Something just occurred to me that might explain what's wrong with so many people -- and I'm not saying this to make fun of them or call them names, either. I think it's true
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I tend to distrust artistic trends born after 1914 pretty much for the reasons you brought up. Dadaism in particular is the direct result of how the horrors of World War I warped a generation, and I thought the description of last year's Colbert/Stewart rally on Washington as a 'Dadaist movement' was an apt one.
You should have moved out to suburbia, you know. I was only six when the Wall fell, but I still don't ever recall fearing full-scale nuclear war one bit. It must have really helped to live well out of any likely blast or fallout radius, because there was never a day I felt like I wouldn't be OK.
Frontiers would surely be a healthy development. I have a lot of confidence in people like Peter Thiel on that front. I think we'll see colonization of the oceans in the next few decades. We're going to see plots of the ocean domesticated, and people are doing to be stunned at what happens when you stop fishing the oceans as a commons, and start farming it as property. There really won't be any hunger anywhere anymore.
When people start farming the oceans, they'll start living atop them. They'll clean up the plastic you speak of, because nobody likes a messy backyard. They'll play with whales and dolphins the way people take care of horses now. And all kinds of floating city-states will emerge to let people migrate to places where they can live any lifestyle they choose.
You should have moved out to suburbia, you know. I was only six when the Wall fell, but I still don't ever recall fearing full-scale nuclear war one bit. It must have really helped to live well out of any likely blast or fallout radius, because there was never a day I felt like I wouldn't be OK.
I have lived in suburbia all my life, well away from the central cities of which the suburbs I lived in were satellites. But from about age 9 on I was well aware of exactly what sort of damage a hydrogen bomb could wreak, and how far its radius of total destruction spread. I also knew about the fact that numerous hydrogen bombs would be dropped on various great American cities, so that the total megatons of those bombs would come to anywhere from 25 to 100, and be spread out just enough to ensure that everything would be totaled within a radius of at least 100 miles. I also knew about just how much fallout World War III would generate -- enough to poison the entire planet and wipe out most higher forms of life (the exceptions being such things as nematode worms). And I wasn't all that much an exception for children my age back then -- many of us learned to read early on, and we didn't restrict ourselves to Dick & Jane readers, by any means. We had real reason for that fear -- we knew exactly what World War III would do, and we'd have been crazy not to fear it.
Frontiers would surely be a healthy development. I have a lot of confidence in people like Peter Thiel on that front. I think we'll see colonization of the oceans in the next few decades. We're going to see plots of the ocean domesticated, and people are doing to be stunned at what happens when you stop fishing the oceans as a commons, and start farming it as property. There really won't be any hunger anywhere anymore.
When people start farming the oceans, they'll start living atop them. They'll clean up the plastic you speak of, because nobody likes a messy backyard. They'll play with whales and dolphins the way people take care of horses now. And all kinds of floating city-states will emerge to let people migrate to places where they can live any lifestyle they choose.
You're assuming that if things continue as they are, civilization will survive. It won't. Not here. It can't. Either humanity changes drastically in very short order -- which is impossible, given our genetic and phylogenetic makeup -- or we have at most about 50 years before it all blows up in our faces. We are far more like our closest cousins, the common chimps, than anyone wants to admit, and chimps make war on one another all the time, for territory. They're downright vicious about it, too. Admittedly, we do throw the occasional saint from time to time, but I'm sure chimps do, too -- and it doesn't change the situation. So either some of us pick up stakes and bug out, accompanied by a good cross section of other Earthly life, or that's it for Earth.
You should have moved out to suburbia, you know. I was only six when the Wall fell, but I still don't ever recall fearing full-scale nuclear war one bit. It must have really helped to live well out of any likely blast or fallout radius, because there was never a day I felt like I wouldn't be OK.
Frontiers would surely be a healthy development. I have a lot of confidence in people like Peter Thiel on that front. I think we'll see colonization of the oceans in the next few decades. We're going to see plots of the ocean domesticated, and people are doing to be stunned at what happens when you stop fishing the oceans as a commons, and start farming it as property. There really won't be any hunger anywhere anymore.
When people start farming the oceans, they'll start living atop them. They'll clean up the plastic you speak of, because nobody likes a messy backyard. They'll play with whales and dolphins the way people take care of horses now. And all kinds of floating city-states will emerge to let people migrate to places where they can live any lifestyle they choose.
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I have lived in suburbia all my life, well away from the central cities of which the suburbs I lived in were satellites. But from about age 9 on I was well aware of exactly what sort of damage a hydrogen bomb could wreak, and how far its radius of total destruction spread. I also knew about the fact that numerous hydrogen bombs would be dropped on various great American cities, so that the total megatons of those bombs would come to anywhere from 25 to 100, and be spread out just enough to ensure that everything would be totaled within a radius of at least 100 miles. I also knew about just how much fallout World War III would generate -- enough to poison the entire planet and wipe out most higher forms of life (the exceptions being such things as nematode worms). And I wasn't all that much an exception for children my age back then -- many of us learned to read early on, and we didn't restrict ourselves to Dick & Jane readers, by any means. We had real reason for that fear -- we knew exactly what World War III would do, and we'd have been crazy not to fear it.
Frontiers would surely be a healthy development. I have a lot of confidence in people like Peter Thiel on that front. I think we'll see colonization of the oceans in the next few decades. We're going to see plots of the ocean domesticated, and people are doing to be stunned at what happens when you stop fishing the oceans as a commons, and start farming it as property. There really won't be any hunger anywhere anymore.
Screw the oceans. They'd die just as dead as everything else if a really large meteorite came thundering in, and nuclear war would total them, too. No, we either settle other worlds in the Solar System, and take a good cross-section of Earthly life with us when we do, at least in the form of genetic arks, and then head for the stars, or you can kiss Earthly life goodbye forever.
When people start farming the oceans, they'll start living atop them. They'll clean up the plastic you speak of, because nobody likes a messy backyard. They'll play with whales and dolphins the way people take care of horses now. And all kinds of floating city-states will emerge to let people migrate to places where they can live any lifestyle they choose.
You're assuming that if things continue as they are, civilization will survive. It won't. Not here. It can't. Either humanity changes drastically in very short order -- which is impossible, given our genetic and phylogenetic makeup -- or we have at most about 50 years before it all blows up in our faces. We are far more like our closest cousins, the common chimps, than anyone wants to admit, and chimps make war on one another all the time, for territory. They're downright vicious about it, too. Admittedly, we do throw the occasional saint from time to time, but I'm sure chimps do, too -- and it doesn't change the situation. So either some of us pick up stakes and bug out, accompanied by a good cross section of other Earthly life, or that's it for Earth.
Reply
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