Re: as others see us

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Thu Nov 30 2000 - 21:12:59 MST


Alex Future Bokov wrote:

> My god, that review... I keep hearing the same damn opinion echoed,
> right down to the same cliche metaphors, from people who couldn't have
> possibly met! Where is this crap coming from?! It just doesn't make
> sense. Having exhausted all the rational explanations, I'm left with
> the following theories:

It comes from the same place our own opinions come from. There are
always relatively conserving of the status quo forces arrayed against
relatively expansionist forces of change. Indeed there is some need
that it be that way. Why does it dismay you?

>
> 1. Aliens have infiltrated our culture and are spreading defeatist
> memes, presumably to non-violently pre-empt competition.
>

Competition is one of many memes. One that is not the cure for all
evils now and forever necessarily. In the Open Source world I see
another word being floated, "coopetition". Cooperate where cooperation
is the best choice or where there are common interest served and compete
in other areas. Defeatist stuff has been part of human cultures from
the beginning.

> 2. Once a culture reaches a certain critical size a subtle, low-key
> mass insanity (mass neurosis?) takes hold. CF fall of the Roman Empire.
>

Well, they in part got screwed by having much of their plumbing and the
drinking untensils of the rich be lined with lead. Lead poisoning
psychosis is not a pretty thing.

As the pace of change accelerates more and more people will feel serious
strain. Many of them will attempt to stand aside from the changes or to
demand they slow down or go away. Many will choose between old
religious values they once learned and having to cope with the
increasingly complex real world. If you want to reach them perhaps you
need to show them that this changing world is actually massively in
their interest and that of their children.

That article was not completely off. From a point of view of attempting
to learn wisdom in the face of adversity (which many have learned to
prize throughout human history) it seems quite perverse to simply
eliminate huge swaths of the adversity thus making the wisdom of
accepting it foolish. It is not difficult to understand how some people
would feel this way.

 
> 3. Humans have an inherent tendency toward self-defeatism and hatred
> of success. Except us mutants.
>

No. Not except us mutants. We are all too human.
 
> 4. Some religionists went underground and resurfaced as "modern" luddites.
>

Religionists have not uniformly been in a luddite or anti-progress
camp. You can fine perfectly healthy religious fervor in many
extropians. Except that many of us think we see how a true New Heaven
and New Earth (if you will) can come to be.
 
> Whatever the case, there's too many of them to enlighten. We'll soon be
> overrun. The only remaining course of action is clear... let's re-read
> Atlas Shrugged and start packing our bags.
>

Do you then assume people cannot be reached and cannot change? Where
exactly will you pack your bags off too? You might want to develop an
impervious force field before claiming a sufficiently large hunk of
earth real estate for all of us.

- samantha



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