These week's selection flow from progress to tradition to a wider look at American politics. After that, there are a few odd ideas that will serve as an intermission when this these quotes are a section of my book. The picture these quotes paint is pretty dark. Look for some rays of hope the next two weeks.
==
The Cult of Progress and The Techno-Future
==
The trans-humanist plan: to transcend the meat-space. What's their back-up plan? To do it better.
If you met my 83 year-old Grandma you wouldn't be saying 100 is the new 80. Rather, the new selection bias is the old selection bias.
(Note/update: none of my grandparents lived past 85).
You probably need AI to enforce rules against AI.
I am disgusted with the 21st century. It puts the worst of humanity in your face at all times. I try to spend as little time as possible in it.
Detroit is already here; it's just not evenly distributed yet.
When our country puts kids in cages, it invokes images of the holocaust, a horrible past. When we use killer robots in the sky to kill kids, it is part of the future, a disruptive future. No wonder progressives can accept the latter.
Conjecture: if drone technology hits the point that the state and property are incontestable then the incentive for bullshit jobs will go away. As dangerous as it is for the 99%, that might need to be the order it needs to happen.
Space travel isn't going to be colonization. It is going to be white flight.
"Unable to achieve what it desires, 'progress' christens what it achieves desire." -- Don Colacho. This is great an explanation for neo-mania.
You are overhead for the technosphere. Prepare to be more human or prepare to be liquidated. Actually, prepare for both.
AI will have a much easier time mastering clickbait headlines and tweets than long-form essays, to any level of human intelligence. Perhaps it already has, and we're just not going to be told.
(Related). There won't ever be a need for AI to master the long-form essay. The blood of the immature can always be stirred short-form (ergo keep it all short form AND keep them all immature!). Furthermore, the retirement-center bots will be able to make do with small-talk.
"The only true and effective 'operator's manual for spaceship earth' is not a book that any human will ever write; it is hundreds of thousands of local cultures." Wendell Berry.
My current understanding is that solar power is good tactically, but poor strategically.
Isn't that what Padmé said?:
"So this is how liberty dies . . . with robots everywhere." *Glares at a droid.*
The real curse of living in interesting times is watching people try to win iteration after iteration of a negative sum game.
==
American "Tradition"
==
"Even our age may seem great when the worst of us are forgotten" Will Durant
I would consider defending the American Way of Life after World War II, but there isn't one.
Why has virtually all conservatism become a project in personal vanity? It's the logic of profit that surrounds our culture. It's impossible for nearly anyone to imagine investing in something that might cost them more than they receive. And the conservatives feel their best return on investment is to set back and proclaim.
Only artificial things can get as clean as most conservatives want.
. . Corollary: this is especially true of histories.
"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." Gustav Mahler
You know what? Let's forget about the abstraction of "America." Let's make the conversation at family meals great again.
When the American project is over, those with a conservative temperament (low openness, high disgust at disorder) will simply find another story for why the then-dominate groups deserve more.
"It's so much easier to blame the grownups than to be one." Ursula LeGuin
"Fear is seldom wise and never kind." Ibid.
Most of the developed world has worked to make the lives of families better. In the U.S. we marketed "family values" and then called it a day.
Traditionalism in America has nothing to do with tradition.
==
American Politics
==
My fellow Americans love a good story, love a good image, but will neglect the supporting realities . . . till the end.
You are not asked daily to participate in democracy. You choose to freak out about things you can't control. This is not the same thing, and you need to learn the difference. However, you do make daily decisions about consumption and production. We should think about those more.
The argument that it was better to build a school than a prison might have been true once. But now, in order to pay for the care of the richest generation in human history, we will soon have money for neither.
"The apparency: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. The actuality: If you even think there's a solution, you're part of the problem." Steve Solomon
While a Matrix metaphor might work for the masses, it is better to think of the elites in the U.S. as lotus eaters. They are too doped up on greed to make any moves. Alas, they've also locked the doors to the cockpit and are the only ones who can steer.
These Americans trading liberty for convenience don't realize that if they keep it up they'll soon have neither. (Thanks to Benny Franklin for this).
The real cruelty of America to its young is not that it is denying them the American Dream. It is denying them the Human Dream of starting a family that they can keep healthy and free from deprivation. This is unsustainable. If it is the first unsustainable thing to pop, then that will be for the good. If it is toward the last, there will be no American society.
Is it really that difficult to understand that a tax cut when the budget isn't balanced is simply free money for rich people?
Liberals prefer to be liberal with other people's money, and conservatives prefer to be conservative with other people's morals. . . Oh, I'm now an old man, fighting last generation's war. Now right-wingers also prefer to be right-wing with other people's money and leftists prefer to signal leftism about other people's morals.
When neither side engages in good faith, any instance of being correct is purely coincidental.
When the political class has shown a complete, stark, sociopathic disregard for 80 percent of the population -- what is another 19 (or 19.9) percent?
"Liberty is not the fruit of order alone; it is the fruit of mutual concessions between order and disorder." Don Colacho. I despair of this ever being widely (enough) understood.
Sorry, friends, the Left is a Granfallon. My real Karass is those who get to the root of things (radical, I know). Prep and survive, but not like a Prepper or Survivalist.
It's sad to see how many Americans think they have nothing to lose. What is more sad is how wrong they are.
Rank and file Republican voters think everything is a conspiracy, and then vote in such a way as to conspiracies happen. As of recently, Democrats do it too, but with different conspiracies.
I have not lost the ability to dream; I have lost the ability to pretend that other people will follow any of my dreams.
" . . . the real difficulty of democracy is not that voters are unworthy, but that their vote is generally the least worthy thing about them." C.K. Chesterton
==
Miscellaneous Ideas -- an Intermission
==
Self driving cars could be called auto-automobiles. I'd also accept them being called "autobots."
I propose that we have 73 Five-Day Weeks (73*5 = 365). We could call the leap year day "Leap Day" and then all of our days of the week would line up every year.
Probably the best idea, as measured by possible utility to the human race, I've had in months. But, alas, oh alack! -- such it is the nature of ideas that they need fertile ground to grow. I will never get this idea out the general public to adopt: Get rid of the free throws in basketball; instead, every second foul place the player in a penalty box for 1 minute of game play.
You fail to get warmth from 100% of fires you don’t start.
