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So much misunderstanding.
You guys seem to think, RE: Bowling for Columbine, that 'anarchist club' is some kind of oxymoron. This in turn implies that you think anarchism means, 'the absence of co-operation or association with others.' No, guys, very very no.
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Ar … archy.html
http://www.panarchy.org/kropotkin/1896.eng.html
And finally,
http://www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk/books … 0006862454
Ends and Means by Aldous Huxley
Science, Liberty and Peace, also by Huxley.
Horribly prescient, far more so than Brave New World.
3001 put me off ACC too, which I regret. I loved his short stories when I was a kid.
Mad Grad Student - Charlie Chan Fan?
GETTING to Mars is the Holy Grail, all the other stuff is a bonus!
I like the Lincoln quote. Reminds me of this, from DUNE. 'It is not that power corrupts, but that power is a magnet to the corruptable.'
Very interesting. Check out the 'All of you have it wrong.' thread for more interesting speculation on Martian government or the lack therof.
Morris, you'll notice my post got included in your quote! I have Forum Confusion Syndrome, so please be patient!
I have the Kaku book on hold at the library. It's overdue and so I don't know whether this will be one of those cases where they simply decide to pay for it rather than returning it. I also notice that he has an interesting looking book entitled Hyperspace. I may read it while waiting for Visions.
I vaguely remember reading some RA Wilson some decades ago. I think I was turned off by some of his more doubtful "New Age" speculations.
I like New Age works like Marilyn Ferguson's The Aquarian Conspiracy who stick fairly closely to real science and informative data. While they often stretch the conclusions they have the science as their starting point.
In any event, if you have a recent Robert Anton Wilson work that you especially like, please let me know.
Morris, are we the only ones here?
No, I don't know why people aren't responding to this thread though I have some speculations. For one thing many of these basic ideas have been explored before, sometimes ad nauseum, in other forums and threads. For another, some of the books and names are not generally known and that requires a little background work for those more seriously interested in this particular topic. Then, there is reference to "anarchy" as a serious political system and that just makes a lot of people uncomfortable. After all that was the big "bogeyman" in American politics before communism came along (as it was in Russian politics). And, I think that the notion that someone has to use library and internet cafe computers really makes some people uncomfortable. A social ambience sort of thing. Finally, the authors you cite that they do recognize have a "New Age" aura and nothing is treated with more contempt in wide circles of the scientific and technological communities, circles which are heavily represented on these boards.
Kaku's Hyperspace is very good, though covering much the same ground as The Elegant Universe. If I had to recommend any RA Wilson they would have to be Prometheus Rising and Quantum Psychology. Not recent, but in my view his best. Especially if you do the exercises. The contempt of some parts of the scientific community doesn't worry me. I find it ironic that my interest in science was reawakened by reading such authors as Aleister Crowley, RA Wilson and others, while the 'education' in scientific subjects I received at school turned me right off science more rapidly than I could imagine, having previously found it fascinating. So I now reach a point in my life where I am frantically trying to catch up, and Martian studies - how wonderful if we could study that at Univerisity - seems to encapsulate so much that is cutting edge in hard science and imminent developments therein.
Anarchism. I know what you mean, the very word can be a turn off to some people, equating it as they do with chaos and various other negative ideas. At my local library I once tried to print an article by Kropotkin entitled 'What is Anarchism?' from an old edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The library's onlice censorship wouldn't let me access it, 'Denied - Classification: crime.' An article from Britannica denied me at a LIBRARY!! In anarchism, as in 'new age' - and I can't express my loathing of that term - we all make up our own minds.
Hmm. Yes.
I'm on slow library computers again, so I'll be brief. Kaku's book is an excellent overview of recent scientific developments and their possible consequences in the century to come, everything from genetic engineering to space travel, highly recommended. I'll try to track down the books you recommend too. I tend to think that any civilisation which progresses from Type 0 - our civilisation - to Type 1 on the Kardashev scale would inevitably go through a period of world government, though to what extent and of what type I don't know. Those opposed to the notion might see it as a tyranny or an unaccountable 'democracy' in name only, threatening both individual 'rights' and the interests of nations; those in fabour of the idea might take a more optimistic 'Star Trekky' view of the whole project as a world unifying endeavour to put aside the conflicts of the past. Such a notion causes friction of course with those who don't want to put aside the conflicts of the past, which is one of the reasons I don't think world government will come about without severe violence first. The Capra inspired systems-view of the process would take this as the period of chaos before a higher order emerges. As RA Wilson so often remarks, 'Society is not breaking down, it is breaking through.' As I said, my inner optimist hopes so. I'll write more here when I'm on the faster system in the net cafe.
Morris, are we the only ones here?
( Thanks for tautology clarification, BTW! )
I tend to think that the 'withering away of the state' seems inevitable as the move toward a globally connected culture occurs, since movement of capital and resources for global benefit would tend to get obstructed by nation-states whose primary concerns were local: and that movement of capital and resources more and more falls under the control of corporate entities which recognise no national boundaries. In Martian terms, any Martian civilisation - and for this I assume a terraformed and colonised Mars - would have an advantageous position in that people arriving on the planet would, I hope, tend to see it as one world without borders and therefore have a common interest in avoiding the territorial squabbles that have afflicted Earth in the process of it's development. Martian civilisation would start off unified.My inner-optimist hopes so. The bitter and cynical part of me believes that humans will take their primate territoriality with them wherever they go and the consequences will not look pretty. However, the collapse or 'withering' of nations is a fascinating subject - ever since I read HG Wells and his notions of World Government and the World Brain. If and when crunch comes I hope it occurs without any Wellsian catastrophe to precede it.Michiu Kaku touches on the subject briefly at the end of his book, 'Visions' but if anyone can recommend reading or links I'd be grateful.
I'm not sure how relevant this is, I was looking for info on Kardashev's Civilisation Types: -
http://www.darkage.fsnet.co.uk/HistoryS … ociety.htm
I just found it and haven't read it through, but it looks interesting.
Actually, this link isn't working and I can't figure out why - help! - but if you go to the 'darkage' homepage and click on 'Theory of History and Society,' you'll get the relevant page.
Morris, don't knock repeated recycling ( is that a tautology? ), it's nature's way! I know what you mean though about such notions producing very little that seems useful, but there are always pioneers whose ideas and lives achieve change gradually and by seepage, for want of a better word. Such things tend to resonate with me more on a personal level not a 'revolutionary' level. I'd make more sense here if the cleaners in the net cafe weren't scraping the chairs and talking loudly about the various inadequacies of their boyfriends!!
Incidentally, I tracked down Korzybski's Science and Sanity online, albeit in pdf format.
http://www.esgs.org.uk/art/sands.htm]ht … /sands.htm
Damn, I got the first link working but now the second one is knackered...don't put me in charge of the airlocks...
I doubt if it's the same Peter Marshal but how wonderfully funny if it was! I love the idea of a Chaplain of the US Senate becoming an anarchist historian spreading notions of revolution and free love! Never happen under Bush though...
Thanks for the welcome, Morris. I haven't tracked down a copy of Science and Sanity yet, though I found a great deal of info on Korzybski online. I came to the subject mainly through Robert Anton Wilson via Aleister Crowley. Another influence that I hold responsible for my less panic-stricken response to the world these days, Buckminster Fuller. Anyway, I won't get off topic here - these library computers do not exactly race along when the system gets busy so I'll try to contribute more and more thoughtfully when I get more time. Incidentally, my anarchist tendencies constitute a pretty recent development as far as actually thinking about the subject goes, mainly due to an excellent book, Demanding the Impossible by Peter Marshall to which my response was a horrified, 'Why did I never hear any of this stuff in school??' I always look closely at anything that provokes such a reaction. Interesting too that complexity and emergence get mentioned in this thread, I just started reading Capra's The Hidden Connections. Most interesting.
Thanks for the welcome, Cobra Commander ( scary crew-cut name! ).
'Religion in the future will look like science fiction.' - Timothy Leary.
'All of you have it wrong.'
First law of science, first law of life - 'Beware of premature certainty.'
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