way more fireworks than the dubious incendiaries of the original Anarchist Cookbook. Where the latter was an unreliable, DIY guide to explosives and firearms, Recipes for Disaster gathers a polymorphous introduction to the direct-action heart of anarchism. It deserves to be read far beyond the circular networks of true believers, for in the grace of its plain-spoken sedition it succeeds not just as provocation, but as a masterpiece of radical propaganda.
The black bloc is here, alongside dozens of anonymously penned chapters on everything from forming affinity groups to helping survivors of sexual violence heal. Making the best of unemployment doesn't compete with building independent media and dealing with government repression – every recipe is given the dignity of its own moment, held together by the demand that what we dream of be what we are. Liberation is not a zero-sum game, it's a "movable feast."
Direct action is cast by its detractors as little more than a code word for smashing windows, but rebellion in the streets is only the most confrontational aspect of a philosophy that seeks life in hand, not the pie in the sky of religion or the crapshoot of organizing for political change. Each recipe is a viral revolt that tries to show how easy it is to live, to skip off the well-traveled and desiccated roads of pre-digested food and pre-determined elections. It's the common-sense of utopian longing, beautifully laid-out over 600 pages.
2.
Direct action is a healthy ethic to live by, but for all their ecstatic immediacy Crimethinc seems to honestly believe that liberation is a simple choice each individual gets to make. Obviously defensive over their well-earned reputation as the self-satisfied bards of the crusty aristocracy, the authors insist that "anyone can do it," over and over again. From Days of War/Nights of Love to Evasion, each Crimethinc book re-affirms their dogmatic rejection of the social. Why everyone doesn't just get free seems utterly lost on them.
It's easy to hit the road when you know you have a home to return to, to refuse basic hygiene (as bourgeois) when you only associate with the equally dirty (and bourgeois). In place of a vanguard that seeks to organize people to fight for power, Crimethinc admits only the possibility of avant-gardes, who through the beauty of their dance will somehow show the rest of us the way. It's a propaganda of the deed more concerned with dinner parties than assassinations, but the underlying misanthropy remains the same. Fight for social change beyond the bounds of affinity and you're just a new boss in the making. In this age of war and the serious danger of Christian fascism sweeping the country – how's that working out? From what I can see, not too well at all. For every anarchist unconcerned with power, there's another Pat Robertson (or liberal demagogue) eager to play.
Capitalism doesn't just thrive through some puritanical suppression of Eros. It replicates itself through the commodification of stimulated desire. In our pornographic dystopia, billboards display flesh more than the product they sell and Nike tells us to Just Do It. In the 1960s, Jerry Rubin was a proto-Crimethinc prophet, and he "just did it" right onto Wall Street, where he traded rebellion in for a career in finance.
Instead of learning from the limitations of the narcissistic side of the 1960s, Crimethinc has fetishized it and defined it as the limit. The Crimethinc ideology is effectively that beyond personal choice lies tyranny. Ronald Reagan couldn't have said it better himself.
If the Situationist author Raoul Vanneigm was right that those who speak of revolution without mentioning everyday life "have a corpse in their mouth," then maybe its fair to say that those who equate revolution with the lifestyle choices of well-read drop-outs confuse making love with jerking off.
3.
It's a whole lot easier to like Crimethinc when you don't take them too seriously. Like Adbusters in a ski mask, they confuse the very real oppression of a working class (they pretend doesn't exist) with the terminal boredom of consumer culture. Decades ago, the German writer Gunter Grass said of the beatific hippies singing peace and love that they were "powerless with a guitar."
In other words, George Bush is real and we can't shoplift regime change. Political change requires politics. Mao was right. Revolution really isn’t a dinner party. Even still, Crimethinc is a tasty dish.
Blasting the axiom that you can't blow up a social relationship, Crimethinc's latest lexicon delivers way more fireworks than the dubious incendiaries of the original Anarchist Cookbook. Where the latter was an unreliable, DIY guide to explosives and firearms, Recipes for Disaster gathers a polymorphous introduction to the direct-action heart of anarchism. It deserves to be read far beyond the circular networks of true believers, for in the grace of its plain-spoken sedition it succeeds not just as provocation, but as a masterpiece of radical propaganda.
The black bloc is here, alongside dozens of anonymously penned chapters on everything from forming affinity groups to helping survivors of sexual violence heal. Making the best of unemployment doesn't compete with building independent media and dealing with government repression – every recipe is given the dignity of its own moment, held together by the demand that what we dream of be what we are. Liberation is not a zero-sum game, it's a "movable feast."
Direct action is cast by its detractors as little more than a code word for smashing windows, but rebellion in the streets is only the most confrontational aspect of a philosophy that seeks life in hand, not the pie in the sky of religion or the crapshoot of organizing for political change. Each recipe is a viral revolt that tries to show how easy it is to live, to skip off the well-traveled and desiccated roads of pre-digested food and pre-determined elections. It's the common-sense of utopian longing, beautifully laid-out over 600 pages.
2.
Direct action is a healthy ethic to live by, but for all their ecstatic immediacy Crimethinc seems to honestly believe that liberation is a simple choice each individual gets to make. Obviously defensive over their well-earned reputation as the self-satisfied bards of the crusty aristocracy, the authors insist that "anyone can do it," over and over again. From Days of War/Nights of Love to Evasion, each Crimethinc book re-affirms their dogmatic rejection of the social. Why everyone doesn't just get free seems utterly lost on them.
It's easy to hit the road when you know you have a home to return to, to refuse basic hygiene (as bourgeois) when you only associate with the equally dirty (and bourgeois). In place of a vanguard that seeks to organize people to fight for power, Crimethinc admits only the possibility of avant-gardes, who through the beauty of their dance will somehow show the rest of us the way. It's a propaganda of the deed more concerned with dinner parties than assassinations, but the underlying misanthropy remains the same. Fight for social change beyond the bounds of affinity and you're just a new boss in the making. In this age of war and the serious danger of Christian fascism sweeping the country – how's that working out? From what I can see, not too well at all. For every anarchist unconcerned with power, there's another Pat Robertson (or liberal demagogue) eager to play.
Capitalism doesn't just thrive through some puritanical suppression of Eros. It replicates itself through the commodification of stimulated desire. In our pornographic dystopia, billboards display flesh more than the product they sell and Nike tells us to Just Do It. In the 1960s, Jerry Rubin was a proto-Crimethinc prophet, and he "just did it" right onto Wall Street, where he traded rebellion in for a career in finance.
Instead of learning from the limitations of the narcissistic side of the 1960s, Crimethinc has fetishized it and defined it as the limit. The Crimethinc ideology is effectively that beyond personal choice lies tyranny. Ronald Reagan couldn't have said it better himself.
If the Situationist author Raoul Vanneigm was right that those who speak of revolution without mentioning everyday life "have a corpse in their mouth," then maybe its fair to say that those who equate revolution with the lifestyle choices of well-read drop-outs confuse making love with jerking off.
3.
It's a whole lot easier to like Crimethinc when you don't take them too seriously. Like Adbusters in a ski mask, they confuse the very real oppression of a working class (they pretend doesn't exist) with the terminal boredom of consumer culture. Decades ago, the German writer Gunter Grass said of the beatific hippies singing peace and love that they were "powerless with a guitar."
In other words, George Bush is real and we can't shoplift regime change. Political change requires politics. Mao was right. Revolution really isn’t a dinner party. Even still, Crimethinc is a tasty dish.
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That's about it. Oh yeah, and quoting Henry Miller like that makes you deep.
Crimethinc is the worst of it. Brandt is too charitable on this little shits.
Some people do that. It can get them in trouble, big trouble. Not everyone out there has yet achieved your own sublime level of supreme enlightenment. Many are young, naive and vulnerable. At the very least, Crimethinc has a moral responsibility to include a disclaimer, so these innocent newbies don't wind up in lockdown for taking what Crimethinc has to say too literally.
This is the anthem of all morally bankrupt boomers who've caved to the demands of this insane culture.
Back in the seventies when the Tim Leary ethic was still strong and enough of them were still disengaged from mainstream American meat-headedness, they were actually changing things. You can still see this in little pockets of the country where enough of the truly committed ones gathered together and stuck with it. The real problem with Leary's ethic was not inherent falseness, but that America is a wasteland of throat-slashing fuckheads who are fundamentally disinterested in rising to its challenge.
The boomers grew up in their surreal little 1950s suburban bassinets with their breadwinner dads and their doting moms. This locked in immutable expectations for what life should be like. They went off to college, got into that deep LSD idealism and followed a completely worthwhile alternative vision. "Dropping out" is a misnomer. What they were really doing was striving to resurrect more ancient and wholesome models of human society. This was a completely healthy reaction to the stark staring industrialized psychosis of Cold War America. 'Turning their backs' would be a more fitting phrase, but it doesn't pack the same snide PR punch...
But the boomers discovered their task was difficult. The culture they were defying (despite what Americans imagine about themselves) was savegely authoritarian, puritanically so. Breaking this completely from it and expressing such contempt for it was a grave crime. It reacted by applying relentless, ruthless, progressive pressure to bring them to heel. The Commodores and five-star Generals of the Great Class War ordered their top brain-shrinkers to wage a psy-war on this phenomen. The media -- ALWAYS their instrument -- portrayed hippies as dangerous psychotics.
Go to the bookstore and have a look at Vincent Bugliossi's 'Helter Skelter,' now in its 50 billionth printing. This book has been hyped, promoted, and subsidized out of all proportion to its merits. Bugliossi was a definitive 'square' who loathed the '60s youth culture. 'Helter Skelter' was his meticulously crafted beaker of PR acid hurled onto that culture. The Commodores and Generals ate it up. They *immediately* adapted it into a four-hour epic made for TV movie -- the first miniseries, in fact, since it ran on two consecutive nights. The characters are best described as 'psycho space aliens' who incidentally and conspicuously do everything hippies were known for. The idiot masses were told that watching this movie was the most important civic duty of their entire lives (I remember this marketing first-hand) and they did so in unprecedented numbers. They were told to make sure their children watched it despite its R-movie character because its lessons were that important, and they did that too. Cynical disinformation works best when shoveled into young tender plastic minds.
The Commodores and Generals had themselves a big belly laugh.
This book and movie are just vivid examples of what they were doing on every social front they could access for decades on end. It's never actually stopped, just like the similar psy-war to poison American minds against communism has never stopped.
Yes, this culture *IS* this inhuman. That's what hippies knew and consciously addressed. This "not a liberal (completely a liberal)" fraud probably knew it too once. He just decided at some point that he didn't care
What most decisively killed the whole hippy thing was those early childhood experiences in the 'Father-Knows-Best' suburban la-la-lands of the 1950s. The boomers went off to college wired indelibly with that program, and after a brief romantic fling with a high ideal, most of them reverted to it. Now they're the most heartlessly greedy American generation yet. What's happening to America today is their handiwork. With typical conceit they call their rejection of '60s idealism "growing up" whan all it really is is caving in
And if there's one thing they despise with a white-hot vengeance, it's people who remind them that's all it really is.
I'm a book store clerk. I sell Crimethinc books. I see who buys them. I talk to these people, face to face, sometimes at length. Some, like you, realize that not everything Crimethinc says is valid, reasonable or even true. Some, like you, read Crimethinc books because they can see the humor in them.
Others, however, would take what they read literally. There are people like that. They're out there. They're not all young, either. Most of them aren't particularly stupid, either. But they are naive. There are a lot of naive people who come into that store to educate themselves by reading books. That's the whole purpose of the store. That's why the book store exists. It's a magnet for the naive. They come there from all over the earth, seeking to educate themselves. Some of them really need it, too.
People even still ask for Abbie Hoffman's *Steal This Book*. The scams in it were burned out before Abbie even stole the manuscript from Emmett Grogan, let alone before he got it to print and began selling it to naive passersby out of a cardboard box on the corner of St. Marks and Second. Yet people still come in looking to buy a copy. Most of them, fortunately, are merely seeking to possess a historical curiosity. Not all of them are, though. Some of them are seriously looking for crime manuals and have heard that *Steal This Book* is such a book.
At least two or three a day, come in thinking the same thing of the original "Anarchist Cookbook*, which contains instructions for manufacturing weapons and drugs that will actually kill you if you follow them to the letter. People don't always know that. A lot of them come in thinking that by reading *Steal This Book*, the original "Anarchist Cookbook*, or some of the Crimethinc series, or something else they heard about on the grapevine, that they will be made privy to some secret, arcane techniques that will enable them to become super, invulnerable, outlaw warriors, with awesome powers that they can pit against "The Man" without having to suffer any negative repercussions.
I know this because I talk to these people. Do you talk to them? Or do you just automatically assume that everyone on earth thinks exactly the way you do? Just wondering.
>he was pretty much like you: afraid of the naivete of others and positively horrified by the idea that they could ever be allowed to make their own mistakes).
This is a straw man. I'm not "afraid of the naivete of others." I'm deeply concerned that people who call themselves anarchists are telling people to do things that are likely send them to prison. We have a moral duty to warn people about what we have learned from our own mistakes and the mistakes of others. This is both mutual aid and solidarity.
There is nothing wrong, per se, with "allowing people to make their own mistakes," unless those mistakes by their very nature endanger other, innocent, people. On the other hand, it is deeply, deeply immoral to let people "make their own mistakes" without warning them in advance what they are getting themselves into. If you know where a minefield is, for example, you are morally bound to post a sign that says, "Danger! Minefield!!!" If you don't, the first time somebody gets their foot blown off, it's at least partly your fault.
>Actually I talk to them every day. I work at a regular job in a mid-sized company and none of my co-workers
This is another straw man. It is obvious to anyone paying attention, that the "them" to which I referred was not your co-workers, but people who purchase Crimethinc books. Please refrain from straw men, and all logical fallacies, so we don't come to suspect you dishonest. Just objecting to people being warned how to avoid prison makes you suspicious enough. It behooves you not to compound it.
As a clerk in a store that sells Crimethinc books, I come in contact with people who buy Crimethinc books on a regular basis. Unless you, too, are a clerk in a store that sells Crimethinc books, I seriously doubt that you come in contact with these people on a regular basis, let alone talk to as many of them as I do, or as often. Ergo, I'm better informed than you are, at least as regards this particular demographic's attitude about being warned how to avoid going to prison. The main difference between smart people and stupid people is that smart people listen to those who are better informed than they are, and heed the advice. Stupid people try to reinvent the wheel.
I spend time with buy Crimethinc books. I talk to them regularly. I listen to what they say. Never once has even a single one them objected to having been warned, not once, not ever. To the best of my personal knowledge, you are the sole and only person who has ever objected. That alone is suspicious. Why do you object? Do you *want* people to go to prison?
On the street, the collective knowledge accumulated, often at great personal cost, by generations of criminals stretching back into history, is called "The Book." Criminals who heed The Book tend to get away with their crimes. Criminals who ignore The Book tend to wind up in prison. This is a fact of life. What we call "street smarts" is composed almost entirely of recognizing the value of the The Book, and putting its wisdom into daily practice. None of us are smart enough to make it in life with only one brain, criminals least of all.
>The two books you complain about were not sold there; what's your excuse for having them?
First of all, I complained about more than two books. Learn to count.
When it's in stock, which is irregularly, we keep Hoffman's book behind the counter. I warn people about it while I bag it, too. We don't sell the original *Anarchist Cookbook* at all, though we do keep a copy on hand to show people when they ask for it, which happens often. The main difference is that while the Hoffman and Crimethinc books can get you busted, the original *Anarchist Cookbook* can get you killed. It contains instructions for bombs that will blow up in your face and recipes for drugs that will poison you. Ergo, it requires a vastly different level of caution. Also, the original *Anarchist Cookbook* tells lies about anarchism. We don't sell books that tell lies about anarchism. If you want a book that tell lies about anarchism, try Barnes and Noble.
Okay, now that that's out of the way, if you work where I think you work, you are on a daily basis spreading lies about anarchism. There are no such titles at Barnes and Noble, but there are plenty anywhere certain titles are sold. You complain about the contents of Crimethinc titles (and I agree that they are not particularly sophisticated), yet you ALLOW them to be sold (and you pack them!) to dupes.
Okay, now that the semi-sarcasm is over, I have a question for you: What are the titles you really dislike, the ones that "tell lies"?
If it were my store, and not a collective, I'd get rid of the the anti-human, anti-science animal rights crap, and all that counter-revolutionary bullsh*t that fetishizes non violence. Non violence is a tactic, nothing more. It is *not* morally superior, per se. Anybody who thinks human beings should die slow, painful and above all unnecessary deaths, just so that some animals wont, is an enemy of humanity. I'd get rid of the primitivist propaganda, too. Primitivism is a crock of sh*t. For the primitivist agenda to actualize, almost everyone on earth would have to die first. This biosphere doesn't have the carrying capacity to support six billion hunter-gatherers. As far as I'm concerned. anybody promoting an agenda predicated on six billion deaths, is the enemy.
Any other questions?
We're only forcing it to do so temporarily by draining nutrient reservoirs that have taken eons to accumulate in the form of soils and fossil fuels. Once those decline to a certain point as population climbs relentlessly upward -- i.e. probably soon -- this wunnaful mahvelous techno-civ thing is gonna disintegrate one morning just like the Twin Towers, and the final legacy of a billion years of evolution will get annihilated along with it. That's the larger tragedy. What people opt to do to themselves out of collective willful stupidity is one thing, but killing THE WORLD??? That's an evil a million times bigger than genocide. And we're doing it. Right now. The full consequences of our present behavior just haven't unfolded yet.
This is is the emerging shape of the near future, and it implicates the humanist/civilizationist value system as deeply insane. Malthus' logic was airtight, much as humanists hate it. The deep ecology crowd is grasping all this in clear lucid terms. It's where full comprehension of history goes when you don't buy into the *religion* of blind faith in civilization, science, technology, and human supremacism.
(as identified by Dmitry Orlov in
Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century)
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/060105_soviet_lessons.shtml
"One often hears that "We could get this done, if only we wanted to." Most often one hears this from non-specialists, sometimes from economists, and hardly ever from scientists or engineers. A few back-of-the-envelope calculations are generally enough to suggest otherwise, but here logic runs up against faith in the GODDESS OF TECHNOLOGY: that she will provide. On her altar are assembled various ritualistic objects used to summon the Can-Do Spirit: a photovoltaic cell, a fuel cell, a vial of ethanol, and a vial of bio-diesel."
To portray deep ecologists as evil, YOU are throwing up a dishonest straw man, right here
"anybody promoting an agenda predicated on six billion deaths is the enemy"
There may be individuals who carry on this way, but no group I know of collectively advocates this. What the anti-civs have realized is that people are either going to adjust their numbers WAAAAY downward voluntarily (by abstaining from childbearing) or the adjustment is going to happen involuntarily and catastrophically on its own. Of the two strategies, the first is *far* more humane. Of course, people aren't going to do it, cuz they're too willfully stupid to understand they need to (full comprehension of history and all that) but that's not OUR fault.
See, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_human_extinction_movement
"The organization does not advocate murder, suicide, abortion, or any violent methods; instead, it advocates the proposal that all humans refrain from reproducing. Such a position is not uncommon within the worldview of deep ecology, which views humanity as being on equal moral grounds with the Earth's biosphere."
This canard you're pushing -- that the anti-civs just hate humans and want them all dead -- is similar to what the local bible whacks in Elberton, GA, say about the Guide Stones, some deep ecologist's stonehenge, put up in 1979 before the term 'deep ecology' was even coined
http://www.arches.uga.edu/~gillstur/GGS.htm#GGS_picture_english
To contrive an argument that the Guide Stones were erected by "satanists," the local Lordy-Jesus loons have pointed to the first "commandment" and claimed "sayee, sayee!! They's callin fur thuh death urv 90 purr-cent urv hyoomann-i-tayeee!!"
No, you imbeciles.
The anonymous rich guy who put this up assumed (reasonably) that any civilization composed of such as yourselves but with access to nuclear weapons is probably going to bomb itself back into the Stone Age next month. These monolithic tablets are a message to the NEXT attempt at technological civilization, which presumably won't yet have attained this number and thus will be able to heed the warning painlessly.
Killing the world is not even an issue, because it's is not within our power to kill the world. The world survived Chicxulub. Nothing we can do is going to hurt it. The world will survive our extinction, just like it survived the dinosaurs' extinction. New species will evolve after us, just as they did after Chicxulub. This is Nature's way. Life goes on.
It is not the world that is in danger. It is us. We could easily make this planet unsuitable, not for life itself, but for homo sapiens. Life will go on. We wont. We're fouling our nest and eating ourselves out of house and home. Whatever else we may be, and opinions do vary, first and foremost we are biological organisms. When biological organisms outstrip their environment's carrying capacity, the inevitable result is a die off. This is true in a Petri dish. This is true on a planet. It's an unavoidable fact of life.
If we don't radically alter how we relate to each other and to our environment, we are in great danger as a species. Our environment is not endanger. It will adapt. It adapted to Chicxulub, it will adapt to anything we do to it.
The question is, will we be able to adapt to it? This is not a rhetorical question. It's a matter of life or death for humans as a species. Adapt or die is Nature's most basic law. We scoff it at our mortal peril.
>To portray deep ecologists as evil, YOU are throwing up a dishonest straw man, right here
That itself is a straw man, just like that irrelevant, off topic crap about the Guide Stones. I never said deep ecologists were "evil." I said they were "the enemy." This is quite a different thing. You don't have to be evil to be the enemy. You just have to present a threat to humanity. There are many reasons to present a threat to humanity besides being evil. You could be stupid, or deluded, or duped, or misinformed, or even just well meaning, but wrong. You could even be "just following orders." But either way. the effects are exactly the same. i.e., you're the enemy.
Allow me to recommend a book. It's called Catch 22. It's a war story. In a pivotal scene, the protagonist has an epiphany. He realizes that anyone who is trying to get him killed is the enemy, even if it's his commanding officer. Great book. Great epiphany. Great lesson.
Primitivists are dead wrong. Whether they are well meaning or not is irrelevant. Either way, they're still wrong. They have simply have not thought this thing all the way through. It's because they think with their hearts, not their brains. Romanticism clouds their judgment. This is pathological delusion, plain and simple. They are nostalgic for a time that never existed, except in their own imaginations. Life in the so-called "good old days" was short, nasty, brutish and dull. Life is still short, nasty, brutish and dull, but it used to be even worse, a lot worse. If you think otherwise, you haven't read enough history.
But life is getting better, and in more ways than one. It's getting better in so many ways, in fact, and the number of ways it is getting better is increasing so fast, that's it's really hard even to count them. Almost all of them have been the direct result of technological innovation. First it was pointed sticks, then fire, then beer, then wheels, books, roofs over our heads, shoes on our feet, and so on. One thing led to another and pretty soon we had horseless carriages, aeroships, and yes, even wireless telegraphy. Think of it! Wireless telegraphy itself!!!! And right here at our very finger tips. Even self professed "primitivists" can make use of it. Truly this is an age of wonders.
And we're all of us better for it. Yes, we are. If you think otherwise, you're wrong. Today, for example, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, people who haven't thought this thing all the way through all the way through, can use the internet, the single greatest technological innovation since fire, to tell people all across the globe how great it would be to eschew technological innovation, and go back to living in caves with no internet. This is beyond incoherent. It's totally irrational. But there it is.
Or maybe they have thought it all they way through and they're just being hypocrites by not putting their money where their mouths are, moving into caves, unplugging from the net and telling people about primitivism's virtues face to face.
Either way, they're full of sh*t.
Technological innovation is good for us. This is a fact of life. I keep telling you this, but some of you apparently just don't want to hear it. Maybe you're stupid. That's always a possibility. Or maybe you've been brainwashed. Maybe you just never learned the virtue of thinking things all the way through.
Or maybe its just because you're hearing it from me, and you're not bright enough to accept the truth unless you hear from someone you like, or at least don't know well enough to dislike yet. Maybe if you heard it from somebody else you'd be willing to listen.
This guy, for example, says it much better than I could. His name's Ray Kurzweil. Check him out. Here's an excerpt. It's irrefutably true:
* * * * *
>This biosphere doesn't have the carrying capacity to support six billion people PERIOD.
That's not necessarily true. At most, it remains to be seen. It certainly hasn't been proven.
But I do agree that life would be a lot nicer if we bred down to a couple billion at most. It's that or space migration. It's too d*mn crowded here. We really ought to do something about it.
Personally I recommend a two pronged strategy. We should both breed down and migrate through space. Both we can do. Both are within our capabilities, should we but summon up the collective will to commit to seeing them through.
What we can't do is continue to practice capitalism. It's simply not sustainable. Capitalism is a three legged stool held up by the unholy trio of exploitation, growth and extraction. Remove even one leg, and the whole thing falls over. Sooner or later, people are going to get fed up with being exploited and treat the ruling class to the righteous mass lynching they so richly deserve (pun intended). If that leg doesn't fail first, both growth and extraction face the inevitable limits of ubiquitous finity. Either way, capitalism is doomed. It has doomed itself by its very nature.
Over breeding is not a separate issue from capitalism. It directly results from capitalism. The main reason people have more kids than is good for the environment, is to insure that someone will be around to take care of them when they are old. Big families are a form of social security. Capitalism doesn't provide social security for most human beings, so they provide it for themselves in the form of extra children and grandchildren. This is a socioeconomic problem, not a biological one. Replace capitalism with a system based on mutual aid and solidarity, and the main reason for over breeding will evaporate.
You're right about there being limits to soil and fuel as we know them, but soil isn't as big a problem as you think. You can make soil. I know because I've done it. It's not even difficult. We're not talking about rocket science here. Total illiterates have been doing it for thousands of years. You could do it, too.
Chemical farming has to go. In typical capitalist fashion, it trades short term gains for a long term loss, and is thus unsustainable. This is, at best, bad planning. Organic farming, on the other hand, can be done sustainably, and can be every bit as productive, per hectare, per season, as chemical farming, as long as it's done right.
Which brings us to fuel. Our current population and economic bubbles are based on the extraction of all too finite carbon fuels, petroleum, coal and methane. Even if we switch back from oil to coal and make synthetic diesel out of it (an long proven and easily available technology), we still will run through our coal supplies in a few centuries at most, and probably less. This is crazy. We shouldn't be burning coal or oil, or even methane. We should be using them for the raw materials needed to produce useful, lasting things like plastics, paint and fibers, and vital consumables such as medicine.
So what will we burn instead? The obvious answer is hydrogen. The time has come to progress to a hydrogen based economy. But, the naysayers will tell you, it costs more to produce hydrogen that you can get back. Don't believe them. This is only true if you count the cost in money, use obsolete technology, fail to factor in time, or all three. The cost of hydrogen is about to come down dramatically. Science has once again come to the rescue. No surprise there. Sooner or later, science always comes through.
Due to a recent development by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, cheap, safe, easy, decentralized hydrogen production is about to be possible. At last we can convert to a planet-wide hydrogen economy. We can do it in a matter of a few years if we display the collective will as a species to do so. Unfortunately, we'll probably have to lynch a lot of oil barons first, but at least it will be fun to watch them twitch.
And what is new development? It's frikkin awesome, that's what it is. It's as big a breakthrough as steam, internal combustion, electricity or flight.
Check it out:
* * * * *
Awesome, huh? Cheap, safe, easy, decentralized hydrogen production is finally possible. There are some engineering details still to work out, but it is going to happen. Think how many problems this will solve. Think of the social changes it will engender. Think how much better everyday life will be. Science to the rescue, again. Hurrah!
Or, if you prefer a short, nasty, brutal and dull life instead, go live like a cave man. I wont try to stop you. Go right ahead. Take your friends with you. But include me out. I want nothing to do with it. Neither do most people. We have more sense.
This is a very popular argument, widely taken on faith, and it is certainly appealing to believe that everything will come out all right in the end, but I don't think anybody really knows this, and meanwhile certain urbanite attributes suggest there are no real obstacles to other scenarios: 1) unlimited cleverness and resourcefulness 2) no meaningful environmental ethic, despite hipster posturing, mouthings of fashionable lip service, canned facile assumptions a la "it's not within our power to kill the world," etc. 3) no aversion whatsoever to living in totally artificial environmentalists.
The assumption behind the "it's not within our power" argument is that once we get the earth a certain amount fucked up, we won't be able to maintain industrial/technological civilization and the whole thing will just collapse and all the dynamics will reverse. Oh? What if humans retreat into nuclear-powered bubble-cities, sort of like earthly moon colonies? It's way more do-able here than on the moon. With a robotic working class, there wouldn't be so much need for organic food. All the 'bots would need would be electric current. Every environmental argument against nuclear power would be void: you just set them a few miles off across the earth/moon-scape; now if one of them melts down or leaks, it's no big deal to you inside your bubble-city. Nuclear waste disposal? Shit, just throw it in an open pit right outside, what does it matter? All necessary food could be grown in sealed hydroponic greenhouses, just like a moon colony. The entire land area of the planet could be converted to such environments, allowing humans to escape the just consequences of murdering their Creator, turning its atmosphere and hydrosphere into sloshing lifeless poisons.
Such a world would be unliveable for me, but I really don't think hardcore urbanites would care. They don't really believe that other billion-year-old green world exists anyway, even when they're standing in its presence. It's like they think they're looking at a three-dimensional big-budget postcard or something. And they certainly don't give a shit about it, not nearly as much as their concrete rat-warrens that are most of the way to being moon colonies already. As long as they have video games that provide a reasonable facsimile of "nature," they won't miss it at all.
Even assuming you're right, you're still evading my point that the deep-ecology strategy for avoiding all this is FAR more humane and rational than the cancer-cell-mentality end game you seem to be opting for.
All people have to do is not have kids.
How hard is that?
But this is unthinkable to them, even if the logical case for it is overwhelming. The Malthusian argument is far from the only one against having kids. It's completely the rational decision now, so why is it such a huge thing to ask?
I'll tell you why: deep primordial instinct, of the sort we share with bacteria, is the real reason we do everything! The bacteria intellect in our hind-brain screams "make babies! make babies!" and that's it, man, done deal. Reality ain't nuthin compared to that. Over the course of this mistake called 'civilization' human intellect has actually degenerated profoundly in this way. Ancient "primitive" humans were much more lucid about the necessity of static numbers, of death, of REAL freedom versus the symbolic shit we settle for, of any number of enormous existential constants.
Meanwhile, you pay passing superficial lip service to issues that I and all deep ecologists are actually grappling with in the sweatiest intellectual terms:
"The question is, will we be able to adapt to it? This is not a rhetorical question. It's a matter of life or death for humans as a species. Adapt or die is Nature's most basic law. We scoff it at our mortal peril."
See, YOU are still at the stage of posing this fundamental question. WE actually have a coherent completely practical answer: stop making more babies ad infinitum. Yes, it really is that beautifully simple. Within decades, human numbers and environmental impacts could be pushed down to the point where a light might actually appear at the end of the tunnel. So again, why is this such a huge thing to ask, and why is willfully refusing this DUTY so sacredly defensible? Ah, but I answered that one already...
"That itself is a straw man..."
No, bullshit. Play all the dance-around word games you want to, I don't see any meaningful difference between "evil," "the enemy," and "a threat to humanity" in your passionately hostile reaction to deep ecology. This shit isn't coming from your cerebrum.
Do you have kids? An old friend of mine used to be open to the inevitable logic of deep ecology. Then he had kids. Now he can't do it any more, has gone completely off the deep end the other way. Let that lizard-fish-bacteria hindbrain overpower you in a moment of weakness, and that thing will carry you off to the land of the lost forever. Just ask any republican.
"...that irrelevant, off topic crap about the Guide Stones."
How was it off-topic? My viewpoint is represented very well by the 12 principles engraved in that megalith, yours is much more analogous to the superstitious rejectionist reaction of the local bible-thumpers, who insist on reading sinister motives into that first line, just like you insist on reading "an agenda predicated on six billion deaths" into deep ecology. I explained to you why this was false, and you completely ignored me.
And now you finally get down to the real heart of your position, which is the techno/civ/science/humanism RELIGION I already laid my finger on, and which you outline with the usual plastic platitudes: ancient life was "brutish, nasty, and short" (it's incredible how dependably your type spews that hobbesian platitude) technology is wunnafull, wunnafull, so wunnafull!!
It's not that simple. ANY survival strategy, from Stone Age to Star Trek, can be EITHER paradisical OR unbearable, depending on how its carrying capacity (which will always be finite) compares to the actual population load. Whatever the carrying capacity is for a given strategy, if it's maxed out and population has mushroomed beyond it, life is gonna fit Hobbes' platitude no matter how many Dick Tracy computers you have on your wrist. This comparison between carrying capacity and actual numbers is the real issue. For thousands of years now, civilizations have been going through cycles of maxing out their carrying capacity, experiencing a crisis, and then figuring out some breakthrough that leads to a higher carrying capacity, which they max out in turn, etc.
Technology is not magic, physical laws of conservation are profoundly unbreakable. Many of the 'breakthroughs' aren't really permanent solutions, but merely deferments of consequences into the indefinite future. As the cycles mount the deferments get more extreme and desperate. Your survival strategy then goes WAAAAY out on a whippy limb, like say hatching 6,000,000,000 people based on the surreal deferments made possible by petroleum, but then you run out of petroleum...
It's at this juncture that YOU invoke blind faith in the Goddess Technology, in the form of a complacent assumption that another epochal "breakthrough" is right around the corner. I have no such faith, and I can back up my skepticism with strong scientific arguments, so you see all this
"They have simply have not thought this thing all the way through. It's because they think with their hearts, not their brains. Romanticism clouds their judgment"
is laughably misdirected. It is YOU who are actually the romanticist, specifically a TECHNO-romanticist. You have blind faith in technology's ability to save the day. This is pathological delusion, plain and simple.
You happen to be living in a golden age, a time when there have been so many breakthroughs and deferments in recent history that everyone has forgotten about the possibility of maxing them out, and meanwhile your strategy of deferring and redeferring is hitting a hard wall. To belabor the point, technology is not magic. Physical law is absolutely limiting. Almost every technology in common use today represents refinements of fundamental technologies discovered 40 or more years ago. Meanwhile the holy grails technologists have been chasing ever since -- nuclear fusion, hypersonic aircraft, faster-than-light space travel, room-temperature superconductors -- have remained elusive, despite untold fortunes hurled at each objective, hundreds of billions in the case of fusion.
That's because "science," (which has degenerated in your hands from a quest for high truth to mere high technicianship) is now running up against the hard immutable limits of physical law and human brilliance. Already, your blind faith in infinite technological advancement is smashing on the rocks of diminishing returns, but you can't see this because your faith is, well... blind!
Meanwhile, your compulsion to chomp through every morsel of food in the Petri dish and convert it into more babies is quite unlike science in actually being inexhaustible. While your ability to squeeze out another magical deferment is reaching the end of its rope, your progress toward exhausting the ones you already have only continues to accelerate. In the end, you're all going to discover that 'nasty, brutish, and short' can apply to any society at any level of technology.
So you see, this
"Maybe you just never learned the virtue of thinking things all the way through."
is once again laughably misdirected
My view isn't romantic. I haven't carried on romantically AT ALL, you've superimposed that on my language. My position is VERY down to earth, conceptually solid, observant of my and my species' subordinate relationships to this inconvenient thing called 'reality.' My grasp of technology and science is outstanding, much stronger than yours I daresay. Try me. I actually have great respect for science as a *philosophy,* but this is very different from the "science" you believe in.
What I keep pointing you to, and what you keep resolutely ignoring, is the absolutely inevitable logic that population dynamics is the real issue. You just simply don't want to hear it. To me this is a kind of lunacy, a lunacy that is a deep kernel of the urbanist/civilizationist/humanist mentality
This planet has cancer. Your only-humans-matter dementia is the mutation that has spawned that cancer. Humans per se are not the problem.
re: "Mutant Algae Is Hydrogen Factory"
Oh please. You mean you haven't figured out this brand of propaganda yet? Go pick up an issue of Popular Science, that's all you'll see. 1,000-passenger HSTs flying you to Japan in 15 minutes, 50,000-square-mile solar panels in geosynchronous orbit, blah-blah blah-blah, just one techno-orgasm after another. If I had a dime for every piece of science-hyping journalistic shit that's been published in the US over the past 100 years, I'd be a fuckin millionaire. An item like this, full of 'ifs' and 'coulds' and 'whens,' I'll believe it when I see it.
But for you it's already cash in the bank
"Cheap, safe, easy, decentralized hydrogen production is finally possible."
That's what I mean by 'blind faith'
>This is a very popular argument, widely taken on faith,
It's not taken on faith, but on on unimpeachable geological evidence. If you think the biosphere could survive Chicxulub, but can't survive humanity, your hubris has blinded you. Go read some geology.
>and it is certainly appealing to believe that everything will come out all right in the end,
That's a straw man. I said no such thing. I said we're no threat to the planet, or even to life. Stop putting words into my mouth. It's rude. It's dishonest. It's very bad form.
We are a threat to ourselves, though, a serious threat. We'd better wake up up and alleviate it before it's too late.
>no aversion whatsoever to living in totally artificial environmentalists.
I assume you meant "environments," not "environmentalists." Some people have an aversion, some don't. There is room in the universe for both types. Personally, I'd *love* to live on a starship. If you want to spend the rest of your life at the bottom of a gravity well, be my guest. Personally, I want off this rock. I'd leave today, if a ride was offered. Humanity has outgrown it's womb. It is time to be born, and take our place among the stars.
>The assumption behind the "it's not within our power" argument is that once we get the earth a certain amount fucked up, we won't be able to maintain industrial/technological civilization and the whole thing will just collapse and all the dynamics will reverse.
Wrong. The assumption behind the "it's not within our power" argument is unimpeachable geological evidence.
Chicxulub: look it up
It is certainly within humanity's capability to transform this world, for a while at least, into something that offends your esthetic sensibilities, but that is *quite* a different thing than "killing" it.
>With a robotic working class, there wouldn't be so much need for organic food.
Now you're talking. Work is for robots. People shouldn't work. Robots should work. People should sing, dance, screw, tell stories, make art, do research and explore.
>Every environmental argument against nuclear power would be void:
Wrong. Nuclear power will always be too risky inside a biosphere. Besides, it's unnecessary. There are too many other, safer, ways to make electricity. We could, for example spin turbines with steam generated by hydrogen, manufactured by biomass such as, oh say, the mutant pond scum just developed by scientists at UC.
>All people have to do is not have kids.
> How hard is that?
>Yes, it really is that beautifully simple.
Like I said, under capitalism, it is virtually impossible to convince people not to have kids because if they don't, when they are old, they will starve. There's also the problem of religion. There's a couple billion people out there who honestly believe that God wants them to have kids and they will go to Hell if they defy God's will. What about them? What are you gonna do, hold them down and sterilize them?
> I don't see any meaningful difference between "evil," "the enemy," and "a threat to humanity" in your passionately hostile reaction to deep ecology.
This shit isn't coming from your cerebrum, it's coming from your ego. Just because *you* don't see something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
To illustrate, return with us to those thrilling days of yesteryear. Picture in your mind a frozen, shell pocked hell hole, somewhere in the Ardennes. It's the winter of '44. Willy and Joe are trying their damnedest to kill Hans and Fritz. None of the four are evil men. They are honest, law abiding, religious, civic minded, ordinary guys who are only doing what they have been led to believe is their moral duty. All four are fighting on sides that commit heinous, mass atrocities in places called Auschwitz, Dresden, Sobibor, Hamburg, Baba Yar, Hiroshima, Leningrad, Rotterdam, Lidice, Tokyo and so on.
Willy, Joe, Hans and Fritz are not evil men. They are deluded men. They have been tricked by truly evil men to fight on the sides of atrocity committees, but they aren't evil. They're just deluded. They actually have far, far more in common with each other than any of them do with the men who sent them to kill each other.
But make no mistake about it, they *are* enemies. Willy, Joe, Hans and Fritz are trying to kill each other. They're enemies. That's what they word means. Whatever their motive may be, anyone who's trying to get you killed is the enemy.
Unless, of course, you're suicidal. But that's a separate issue. As far as I'm concerned, the line between being suicidal and being against science and modernity is. at best, fine and shifting. As a species, we face serious threats to our very existence, that only science can cure. We face other threats as well, ones that only global revolution can cure. But they all pale next to our greatest enemy, entropy. No matter what we do, sooner or later, this rock ends up a cinder, which is all the more reason to migrate.
>"...that irrelevant, off topic crap about the Guide Stones."
>How was it off-topic?
It's a straw man. I'm not the guy who put those stones there. Neither am I one of his critics. Please confine your attempts at rebuttal to what I actually said. Enough with the straw men already. Stop putting words into my mouth.
>analogous to
Analogies are too subjective. Let's stick to the facts.
>your position, which is the techno/civ/science/humanism RELIGION I already laid my finger on,
That's another straw man, namely <a href="ttp://http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/fallacy/begging.php">begging the question. My position is not religion, but science. Religion and science are not just different things, they are different *kinds* of things. They are as different as chalk and cheese. Religion is based on faith, i.e., they stem from an a priori assumption. Science is the rational analysis of empirical data.
>ancient life was "brutish, nasty, and short" (it's incredible how dependably your type spews that hobbesian platitude) technology is wunnafull, wunnafull, so wunnafull!!
You're d*mn right it was. Do you want to walk everywhere and die from infectious diseases? Be my guest. Go live in the wilderness, give up your internet, and stop using the greatest technological advance since fire to tell us technology sucks. Then we'll believe you're not a hypocrite, in addition to being dead wrong.
>then you run out of petroleum...
Then we burn hydrogen. Problem solved.
>It's at this juncture that YOU invoke blind faith in the Goddess Technology, in the form of a complacent assumption that another epochal "breakthrough" is right around the corner.
One break through after another is a long standing historical trend. It's been happening for millions of years. Human nature being what it is, it is difficult to imagine we'll ever stop making breakthroughs.
The breakthrough we need to move on to a cheap, safe, decentralized hydrogen economy has just been made at UC. If humanity has the collective political will to develop it, it could well prove to be an even greater advance than the internet.
>You have blind faith in technology's ability to save the day. This is pathological delusion, plain and simple.
Its not faith. It's a rational conclusion based on unimpeachable empirical data.
>You happen to be living in a golden age,
Indeed we are, but only at its very beginning. You, on the other hand, would take us back to the Dark Ages.
>Almost every technology in common use today represents refinements of fundamental technologies discovered 40 or more years ago.
"40"!?! Try four million plus. Technological development the first time our ancestors used a rock to sharpen a stick.
>Meanwhile the holy grails technologists have been chasing ever since -- nuclear fusion, hypersonic aircraft, faster-than-light space travel, room-temperature superconductors -- have remained elusive, despite untold fortunes hurled at each objective, hundreds of billions in the case of fusion.
The same could once have been said of horseless carriages, aeroships and wireless telegraphy. We are at a specific point in the historical process. Some is behind us. Some is ahead.
>That's because "science," (which has degenerated in your hands from a quest for high truth to mere high technicianship) is now running up against the hard immutable limits of physical law and human brilliance.
Heard it before:
There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement" - Lord Kelvin, 1900
>population dynamics is the real issue. You just simply don't want to hear it.
You lie. I've addressed it at length. There are two solutions, population reduction and space migration. I endorse both.
>>"Mutant Algae Is Hydrogen Factory"
>Oh please. You mean you haven't figured out this brand of propaganda yet?
It's no more "propaganda" than news of the Wright brothers' first heavier than air flight in 1903 or Francois Isaac de Rivaz development of a (hydrogen powered) internal combustion engine in 1807.
>"Cheap, safe, easy, decentralized hydrogen production is finally possible."
>That's what I mean by 'blind faith'
Somehow I can't imagine people like you not scoffing at Orville, Wilber and Francois. Yet horseless carriages and aeroships are now possible. This is a fact. get used to it.
But let's address the issue of belief. I have beliefs. Here's one. I believe in progress, not because I find it appealing, but because it is a fact supported by unimpeachable empirical data.
My grandmother was born before the Wright brothers flew. She lived to see men walk on the moon. Knowing this, I find it impossible to believe progress will stop, or that now that cheap, safe decentralized hydrogen production is possible that it will never be developed. To this degree of "faith" I confess. I don't see it as faith, though. I see it as the sound historical analysis if irrefutable trends. If you don't, you're wrong.
We're humans. We invent. That's what we do. No, we're not going to stop. No, we're not going back to the dark ages. Life sucked then. That's why we chose to progress. If life had been good, we'd have stagnated. Stagnation is well within our capabilities. Witness the New Guinea highlands. Sometimes, in rare, isolated instances, stagnation may even sense. It sure seems to work in New Guinea. But it doesn't work for the whole species. If it works for you, move to New Guinea, live in a grass hut and raise yams with a digging stick. I wont try and stop you. But as long as you rant about the virtues of primitivism over the internet, I'm going to think you're a hypocrite. If you weren't a hypocrite, you'd live in a grass hut and raise yams with a digging stick. You don't. You use the internet. Ergo, you're a hypocrite.
I'm not placing a moral value on hypocrisy here. I'm merely pointing out that hypocrites, by definition, are liars. Liars, by definition, cannot be believed without corroborating evidence. You have not presented evidence. You have regurgitated some Zerzanian talking points, that's all. Evidence, it ain't. A hypocrite, you are.
You're also dead wrong, but that's a separate issue. You're using technology to read these very words. Everyone uses technology, and has, since the first stick got scraped to a point. Technology is good. You use it yourself. Without technology our ancestors would not have lived to spawn their descendents. They'd have would up as leopard turds. A lot did. The ones who armed themselves with this new fangled stick thingie, and organized an effective defence did not. They lived. Their genes got carried on and had the chance to evolve into our own. We're humans. We invent. It's in our genes. No, we will never stop, nor should we, nor could we, even if we wanted to. That's how it is. Get used to it. You come along with us into the future, or you can be left behind in the dust. The choice is yours, but only for yourself. You have no right to make that choice for the rest of us. Don't even try.
do you have kids?
"If you weren't a hypocrite, you'd live in a grass hut and raise yams with a digging stick. You don't. You use the internet. Ergo, you're a hypocrite."
I don't advocate discarding technology. That's a straw man, I've said no such thing. I advocate not having kids. Also, I DON'T have kids. Ergo, I'm not a hypocrite.
Do you have kids?
Chicxulub is the massive meteor impact said to have caused the K-T extinctions, is it not? This is quite unlike a resident life form that has gone rogue, become analogous to a cancer in its relationship to other biotic communities, and as such is spectacularly adaptable. Yours is an apples-oranges analogy
Also, I don't think whole taxonomic orders should be sacrificed to this glorious techno-civ Molech. No, you didn't say that. It doesn't matter that you didn't say it. *I'm* saying it.
I could go on in this vein, but I see no point. You enjoy your rat-warren nightmare world, nessie. Hatch out some more kids so they can witness the heartbreaking tragedy of the near future, by all means. For my bloodline, this insanity ends with me.
Bullsh*t. I responded to it repeatedly. I pointed out two obvious solutions, both of which I endorse.
>do you have kids?
I don't discuss my family in public. I don't want to endanger them. Too many people want me dead.
>I don't advocate discarding technology.
You don't!?! You sure could have fooled me. Why do you bad mouth it, then? Either you like technology or you don't. If you don't like it, you must want to be rid of it. If you don't want to be rid of it, why bad mouth it? You're displaying incoherence here.
>Chicxulub is the massive meteor impact said to have caused the K-T extinctions, is it not? This is quite unlike a resident life form
D*mn right. It's bigger, more powerful and more deadly. If it couldn't "kill the planet," we sure as hell can't. We can muck it up enough that its unpleasant for us to live in. We've already started. But that's our problem, not the planet's.
>I don't think whole taxonomic orders should be sacrificed to this glorious techno-civ Molech. No, you didn't say that. It doesn't matter that you didn't say it. *I'm* saying it.
It's not up to you. It's up to Nature. Nature has killed off whole orders of life before. K-T was nothing compared to what happened at the end of the Permian. Life snapped back. Life always snaps back. It will continue to snap back until something really big happens, like the sun goes nova, for instance. Even then, life will go on, just not on this planet. It's a big universe. There are a lot of planets. The odds against this being the only one with life are astronomical (pun intended).
>you enjoy your rat-warren nightmare world, nessie.
And where do you live, pray tell? In a cave in the jungle with no internet access? I don't think so.
I enjoy my world greatly. If you don't enjoy yours, that's your problem, not the world's. Maybe you're looking at it wrong. You need a new outlook. Have you tried Zen? LSD? Therapy? How about religion? Yeah, I know, religion's a refuge of last resort, but you strike me as a bit desperate.
Face it, most people live in cities for a reason. We're social animals. We *like* being around each other. We *need* to be around one another. Cities aren't a "nightmare." For those of us who can appreciate their intrinsic beauty and unbounded value, cities are extremely pleasant places to live. The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. That's why we're here.
They are also the only thing preserving what wilderness is still left, because if we all left the cities, where would we go? To the wilderness? Is that what you're advocating? I hope not. There is room in the wilderness for that tiny handful of people who prefer the company of trees to the company of people. There is not enough room for us all. Besides, we like cities. If you don't, feel free to leave. No one's trying to stop you.
And you call yourself AN ANARCHIST??!!!!
YOU'RE A FLAMING AUTHORITARIAN MANIAC!
It's not like deep ecologists have a "how do we kill everybody off?" discourse going on. Their unforgiveable crime is thinking unauthorized-by-nessie thoughts, usually based on first-hand experiences that are simply beyond your own experience and imagination.
Ya know, you still haven't browbeaten me into not thinking unauthorized-by-you thoughts. You better keep grinding away at it
You're a perfect example of why the left is so hopelessly fucked up in this country: too many posers and frauds who, back behind their bullshit egos, make their 'I like Ike' grandparents look like Kalashnikov-waving underground revolutionaries. Would you just go join the Rotary Club, already? Put your kids in the Cub Scouts and go be a den master, you'll really dig it. I'm not kidding. It's control-freak heaven.
"For those of us who can appreciate their intrinsic beauty and unbounded value, cities are extremely pleasant places to live."
You grew up there, didn't you? I've seen this sentiment expressed even by people who grew up in the horrifying disaster area of the New Jersey industrial corridor, the most incredibly hideous ruined landscape I've ever seen. I'm convinced that if you could somehow raise a kid to adulthood down inside the sewers of Calcutta, he'd think THAT was the most wonderful place on earth
"Ah, the smell of the bloated corpses floating by on rafts of maggots as the rats tried to chew my toenails off! Now that was the sweet life!"
Keep reading that sci-fi and playing video games, nessie. Those are the only interstellar spacecraft you or any other human is ever going to see. Want to put money on it?
Also, about this UC "hydrogen revolution," I've actually worked in biotech labs. I know what shameless lying-ass hucksters scientists are these days. I also know they pursue dead ends all the time. These guys are saying, "oh, all we have to do is this and that and this. No biggy!" and meanwhile each one of these things is a GIGANTIC challenge, potentially impossible. It happens all the time. These guys might even know it's impossible, they're just whores streetwalking for their next big grant. That's how it is now. H2 above trace concentrations is fundamentally inimical to life, much like Cl2. How they're going to raise the concentration in cell culture to the point where extraction can occur at an energetic profit is a HUGE technological challenge they're not even mentioning. What else are they not mentioning? There's just no telling.
It's like that Dmitry Orlov excerpt I showed you. That guy is no potato farmer. he's a professional technologist who's spent his life in engineering labs. A lot of people with hardcore tech backgrounds don't share your blind faith. They know better. For one thing they've been watching the diminishing returns unfold first-hand for many years now. Also they know thermodynamics well enough to rule certain things out as equivalent to perpetual motion, stuff that techno-dreamers are still dreaming their starry-eyed dreams about. That's what Orlov meant by 'back-of-the-envelope calculations.'
Your kind of faith is mainly seen in science fiction geeks who don't really understand what they're talking about
Anyhow, there's an actual discussion about the review over at NYC Indymedia... or at least an imitation of one.
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/03/65750.html
(Why don't you guys give each other a call and have this discussion over a beer somewhere?)
Aside from being insanely self-absorbed, you feel no moral culpability for what you're doing. This is clear. Non-human life is completely beneath moral consideration for you, and you have become absolutely criminal in your relationship to it. This is exactly like the zionists' relationship to the Palestinians. It is morally identical, but the scale of the crime being perpetrated is immensely larger. The blindness to consequences is also truly insane. It's not just the biota of the planet that will be devastated; this in turn will lead to a human pan-genocide, very likely to include YOUR OWN DESCENDANTS. And it's you arranging that outcome in the present via your massively delusional Baby Huey assumptions and beliefs. That's how deeply fucking insane you are.
The cancer "analogy" goes beyond mere analogy; it's such a perfect fit (cities as tumors, with planet-encompassing vascular systems leading to sites of direct industrial assault on the substance of the planet, literally eating life off the face of the earth) as to establish it as a profound manifest reality
Oh, that's right: you and your descendants are going to "get off this rock," aren't you? Well, that makes your whole vision of things much less delusional, doesn't it?
Dig, dig, dig, Baby Huey!
They are, in fact quite atavistic. They are the very attitudes that led the Neanderthals to use exactly the same technology for four hundred thousand years. They were the most enthusiastic neophobes in the entire human story. They are also extinct. Coincidence? Perhaps.
I think not. Neophobia is, by definition, a dead end. It is not the least bit surprising that someone who considers us to be a "cancer" would try to lead us down a dead end path. He *want* us to die off, even though in a world full of cliffs, rope and poison, he himself has yet to lead the way. Why, we may wonder. But why bother. Better to ignore him. He is irrelevant. That is why humanity has always marginalized the priests of Thanatos. had we not, we wouldn't be here. Oh, sure, there have been occasional outbreaks, at the cliffs of Okinawa for example, but on the whole we as a species reject death, both individual and collective. We put it off as long as possible. Some of us are, in fact, working diligently to defeat it entirely. At last, immortality is within our grasp. This so irks the Thanotites that mere mention of it evokes spluttering paroxysms of fanatical denial. It does no good. Deny it or not, progress progresses. That what progress does. That's what the word means.
Yeah, we face great challenges. So what? Facing great challenges is what makes us who we are, i.e., not extinct along with the Neanderthals. Facing great challenges has turned the wildest sci-fi of yesteryear into the mundane and ordinary. Would Jules Verne be the least bit surprised that we have visited our moon, or that submarines prowl the ocean's depths? I think not.
When I was a kid, a computer was as big as a house. It costs millions of dollars and was guarded by soldiers. You needed a Ph.D and security clearance to even get near one. Now days a ten buck pocket calculator has more power, and computers that were top of the line two years ago are set out of sidewalk to make room for newer, cheaper, bigger faster ones.
I carry in my pocket a gizmo that looks exactly like an early Star Trek communicator. At the push of a button, with no wires at all, I can in an instant, talk to someone on the other side of the planet. In a single generation Roddenberry's sci-fi fantasy became as common place as purses and briefcases. Would Bell and Watson be surprised. Probably not. Would Morse? Would Cooke or Wheatstone? Maybe, but not for long. Roddenberry wouldn't bat an eye.
The pace of technological development denied Jules Verne the chance to see his wild flights of fancy take concrete form in everyday life. Not Gene Roddenberry. The pace of technological development has quickened. It continues to quicken. The rate of quickening is quickening. We are approaching ever faster a point in technological innovation so advanced that we can't even imagine it. Even sci-fi writers are beginning to have trouble imagining it. The biotech and nanotech revolutions will do to humanity this century what electricity and flight did to the last century and what steam did to the century before. This is an absolute certainty. What lies beyond we can't even imagine. Yet.
In a single generation we went from Kitty Hawk to the moon. Our probes have left the solar system. Can star flight be far behind? Of course we face great challenges. So what? Was not flight itself a great challenge? It took four hundred years from Leonardo's drawing board to the sands of Kitty Hawk. It took 66 years from there to the moon. Where will be in another twenty? Fifty? A hundred? A thousand?
Humanity loves a great challenge. That's why we outlived the Neanderthals. That's why we marginalize the Thanotites. No, we are not a cancer. Thanatos is a cancer. Excise it, and realize our potential.
Yeah, there will be problems. We'll solve them. That's what we humans do. We solve problems. It is what makes us who we are. Yeah. we'll make mistakes. We always have. But we'll correct them. We will not go back. We go forward. You can come along or not. It's your choice. We wont force you. We couldn't if we wanted to, and we don't want to. If you need to forced to to come with us, we're better off without you. Stay behind. We won't miss you. We don't miss the Neanderthals, either. The Neanderthals themselves miss nothing. They're dead. Their Thanotistic rejection of progress doomed them as yours will doom you. Your bones, too, will one day grace museums. Oh, well. So long. Buh-bye.
"One ad hominem after another, all off topic and not one a rebuttal..."
And then said to myself, "ya know, you could use your time a lot better than going 'round and 'round with this pathetic warped closet-stasi fraud." Solong, guy. Glad I finally got to know you. Now I finally see why you've sown so much alienation around here, and not just among the zios. You go ahead and stick another of your "logical fallacy 23.5-b/¶A" cumrags on here, and have fun reading it, too, cuz I sure as fuck won't
You bring that out in people, nessie. Every last one of them. Ever wonder why?
@%<
No- I'd guess he thought the two of you vicious trolling antisemites had so much in common that you'd be natural allies.
"Why? What's his motive? Who would gain if we did? Just wondering."
Gehrig's a doll. He just wants to spread joy, peace and understanding where ever he goes. He thought the two of you could be friends. Maybe if you had friends and a life you stop the incessant trolling. Guess not. Guess you'll both just go back to sitting in your room, pulling the wings off flies. In your case, Nessie, you won't be alone. You have your children. You can teach them to pull the wings off flies.
"To talk of many things
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax
Of cabbages and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
and ...whether... kittens have wings?"
Disagree with nessie on any subject whatsoever? You're a misanthrope. At least, that's what he'll call you.
Add that to the list of things nessie calls those who don't worship at The High Church of Nessiness.
@%<
If you call human beings a cancer, and I don't call you a misanthrope, I'd be lying. I don't have to lie. The truth is on my side. Zionists have to lie because there is no honest defense for ethnic cleansing. They would like nothing better than to have their enemies thought of as soft on misanthropy. What a propaganda coup that would be. But, oh well.
Spoken like a good little Mussolini.
@%<
And yet you do. Perhaps its a compulsion. Or perhaps you just need a refresher course in reading comprehension.
" Zionists have to lie because there is no honest defense for ethnic cleansing. They would like nothing better than to have their enemies thought of as soft on misanthropy. What a propaganda coup that would be. But, oh well."
At no point did TW call human beings a cancer. Rather he claimed:
"This planet has cancer. Your only-humans-matter dementia is the mutation that has spawned that cancer. Humans per se are not the problem.
This is quite unlike a resident life form that has gone rogue, become analogous to a cancer in its relationship to other biotic communities, and as such is spectacularly adaptable.
The cancer "analogy" goes beyond mere analogy; it's such a perfect fit (cities as tumors, with planet-encompassing vascular systems leading to sites of direct industrial assault on the substance of the planet, literally eating life off the face of the earth) as to establish it as a profound manifest reality "
Seems to me he is discribing the relationship of human beings to our earth as a cancer- not the humans themselves. (Think-uncontrolled cellular growth, tendency to invade surrounding tissues, hijacking essential services to nourish the malignancy to the exclusion of other structures...)
Shit. Now you have a zionist defending TW.
I need a drink.
Nessie's perfectly capable of parsing what TW said and getting it right. Why does he get it wrong? Because he _chooses_ to get it wrong. Because once nessie decides you're one of Them instead of one of Us (where here "us" means "nessie or those who either agree with him on everything or keep their disagreement to themselves") then he considers himself morally absolved of the obligation to treat you with anything remotely approximating rhetorical fairness.
@%<
That's close enough. It's also a logical fallacy, i.e., he's begging the question. In fact I have no "only-humans-matter dementia." I do believe that with very few exceptions, humans matter more than non humans and that some humans matter more than other humans. This does *not* mean that non humans don't matter. They do. Without them we could even survive. But we matter more, at least to us, at least to those of us who have not been sickened by the grievous mental disease of misanthropy.
This is how I look at it. That's how most people look at it. It isn't "dementia." It's a near universally held moral, political and esthetic analysis. Almost everyone feels this way. almost everyone. If you don't believe me, ask around. Don't ask your friends. Ask strangers chosen at random. They'll tell you.
What's more, to imagine that *anything* humans can do to this planet is analogous to cancer, makes a false analogy generated by an irrational hubris. A pimple on its butt, perhaps, but cancer? Gimme a break. Get over yourselves. You're just not that powerful. Species come and go. So will ours. The planet abides. It has seen the dinosaurs come and go. It will see us come and go, too. Get used to it. We're going. We have no choice in the matter. We *will* go. It's only a matter of time.
We do have a choice as to *how* we'll go. We can either go extinct, or we can transform ourselves into something beyond human, leave our womb and take our place among the stars. That's our choice. To chose extinction is misanthropy of the first order and the highest degree. I reject that. If you don't, I reject you. This is not "dementia," this is common sense. Anyone who wants my species to go extinct is the enemy, particularly if they actually do something to bring it about, like spreading propaganda against us.
Got that? Disagree with nessie and you're making humanity extinct.
@%<
"We go forward. You can come along or not. It's your choice. We wont force you. We couldn't if we wanted to, and we don't want to. If you need to forced to to come with us, we're better off without you. Stay behind. We won't miss you."
That humans will inflict a mass die-off on themselves is a thermodynamic certainty, assuming endless mindless population growth. It's just a question of *when*. Once history goes around the bend into this gruesome episode, bringing new life into the experience will have become an emphatically stupid / criminally insane decision, whereupon only morons and nessies will do it. Along with individuals in the sub-90 IQ range, nessie DOES represent the evolutionary vector of our species. How's that for a grim ending?
Nessie's last diatribe provided the darkest glimpse yet into his severely deluded grasp of population realities:
"Some of us are, in fact, working diligently to defeat it entirely. At last, immortality is within our grasp ( http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1489635,00.html ). This so irks the Thanotites that mere mention of it evokes spluttering paroxysms of fanatical denial."
This is how nessie's breeder-lunatic personality disorder thinks. It's not enough that the human species has *already* entered into runaway geometric growth. No-no, let's also fix it so that there are no subtractions from the population balance sheet EVER. And what's the use in living forever if you can't pop out another kid every so often -- forever -- and if each of them can't live forever and do the same? Therefore after we get immortality worked out the next imperative will be eliminating human reproductive senescence. Wow, think of all the great²³ grandchildren you'll get to cuddle!
This "glowing vision of the future" reflects a detachment from population realities that I can only describe as profoundly insane, and like I said nessie's pathology on this point IS the wave of the future.
This is why I find the nuclear-bubble-cities-on-a-dead-planet scenario so plausible. If it can possibly be done, the nessies of the future WILL do it.
This one's called an 'appeal to belief.'
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-belief.html
Nessie absolutely knows this, therefore he's just cynically shitting out of his mouth with this one
>That humans will inflict a mass die-off on themselves is a thermodynamic certainty, assuming endless mindless population growth.
Mindless population growth is not a given. Neither is this single planet the limit of our potential range. TW's math is faulty.
>breeder-lunatic
"Breeders" constitute at least 85-90% of humanity. Only a misanthrope would insult that many humans at once.
>what's the use in living forever if you can't pop out another kid every so often
Spoken like a true misanthrope. I can think of *many* reasons. We can sing, dance, screw, tell stories, make art, do research and explore. There's more to life than reproduction. There's even more to sex.
>immortality
Immortality *is* within our grasp. There are people alive today who will never die of senescence. Yeah, they do have to stop breeding. No problem. If nothing else drives home the need for appropriate population density, immortality will. This will entail vast social changes, but then so did steam, electricity and flight. So what? We'll adapt. We're humans. That's what we do. It's in our genes. All the ones who didn't adapt died out. Their genes are out of the pool.
As for gehrig, he's once again clutching at straws:
>Disagree with nessie and you're making humanity extinct.
This is both a patent absurdity not what I said. In other words, it's a straw man, and not a very well constructed one, either.
What I actually said was, "Anyone who wants my species to go extinct is the enemy, particularly if they actually do something to bring it about, like spreading propaganda against us."
There is *nothing* in there about disagreeing with me. Gehrig has so little respect for your intelligence that he expects you to not comprehend read what he, himself, just quoted. Lack of respect for the intelligence of others is a hallmark of the Zionist mentality. They even think we believe they are the underdog, the victims, and not racist. They take us for dunces. What hubris. It's their Achilles heel.
There is a principle difference between humans and other species as far as impact on this planet. Natural history has shown that other species take what they need, as opposed to the needless destruction that humans have inflicted.
We are NOT above other species as far as the existence of a carrying capacity. Right now, many scientists say that we are above...something that is possible, but generally shortly after you see a sharp fall in population. If you don't care about the environment, think of the fact that in Zimbabwe they only have enough wheat for nine more days. Are we meeting human needs? No? And continuing to grow isn't going to help.
We need to stop focusing on growth and expansion, and focus more on things like ensuring that the Catholic church does not stop condom use in Africa, and improving quality of life in places with high birth rates (this has shown to help reduce the population).
By the way, Nessie, I have some suggestions for you. This whack cyberpunk crap...even if it word work (which it can't...we aren't computer codes, bud), I would hesitate to call it human. Just touch the skin of someone you love (your children, perhaps), and you'll see why.
And go out to a forrest. You're in SF, right? Muir Woods isn't too far away...go farther than the heavily used trails. Perhaps you will understand TW's perspective better.
Perhaps when our population has reduced to a maintainable, healthy level, you will see something very important. Humanity is beautiful.
And this is what it gets them:
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/1725437.php
You know you did it. You know it renders that line of argument specious. You're worse than a misanthrope, nessie: you're a liar.
Of the very few things worse than being a liar, one of them is being a 'Borg, and you're that too. They get to live forever, you know...
BTW, human supremacism is not an "analysis." It's a very pure example of the psychology of bigotry, i.e. of humans short-circuiting and perverting analysis to fit their self-interested motives. Among the varieties of human bigotry, this one is absolutely the most destructive ever. A distant second would be class bigotry. I've been making these points for a while, by which I mean I'm not just concocting this position now for argument's sake
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/10/1772589_comment.php#1772997
He's lying. I did no such thing. I stated, "In fact I have no 'only-humans-matter dementia.' I do believe that with very few exceptions, humans matter more than non humans and that some humans matter more than other humans. This does *not* mean that non humans don't matter. They do. Without them we could even survive. But we matter more, at least to us, at least to those of us who have not been sickened by the grievous mental disease of misanthropy."
Really. Scroll up and see for yourselves.
What I said was, "This is how I look at it. That's how most people look at it. It isn't 'dementia.' It's a near universally held moral, political and esthetic analysis. Almost everyone feels this way. almost everyone."
What I did not say was, "Almost everyone feels this way, almost everyone, and therefore it must be true. Ergo, it was not an "appeal to belief."
What I said was "not dementia" is the rejection of choosing extinction and the rejection of those who do. That's not dementia. That's common sense.
TW's problem here is that he defines "dementia" as "not correct." This is an incorrect definition. "Dementia" and "correct" aren't just different things, they are different kinds of things. They aren't even the same parts of speech.
Dementia is:
1. Deterioration of intellectual faculties, such as memory, concentration, and judgment, resulting from an organic disease or a disorder of the brain. It is sometimes accompanied by emotional disturbance and personality changes. 2. Madness; insanity. See Synonyms at insanity.
Correct, on the other hand, means:
1. Free from error or fault; true or accurate. 2. Conforming to standards; proper: correct behavior.
Really, look it up.
>'Borg, and you're that too. They get to live forever, you know...
He says this like it's a bad thing. I have a number of steel pins and a plate holding parts of my skeleton together, I have fillings in my teeth and I wear eye glasses most of the time. So yeah, I'm a cyborg by definition. So what? It's done me good. I have a better body for it, and am a better person too. And there are a lot of people like me. Before you decide to discriminate against people with augmented bodies, you really ought to count heads. Take note, as well, of the positions we fill. Few societies could function without us. You need us. If we all went on strike tomorrow, systems would collapse, and you'd start to starve in three or four days. So show some respect.
I can also see ultraviolet and infrared, hear ultrasonics and infrasonics, and detect radio waves, but I have to use portable gizmos to do it. I would prefer that the capabilities were built in, and will rejoice mightily when, in the not too distant future, it becomes possible. If you prefer to limit your ability to perceive, that's your prerogative. Nobody will force you.
I also look forward to the day, not far off, when computers are tiny, implantable and directly interface with the brain. Are you satisfied with the capacity of the unaugmented human brain? I'm not. That's why I'm using a computer at this very moment. I just want a smaller, more portable one, with a transparent interface, that's all.
It's good to be a cyborg, very good thing. Eventually, human consciousness will be able to migrate from carbon to silicon. Then space will truly be ours. Freed from the restrictions of carbon based life support systems, we will be able to roam the universe at will. This does not, however, mean that we need become like the "Borg" of Star Trek. The "Borg" of Star Trek are not what I have in mind at all. I'm thinking more along the lines of Data. Remember, the "Borg" as portrayed on Star Trek are a very clever piece of anti-collectivist propaganda, conceived by the same people whose proffered version of an idyllic future is based on the rigid hierarchy of the US Navy and the politics of Cold War imperialism. They would have you believe that collectivism robs one of one's individuality and turns you into an insect. There a lot of people in NoBAWC who would take strong exception to that. There is nothing about collectivism, let alone the enhancing of the human mind and body, that compels obedience, conformism or loss of individual will. That's just the line of the pro-hierarchy, pro-capitalist, pro-state, pro-military, pro-imperialist propaganda mill behind Star Trek talking. It's simply untrue. Just because, for example, you now have to wear eye glasses, does not mean you have to read and believe what the other glasses wearers do. If you don't believe me, poll a random cohort of eye glasses wearers.
Star Trek sucked, anyway. Babylon 5 blew it out of the water. It had much better politics. The was writing was better. So was the acting, the costumes and the special effects, too.
>BTW, human supremicism is not an "analysis."
This is a straw man. I never said humans were supreme. What I actually said was, that I "believe that with very few exceptions, humans matter more than non humans and that some humans matter more than other humans."
That's quite a different thing. (1.) "Matter more" does not equal "supreme." (2.) We're not supreme, anyway. Neither is any single life form. If we were to, mistakenly, attribute supremacy to a single form of life here, it would have to be insects. This is an insects' planet. We just live on it, that's all. But in terms of biomass, distribution and continuity, insects beat us hands down.
>I've been making these points for a while, by which I mean I'm not just concocting this position now for argument's sake
So what? All that proves is consistency. It doesn't prove they are true. And if they are true, or even if some are true, so what? That doesn't mean they apply here. Au contrair, they are straw men, as I have just demonstrated. There is a reason people resort to straw men. It's not because they rebut a point by staying on topic and presenting logic and evidence. It's because they are getting desperate.
Hmmm. Some humans matter more than other humans. Which ones, pray tell? You and yours? Your particular ethnicity, religion, political orientation? Those with more power, money or social standing? Those with better ammunition? Just wondering....
"I also look forward to the day, not far off, when computers are tiny, implantable and directly interface with the brain. Are you satisfied with the capacity of the unaugmented human brain? I'm not. "
That will make it so much easier for the powers that be to control you, my dear. I for one, would resist.
"Star Trek sucked, anyway. Babylon 5 blew it out of the water. It had much better politics. The was writing was better. So was the acting, the costumes and the special effects, too."
Firefly beat them both. It only lasted nine episodes. It was a libertarian space western. Check it out on Netflix.
>Hmmm. Some humans matter more than other humans. Which ones, pray tell?
That depends on who you are. But no matter who you are, some people matter to you more than others. It's part of what makes you human.
>That will make it so much easier for the powers that be to control you, my dear. I for one, would resist.
Au contrair, the more data I have access to, the more power I have, and thus the harder I am to control. Knowledge is power. Like we used to say back in the Day, "Learn, baby, learn."
>Firefly beat them both. It only lasted nine episodes. It was a libertarian space western. Check it out on Netflix.
What do you mean by "libertarian"? Do you mean in the traditional, anarchist, sense, or in the Libertarian Party sense?
And if it was so great, why did it die off so quickly?
Hey 'Borg-boy: you keep saying 'I didn't say this, I didn't say that!' Who gives a fuck? There's only room for your interpretations here? If I introduce my own now I'm 'distorting your 'Borgma?' Most of the times you've whipped out this *tactic*, it hasn't mattered whether you've said the thing in question or not. This is just another symptom of your ghastly self-absorption
It's like this shit where you pretend I've copped out if I don't rebut you point by point. Uh no, I'm not going to waste my time being your monkey. Nice try though
So the 'Borg in Star Trek are your idea of cool dudes and you think that series has besmirched our glorious collectivist destiny, huh? And -- once again -- YOU CALL YOURSELF A FUKKKINGGGGGGGGG ***ANARCHIST***?????????
'Borg-like collective consciousness somehow connects with anarchism for you? Just how much Window Pane did you do back in the day?
You diss the vision of Deep Ecology and primitivism as being of a world that never existed. Ancestral memory and mucho historical evidence tells me otherwise, but meanwhile this 'Borg New World you keep jerking off to has DEFINITELY never existed and if such things do happen, what's going to give YOU executive control? Hasn't history or leftist politics taught you shit? All this groovy stuff you're fanaticizing about is gonna be toys for rich boys. All the common clay beasts of burden will get is a chip implant that strokes their pleasure center when they're being good slaves or jolts their pain center when they're not. Either that or we'll get wiped out by "Bird Flu" to make room for actual robotic replacements. So how is nessie gonna be one of the chosen few to land in the catbird seat? What, is your last name 'Mellon-Scaife' or something? Interesting...
You are one extremely icky dude. Your sci-fi-nurtured hallucinations of 'our wonderful techno-future' is my idea of life in the deepest pit of hell. You remind me a lot of that maniac on Changesurfer Radio. They're your kind of people, i.e. cackling cyber-lunatics. You guys really fuckin scare me.
Everybody else should check out Changesurfer, too. Here's a show they did recently. Read this little blurb and see if it doesn't make you want to throw these sick fucks in padded cells on an Antarctic coastal island.
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/csrmore/csr20060304/
Meet the show's producer James Hughes. Does this guy make your monitor scream 'Mad Scientist!!!!' or what?
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/bio/hughes/
Talk about your dangerous lunatics!! Now THIS is "The Enemy," right here. These motherfuckers are insane just like nessie, and they're out to make the rest of us just like them -- voluntarily, or...
What kind of "anarchist" would get on board with these lunatics??!! The very thought would be hilarious, except it's much too deeply sick for that. If nessie DID somehow become one of the Big Boss hot-dogs in charge, would you trust HIM to be dialing in your settings, tuning your mentality? Jeezuss, just feed me to a 30-foot crocodile already!
What these guys are really selling and fantasizing about is TOTAL CONTROL of the sort portrayed frivolously in the recent remake of the Stepford Wives, but these fucking loons aren't kidding.
Roddenberry's 'Borg-inhabited vision of techno-hell couldn't be underlined more clearly in the present.
That depends on who you are. But no matter who you are, some people matter to you more than others. It's part of what makes you human.
You didn't answer the question. Which ones matter more to you? Is it just a matter of "me and mine"?
>That will make it so much easier for the powers that be to control you, my dear. I for one, would resist.
Au contrair, the more data I have access to, the more power I have, and thus the harder I am to control. Knowledge is power. Like we used to say back in the Day, "Learn, baby, learn."
And you have confidence, knowing what you know about the world, that there would be free and unfettered access to information? I suspect not....
>Firefly beat them both. It only lasted nine episodes. It was a libertarian space western. Check it out on Netflix.
What do you mean by "libertarian"? Do you mean in the traditional, anarchist, sense, or in the Libertarian Party sense?
The traditional, anarchist sense. Whatever that is- it clearly means different things to different people.
And if it was so great, why did it die off so quickly?
Dude- its America. More people are going to see "Medea's Family Reunion" than "Pride and Prejudice". Popularity is no indication of quality. Duh. Remember high school?
Me and mine come first for all humans. That's how our brains are wired. The only way we differ is in how we define "mine". After my family and personal friends, the people who matter most to me personally are those who are working to make the world I live in a better place to live. They are scattered across the face of the earth. Some I have never met.
>And you have confidence, knowing what you know about the world, that there would be free and unfettered access to information? I suspect not....
That's another straw man. I never said there would be. I said that with enhanced senses I'd have access to more data. That's quite a different thing.
>why did it die off so quickly?
(1.) You didn't answer my question.
(2.) This isn't America. This is Earth.
I don't have access to the inner workings of the Fox Broadcast Network. I don't know. I would need to speculate. The reason shows generally get cancelled is because not enough people watch them. Advertising revenues drop. This is not an indication of quality. How many seasons has the Jerry Springer" show been on?
This isn't America. This is Earth.
No, this is still America, last I checked. I'm sure the denizens of Yap or of Zimbabwe or Malaysia don't have a great deal of influence over what programs get run on Fox.
All who love the truth.
>There's only room for your interpretations here?
We're not talking about "interpretation" here. We're talking about words being put into my mouth that I did not say. It's rude. It's dishonest. It's very bad form. It's also solid proof that the person who did it is a liar, and cannot be trusted to tell the truth about anything.
For example:
>So the 'Borg in Star Trek are your idea of cool dudes
This is the exact and precise opposite of what I actually said. Really, scroll up and see for yourselves.
>You diss the vision of Deep Ecology and primitivism as being of a world that never existed. Ancestral memory and mucho historical evidence tells me otherwise,
(1.) There is no such thing as ancestral knowledge. It's superstitious hogwash.
(2.) There is mucho historical evidence that the fantasy world of the "noble savage" that the primitivists would have us believe in never existed. Read history. Read archeology. Go to the primary sources, not latter day interpretations by people with political agendas.
>All this groovy stuff you're fanaticizing about is gonna be toys for rich boys.
This was once true of horseless carriages, aeroships and wireless telegraphy. In my own living memory, it was true of computers.
>You are one extremely icky dude.
(1.) Sticks and stones
(2.) An ad hominem is not a rebuttal.
Your sci-fi-nurtured hallucinations of 'our wonderful techno-future' is my idea of life in the deepest pit of hell. You remind me a lot of that maniac on Changesurfer Radio. They're your kind of people, i.e. cackling cyber-lunatics. You guys really fuckin scare me.
>Everybody else should check out Changesurfer, too. Here's a show they did recently. Read this little blurb and see if it doesn't make you want to throw these sick fucks in padded cells on an Antarctic coastal island.
Not at all. They are trying to promote progress. I fail to see how the elimination of suffering is a bad thing. I don't think their way of going about it is the best possible way, but who knows? We need to try as many ways as possible.
Human enhancement technology is definitely a good thing. Without it I couldn't see very well or walk any better than I do. If you think I should be condemned to the life of a vision impaired cripple, so as to not offend your sense of esthetics, you're and *sshole. Die off and quit wasting air.
For more on better humans, see:
http://www.betterhumans.com/
> If nessie DID somehow become one of the Big Boss hot-dogs in charge, would you trust HIM to be dialing in your settings, tuning your mentality?
That's a straw man. never once have i suggested that human enhancement follow a hierarchal model, let alone that I, of all people, should be in charge. Au contrair, that is the precise and exact opposite of what i said. Really, scroll up and see for yourselves.
When people have to resort to ad hominems and straw men, it is is sure fire indicator that:
(1.) they have no rebuttal.
(2.) they are fundamentally dishonest.
(2.) The market for TV shows is global. Yap isn't much of a market, but Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa are.
Let's compare Firefly to, I dunno, America's Next Top Model. The thought that goes into Firefly is amazing, the drama keeps you in, the politics are intriguing. Top model: who's prettiest (by societal standards) and how do we pick the girls that are going to be bitchiest to each other? What do they promote? Firefly: rugged individualism. Top model: anorexia
Sure, there's something to be said for just "mucking in the water," as one IndyBayer has put it. There's plenty of that with Firefly, and anyway, by all means watch America's Next Top Model if you enjoy it...but don't tell me that it's of a higher quality.
No. It is a thing that 1) science is incapable of testing one way or the other and 2) is beyond your experience and imagination
Neither one of these rules it out. No, not even #2!
Meanwhile, what about these cyber-future whack-off fantasies of yours? Are those also 'superstitious fantasies?' Cuz, I mean, nobody has EVER glimpsed any of that stuff **FOR SURE**. Right now it's equivalent to the George Jetson fantasy that we'd all be flying around in household hovercraft by now. 40 years ago your kind solidly believed that shit, too. Of course, a stupid little thing called PHYSICS interceded, but other than that, wow what a vision!!
Also, I think I recall you accusing the deep ecology crowd of being 'anti-human.' Now it turns out you 1) resent the limitations of your human brain 2) want to have your consciousness transferred to silicon chips so you can get rid of that stupid thing 3) resent the 'gravity well' that has given rise to your species. It seems likely you wouldn't mind being transferred into a robot body and shedding your meat envelope for good. Um, all this seems quite anti-human to me. You've said some stuff about deep ecologists being hypocrites, too. You really seem to have the two of us confused.
"never once have i suggested that human enhancement follow a hierarchal model"
Oh, there you go doing it again, Mr. Center of the Universe. No, you didn't say it. *I'm* saying it. It follows from
"Hasn't history or leftist politics taught you shit?"
Who do you think is going to pour tens (hundreds?) of billions into the research needed to make this happen? The ACLU? You keep crowing about the Wright Bros. What has their discovery mainly been used for? How about Einstein's fabulous theoretical breakthrough? How has that been applied? Yes, that's right, both have been used first and foremost to solidify the absolute power of the super-rich, just like every other cutting-edge technology for the past 5,000 years. Very good, dude, here's a cookie!
How can you read that shit on changesurfer and not recognize the potential for absolute control of human psychology? When the billionaires who control the endowments, the foundation monies, campus governments, DoD spending priorities -- in short, ALL of the purse strings -- allocate the necessary scientific resources, do you actually believe their motto will be "for the enrichment and universal benefit of all humankind?" Once again:
"Hasn't history or leftist politics taught you shit?"
They're going to do the same thing they did with neurological & behavioral research back in the 1950s, when they spent up to a billion dollars a year on the 'Manhattan Project of the Mind.' The modern U.S. practice of psychological torture is just one of the products of that epic research effort. Lot's of PR strategy came out of it, too. It's all exactly like something the Nazis would have done, right down to blood-curdling Mengelean experiments.
Anyone who has not heard Dennis Bernstein's interviews of Alfred McCoy MUST do so NOW!
http://flashpoints.net/index.html#2006-02-14
Even before the gravy days of the '50s, this establishment's main interest in Freudian psychology was figuring out how to manipulate the public
http://tinyurl.com/hg7ww
They did a brilliant job, too. Goebbels & Co. were ever so grateful!
To this day, psychological research and practice is still dominated by very creepy social control agendas. What makes you so confident these brain chips are going to be anything other than the next epic phase of this? Oh yeah, SURE they'll give you superhuman mental abilities, but what else will they do that you're not even aware of?
Apparently you think the following is completely off the mark:
"All the common clay beasts of burden will get is a chip implant that strokes their pleasure center when they're being good slaves or jolts their pain center when they're not."
I think it's right on target. The past 90 or so years of history seem to bear me out.
Chances are untold billions have *already* been spent on relevant research by the Pentagon and/or mega-corporations. Changesurfer and that android who runs it are probably just an experimental marketing pilot. I think he's their first implant experiment, too.
See, you SAY it's ridiculous to interpret your position as meaning you'll have any say in all this, but meanwhile you're fondly imagining it will all be *just* *so*, just as you say, and meanwhile WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU???? You're some dweeb worker/owner of a leftist bookstore in Haight-Ashbury. You're the LAST person on earth who's going to have any say over this stuff.
You know enough history to know perfectly well that governments and super-rich megalomaniacs can't be trusted anywhere near something like this. Oh but this time it's different! Why? Because it's a shiny new bike and nessie WAAAAAAAAANTS it!!! Jesus, grow up! Like immortality, the brain chips that will actually be nice to have are gonna be way out of your league anyway. Wanna make a little wager? You've remarked yourself in this thread about the realities of capitalist societies, so it seems to me you must be sitting on a multi-million-dollar trust fund or something, or you would know better than to hope against hope.
No, the Rockefellers aren't going to take you for rides in their spaceship, either.
"Human enhancement technology is definitely a good thing."
You're putting eyeglasses in the same category with brain chips? Shit, you might as well put clothing in there, too. It wouldn't be more of a stretch
What nessie's selling is a FINAL SOLUTION for modernity itself
I don't think this overstates the significances at all
At any rate, I'm not sure that your ultimate visions are mutually exculsive. Couldn't the Deep Ecology model have universal as well as planetary applications?
A paper may appear in a journal like nature about an expirement where individual atoms were used to create something that returns one of 2 states given 4 possible input states, it then makes it into popular scientific magazines as an article about quantum computers with a mention that in the distant future this could be how computers are constructed and it could be theoretically possible that such computers could at some point break strong encryption, newspapers print an article about how scientists have built a quantum computer and mention that such computers can break strong encryption and then conspiracy theoriests go arond saying that the government probably already has such computers. In such a case basic research that cant be expected to result in anything real for decades is essentially sold to the public as a current possibility and the scientists working on the expirements arent going to correct the newspapers since if their work is portrayed as exciting maybe more people will help out and it will get more funding.
A few things that seem a bit strange about the conspiracy theories is that they ignore clear signs to the contrary, LLNL may have faster computers than most private companies but those computers were built by the private not the public sector. Government support for military machinary is high but conservative support for government funded basic research is pretty low and you would think they would have to be the people behind any conspiracy (and the cognitive dissonance of having to admit that socialized science results in faster results that privately funded science would probably be too much for them if it were that obvious).
Will we have pleasure chips in our heads in the next 100 years? Maybe but it would probably resemble labotomy more than something sci fi ish (electrical stimulation of certain parts of the brain is being promoted asa cure for severe depression by some researchers now but the desriptions of the experiements dont sounds very high tech unless you also think labotomies are high tech)
Will humans ever live on other planets? Probably and perhaps even in the next 200 years but its likely to look like humans living on Antartica or on space stations since the resources required will probably always outweigh the advantage of having more land. The energy required to launch something into space (escape velocity) has a limit to how low it can go under any technology and its likely that the future will hold less available energy per person (even when solar power becomes cheeper) than now. Few in the 1950s would have predicted that the US would land a man on the moon so quickly, but how many who saw the moon landing would have predicted how quickly people would stop going to the moon and how decades later it now appears that only symbolic landings will occur (probably once by China and maybe once more by the US) for the next few generations (anything beyond symbolic landings are probably 100 years away or more).
Technology can be good and bad and more nukes and more bioweapons will probably go hand in hand with new cures for diseases and cleaner fuel technologies. But humans seem predictable and boring so even 1000 years from now I wonder how different things will really look. Maybe all humas will wipe themselves out through war or all diseases will be gone, people will live hundreds of years and be able to commute between planets... but both futures are doubtful and with all the new inventions and discoveries life will likely look a lot like it does today; religions will come and go, cultures will merge through globalization and split appart due to creation of new identity groups and life expectancy will probably still have a max of a little over 120 (you would assume that for some speciies long life would have some evolutionary advantages but name one vertibrate that lives much longer than humans).
I've never seen either of these things, so I can't honestly proffer an opinion. I do know that some people prefer one over the other. That's the way it is with everything.There's no accounting for taste. Some people like catsup. Some people like mayonnaise. I like mustard. What's the big deal? Quality isn't a factor in taste. Quality rates technical stuff like production values, not personal taste, and certainly not political analysis. Technically, Tom Jones can sing circles around Johnny Rotten. Personally, I'd rather listen to Johnny Rotten. But, hey, that's me. Other people think he sounds like a cat being boiled alive. There's no accounting for taste.
>(ancestral knowledge) . . . is a thing that 1) science is incapable of testing one way or the other and 2) is beyond your experience and imagination
In other words, it doesn't exist. Neither does the tooth fairy, which fits the same criteria. Which brings us back to quality. The technical quality of my analysis is superior to TW''s because it is based on empirical data, not wishful thinking. I only believe in what I can see with my own eyes, and not all of that, not by a long chalk. TW believes his imagination is equal to empirical data. Tastes aside, I'm just plain doing it better.
>nobody has EVER glimpsed any of that stuff **FOR SURE**.
Yet. There was a time, not so long ago, when the same could be said of horseless carriages, aeroships and wireless telegraphy. Now days we take them as givens. Lord Kelvin was wrong about physics, Some of us learned from his mistake. Others did not. TW clearly did not. No, we have not exhausted the possibilities yet. There are possibilities we have not even imagined yet. That's the whole point of the Singularity. There are limits even to our own imaginations. There are (presumably) limits to what is possible, but we can't even imagine them yet.
>Of course, a stupid little thing called PHYSICS interceded, but other than that, wow what a vision!!
Physics what what the doubters invoked when heavier than air flight was postulated. It's can't be done, they said, physics wont allow it. Tell that to a pilot. Tell that to a bumble bee.
We don't use personal hover cars today, because they are not economic, not because they are not technically feasible. What we also don't have that was predicted 40 years ago is civilization lying in ruins, destroyed by a self imposed ecological catastrophe. In another 40 years we may see both these predictions come true, or one but not the other, or neither. We just don't know yet. Prediction is a tricky business, especially when dealing with specifics. That's the the whole point of the Singularity. We've reached a point where our ability to create progress is about to outstrip our ability to even imagine what it will be like.
>you wouldn't mind being transferred into a robot body and shedding your meat envelope for good. Um, all this seems quite anti-human to me.
It is no more "anti-human" than the desire to clothe ourselves against the cold, augment out feeble finger nails with sharpened flint, or start our own fires. What makes us human is our ever evolving consciousness, not where it lives or how. Transhuman *is* human. Eyeglasses make us no less human than nearsightedness. Neither does clothing. Neither do pockets. Neither does listening to an iPod in our pocket through ear plugs in our ears. Neither will listening to a subdermal iPod through Bluetooth enabled cochlear implants. We could be doing it already, The technology already exists.
>You're putting eyeglasses in the same category with brain chips? Shit, you might as well put clothing in there, too. It wouldn't be more of a stretch
It's no more of a stretch than putting jet planes in the same category as horses. They're both ways to get around that far surpass our own feet.
We have *always* augmented our natural abilities. We're not going to stop now. We're not going to stop finding and/or creating newer, better ways to do it, either. It ain't gonna happen, no matter what you say, nor should it, not could it. We couldn't stop inventing if we tried. We're humans. That's what humans do. And a d*mn good thing we do, too.
Do you want to walk everywhere, only see what's in front of your eyes, only remember what fits in your own brain, only survive those diseases that you body can shake off on its own, or try to fight off the cavalry with flint tipped arrows? Be my guest.
>Oh, there you go doing it again, Mr. Center of the Universe. No, you didn't say it.
You're d*mn right I didn't. I wouldn't. It's not true. I don't say things that aren't true. I say true things that certain people would prefer not hear, but that's a separate issue. Technological advancement and social control are separate issues, too. The same technological means used to control people can also be used to liberate them. A pistol in the hand of a rapist serves a much different social function than a pistol in the hand of an intended rape victim. The same low orbit satellites that are even now tracking our every movement from space, also give us the capability to finally comprehend the scale of what is happening to the rain forest, the ice cap and the surface temperature of the ocean. The same band of the electromagnetic spectrum that brings us Top Model also showed us that guy standing in front of the tank in Tienemien Square. The same presses that print the Turner Diaries can also print Living My Life.
>Who do you think is going to pour tens (hundreds?) of billions into the research needed to make this happen?
The very internet that you yourself are using at this very moment to disparage technology was produced by the military industrial complex to better facilitate the creation of new weapons of mass destruction and better mechanisms of social control. Now we use it to organize mass resistance to the military industrial complex.
Subvert: It's a verb. Look it up.
Technology is politically and morally neutral. Not all technologies are ecologically neutral, but that's a separate issue. Let's try to not confuse them, shall we?
>You keep crowing about the Wright Bros. What has their discovery mainly been used for?
Transporting civilians, mail and freight.
>How about Einstein's fabulous theoretical breakthrough? How has that been applied?
Primarily to the generation of electricity, and the production of medical isotopes. Bombs are only one use, There are many, many uses. Personally, I think using nuclear power to generate electricity will prove in the long run to be far more dangerous than the bombs. But that's a separate issue. The fact is that most of the uses to which nuclear power has been put have been peaceful. Whether that's a good thing or not is a matter of opinion. Whether it's true or not is a matter of fact.
>How can you read that shit on changesurfer and not recognize the potential for absolute control of human psychology?
He's begging the question again. Of course I recognize it. But I also recognize the potential for human liberation. I see both because I'm an optimist, i.e., I'm a realist. The realistic analysis is to recognize that while things are getting worse, they are getting better, too. They are getting better faster than they are getting worse. They are getting better more than they are getting worse. That's optimism. I have it. The misanthropes do not. I'm a realist. They're befuddled by delusion.
So when I see stuff like people developing methods for the "absolute control of human psychology" I remember that the same implant technology that Delgado was going to use to turn us into robot, not only hasn't turned us into robots, it's been developed into an effective treatment for Parkinsons. The same LSD that the CIA tried to develop as a truth serum spawned a generation of active rebellion. The same kind of devices originally developed to break codes and better aim artillery are now being used to facilitate this very conversation. Any technology can be subverted to serve the will of the people.
>What makes you so confident these brain chips are going to be anything other than the next epic phase of this?
The indomitable human spirit and our unbridled lust for liberty has *always* enabled us to turn any mechanism developed to control us into a tool for liberation. Even the guns of the guards at Treblinka were used by prisoners there to shoot their way out of the camp.
>Oh yeah, SURE they'll give you superhuman mental abilities, but what else will they do that you're not even aware of?
We'll find out. Computers give us superhuman mental abilities. We're using them at this very moment. Does that mean there are not negative side effects? Of course not. There are definitely negative side effects. Does that mean we should not use computers? Of course not. It just means we should be cognizant of the negative side effects and take proactive countermeasures. Wear wrist braces. Take frequent breaks. Exercise. Don't believe everything you read on the internet. But use computers. They're a tool of liberation.
>The past 90 or so years of history
have demonstrated conclusively that not only can we can turn the mechanisms of control into mechanisms of liberation, but we do. Delgado's primitive neural implants have been turned into a mechanism to liberate Parkinsons suffers from their agony. The guards' guns at Treblinka were used to liberate inmates. The internet itself has liberated this very discussion from the isolation imposed by geography and economics.
>You're the LAST person on earth who's going to have any say over this stuff.
That's where TW's wrong. He has internalized the propaganda of the ruling class so deeply that he honestly believes in the intrinsic helplessness of the worker and the hopelessness of the workers' position. In short, he's been brainwashed. Now he's trying to share his brainwashing with you. He's preaching defeatism. Don't fall for it.
One worker is, indeed, helpless. But all of us are not. Joe Hill put it best:
If the workers take a notion,
They can stop all speeding trains;
Every ship upon the ocean
They can tie with mighty chains;
Every wheel in the creation,
Every mine and every mill,
Fleets and armies of the nation,
Will at their command stand still.
"Technology can be good and bad"
I wholeheartedly agree that science and technology are value-neutral *on their own*, but this is a moot point since they don't proceed on their own. They are abstractions that exist through an outside material agency, namely US, and science in the hands of humans is *anything but* value neutral. It is shamefully naive, even ignorant, to defend it on that basis. You are stripping both science and humans of larger organic contexts
Technology, for example, has not organically developed on its own. The main vector of development has emerged from the deep motivations of the monarchal set that connives to exert executive control over this and everything else. THAT is the master program. THAT is why military applications continue to devour better than *half* of all research spending on a clear cost-is-no-object basis. Where else do you see cost being no object in science? This is the way it's been all your life. Maybe that's why you're not seeing it.
And what are those monarchal motivations? Greed and power and empire, baby, just like they've always been. This is the scientific aesthetic of reductionism translated to history, and it's rock-solid
If this thesis doesn't make deep sense to you I suggest you stop boning up on technology and start digesting some history and some of the social and political reality before your eyes. Slavery, monarchy, colonialism, and religiosity haven't subsided from the world AT ALL. This culture has only slipped into accepting delusional frames for them.
Religiosity, for example, has translated partly into the deification of science, with scientists taking the place of priests. Even Edward Bernays, that guy I mentioned before, said it plainly: "science is a religion unto itself." His field, Public Relations, doesn't just incidentally feed my paranoid delusions, it gives them substance! This and other ethically ugly applications have been the clear cost-is-no-object beneficiaries of monarchal interest in behavioral science. The aforementioned "Manhattan Project of the Mind" is a HUGE block of historical evidence toward this. I defy you to name a comparable "peace-time" initiative in psychology.
All you're really doing is preaching the "Science Good" gospel to me. Yes, I know you said value-neutral. I don't care. You're being being disingenuous. You *like* science, it's obvious, and you're reacting emotionally. People always do. What you're really doing is clear to me cuz I've stood in your shoes. I kept walking though.
Sure, there is an immediate personal benefit to many forms of innovation. Whether or not there is a long term societal benefit is another. You have to examine a product from its design- are toxins used? Are workers abused? Are natural resources being squandered? And you need to examine them through their use and through their disposal.
Yes. Cars are cool. I traveled the length of the Oregon trail in my ratty van in 3 days, and I didn’t need to bury any of my passengers in route. But think about the development of the automobile- mass production made cars affordable to the masses, but alienated workers. Work became repetitive and rigidly controlled. Workers lost autonomy, and were more apt to be exploited. Car accidents kill over 40,000 people a year in America. Auto exhaust contributes to pollution and global warming. And after 12 or 14 years, after they are stripped of their useful parts, they become part of our landfill. But there is more- highways cross our landscape- killing wildlife and choking off natural migration routes. People commute longer and longer distances- communities and families dissolve. Yes, it benefits us personally, but at what cost to our world?
“Innovations” occur everyday- a market is created for something we’ve lived comfortably without for millennium. Yes, computers have made our lives easier, but what becomes of the units we see sitting on the curb after 2 years? They too will end up in the landfill, leeching lead and heavy metals into the water supply.
Vaccines have virtually eliminated measles, mumps and diphtheria, but many feel the rise in autism spectrum syndrome is directly related to them... Some have linked the rise in cancer to problems in the development of vaccines. Agricultural innovations increase crop yields, but do you really trust the folks at Archer Daniels Midland to provide us with wholesome food?
I look upon technological innovation with a very skeptical eye.
And no, even as an identified uncloseted Zionist, my deity is not Israel. It is not the sum total of my spiritual existence, either. I've never been to Israel- partially because I thought once I got there, I'd never leave, but also, because I fear that the reality of Israel could never meet the promise of Israel. Having is not as pleasing as wanting....I believe Mr. Spock once said that.
Megafauna- definitely the captain! Simon- ew.....
But I tend to agree.
You're saying this as a white male 'boomer getting to play play play at being "a radical" in the most affluent society in the history of the world. That affluence, furthermore, has been purloined out of the mouths and the lives of the world's human majority, not to mention from the ruined corpses of WHOLE BIOMES. But why worry your little head about all that when you don't really care about universal liberation anyway. No you don't. Fuck you. You care about *privilege* for *nessie*. That's what you call "liberation."
The past 90 years has been an appalling catastrophe for most of the world's people, whose last great hope to wrestle free from the death trap of Western colonial domination has been decisively smashed during this period. YOUR OWN COUNTRY has done most of the smashing. By tossing a few crumbs of the booty your way, it has fostered this illusion of yours that everything's just neato-groovy, settling you and all the other potential troublemakers back into comfy cushions of token privilege so you'll let the Big Boys go about their business of raping everyone else to death.
The United States didn't *defeat* fascism/global domination in 1945. It ripped that ball out of Hitler's arms and ran it all the way to the fuckin end-zone! This has not involved 'liberation' from most people's viewpoints. If it has meant 'liberation' for **YOU**, think about how it would also have meant 'liberation' for your counterparts in Germany had Hitler prevailed
But the destruction of human liberty -- i.e. of people living as they choose to live -- over the past 90 years has been dwarfed to tininess by that of the past 500, as the egomaniacal European cancer has swept the world, erasing thousands of cultures as it smashed down the template of colonialism at every site of metastasis. But hey, that's all groovy gravy for a cancer cell like you, so why even think about it?
But the sum of all these generalized human costs of your own contentment is like an anthill next to the himalayan mountain of the destruction brought down on non-human life. This has unfolded *especially* during this 90-year interval that nessie, contemplating selectively as he plays with gleaming toys in his climate-controlled bassinet, believes have been so marvelously wonderful.
The bottom line, nessie m'dear, is you just simply don't give a fuck. You're the quintessential self-centered 'boomer asshole, right down to your pantomime of being anything else. When you preen and gloat over your "optimism," that's all it really means. Another person with your access to privileges but with a genuine concern for universal rights would understand the underlying criminality of those privileges and the need to reject your pig portion so that others (including non-humans) might simply live. The nessie of the 1960s might even have said this himself, but you're not that nessie anymore. You're a corrupt selfish scared old man, just like most of the 'boomers these days.
The largest single emotional factor in everything you've said is FEAR. Something has caused you to understand your mortality, and you're running scared now
You're also wrong about aviation and nuclear technology. The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, other developers of the first crude generations of airplanes, were classic American innovators, but aside from this virtually all of the development of airplane technology has been driven by teams of engineers working hand in hand with military planners, and it is from this context that all the civilian applications have spun off. Civilian uses may dominate the **economic_activity** of aviation (even this is debatable), but we were talking about technological development, remember, and this has been driven overwhelmingly from the military side, even going back to the Wright Bros. For every "liberating" civilian application you can name, I can point to a technology of death that would give Dante Alighieri the heeby-jeebies. Each of these death-cannons is being held at all times to the heads of everyone on earth, including yours, and yet you imagine your ability to play around with marginal labor movements, etc., represents a real counterbalance to their ability to turn you into red smear on the wall any time they want. You're a complacent fool!
All this becomes even more true with nuclear technology. Here I don't think civilian apps even dominate the economic picture.
And there's still other examples, like biotech. Once again, the cost-is-no-object focus has been the development of superplagues. Biotech could be an incredible boon to green technology. Cars could be engineered organisms, driven by muscle. This would be many times more efficient than internal combustion, and such apps could be just as captivating to your techno-maniac friends. Ah, but that's not where the MONEY is...
Purely by waving this funding carrot around, the overlords of greed absolutely dictate the direction of technological development
Thats a straw man. I don't see TW raving about the glories of huddling in caves, going hungry or dying from a preventable disease. He seems to be appealling for a more simple life- if you bake you own bread instead of purchasing some adulterated concoction sealed in plastic, maybe its something you could relate to, also if you gave it a moments thought.
So you are a San Francisco boomer with a family? Do your kids friends live in homes with all the latest stainless steel appliances, and granite countertops, even though food only comes from the Chinese restaurant across the street? The culture of consumerism and want as opposed to need is what is problematic. It leads to waste, and the ravaging of the environment. I don't see the earlier threads as a call to a a primative lifestyle- but rather to a simpler lifestyle. It would benefit us all, and our world as well.
This cancer I've mentioned, it has a name and a form that are startlingly familiar: corruption -- criminal thought and action ramifying through all of human affairs. It's destroying everything.