>Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 15:41:38 -0500
>From: "Eric Boyd" <6ceb3@qlink.queensu.ca>
>Subject: Re: virus: Brave New World
>
>Hi,
>
>Reed Konsler <konsler@ascat.harvard.edu> writes:
><<
>:-) I agree. I deduced that you took Huxley's vision to be scary
>based upon our conversation. Me, I think it really is a _Brave New
>World_. What do you think?
>>>
>
>(this wasn't directed at me, but I couldn't help overhearing...)
>
>I think that the BNW is scary precisely becuase the ideology which
>underlies it does seem attractive. Ultimatly, BNW is a trade off --
>society trades progress (in the extropian sense) for the happiness of
>it's members.
[laughter] There are only a few characters in BNW that are unhappy...the most intelligent or antisocial. Everyone else is just ducky for a game of electromagnetic golf! Don't you get it? You identify with the misanthropes in Utopia. Doesn't that strike you as odd? Are you that Miltonian? BNW is about progress and happiness. Progress in the only real sense: consumerism and replication bombs. Happiness in the only real sense: finding a role for each member of society. BNW describes the global organism, what Howard Bloom describes as the "Global Brain".
So what if we give up a little of our false sense of individuality?
"He is no fool that trades what he cannot keep for that which he cannot lose."
>I was disappointed not to see further discussion of what
>transpires on that island in the book.
But you already KNOW. WE live on the islands of isolation every day...Huxley was showing you a vision of what the BNW might be like. We understand the book differently. I understand your interpretation, do you understand mine?
>However, the pessimist in me tends towards the realization that
>*individuals who will choose to forfeit the BNW* in favour of the
>island will be *very* rare, to the point that the minimum necessary to
>support humanities collective knowledge would not be available.
Give me a break. Memes aren't that important.
>Perhaps this could be remedied by raising some children outside of the
>BNW (i.e. on the island), and thus into the island culture as a
>default, instead of into the BNW as a default?
You would intentionally torture people just to preserve knowledge of pain? I think nature will solve that problem without our interference. Every body spontaneously acquires cancers, tumors, warts, odd lumps, and abbrasions.
Reed
Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------