ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz | 151 comments (151 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (4.00 / 12)

It's late and I'm very tired, but wd just like to note that a massive loss of knowledge/info has already happened and is accelerating. We're losing feral species at a terrifying rate, losing the collective genome of the biosphere. We're losing entire biomes and any hope of ever understanding how they once worked before we wrecked 'em. We're losing a human language about every 2 weeks, or so I read recently. We've lost almost 90 percent of the diversity of our animal, vegetable, fruit and nut cultivars thanks to industrial commodity agriculture; we've lost about 90 percent of our farmers (in the US anyway) as well. we've lost almost all the skills that used to be common property, ensuring the survival of the masses even when elites lost their Ponzi games and nosedived. we've lost most of the knowledge and skills that made civilisation possible in the first place -- as if civilisation automatically erases itself as it builds... cf Jane Jacobs' grim Dark Age Ahead...

And yes, if we're honest I think we have to admit that a lot of this knowledge loss was in fact driven by an overenthusiastic embrace of machine technology (plus colonial racism and arrogance, plus the Enclosing logic of industrial capitalism); so if our posterity someday come to blame their hunger or reduced circs on "science and technology" there will be a wee grain of truth in the accusation (which I think is why it irks us technorati so much to contemplate). If we consider what scientists and industrial technologists are party to and responsible for, from Auschwitz to Agent Orange to GMOs to the whole fossil fuel party that may -- let us hope not, but it may -- have doomed our civilisation plus most of the other species we share the planet with... then that disillusioned and angry posterity may just have a point, no matter how fond I am of my laptop... which btw required something like 20x its weight in fossil fuel to construct... sigh...

I'm not so much worried about the high-tech information and knowledge that is perhaps about to be lost -- most of it is frivolous wrt to basic human survival -- you can't eat your iPod. but I'm deeply worried about the more fundamental, essential information and knowledge that has already been -- often deliberately -- wiped out to make way for "newer better more profitable" monocrops (literal and figurative) and fossil fuel dependency. The old joke about cashiers who are unable to do basic subtraction w/o an electronic cash register is not so funny; metaphorically speaking it describes large sectors of our society. I heard a funny story from a Kiwi about military "cooperation" exercises with US troops, in which the US detachment got lost because their GPS failed and they did not know how to read a paper map. Maybe this was a slight exaggeration, but it sounded pretty circumstantial.

In essence what technocratic culture does is to Enclose competence and knowledge in the hands of an elite caste of designers, planners, and engineers, while removing and "obsoleting" more and more skill and knowledge from the work and lives of the masses of their fellow citizens. It's the ultimate in "convenience" -- no need to think or to know anything! To what extent this inculcated cluelessness and uselessness is a contributory cause of depression, anomie, bad social behaviours etc I have no idea; but it does scare me that the majority of people I know are utterly dependent on technology they neither understand nor are able to repair, on food/water systems completely opaque, unaccountable and out of their control, and "magical" supplies of energy which they cannot replicate.

In a sense, technocratic culture makes the majority of the population into cargocultists, having neither competency nor sense of provenance wrt the objects and processes of daily life. (The theory was, at least the ostensible theory was, that this would "free the masses from drudgery" and enable us to develop our minds, pursue the arts and higher education, enjoy leisure and so on. In practise it means that people watch an average of 4 hours of stupidity-inducing corporate TV per diem, much of it dedicated to persuading us to buy even more didactic, dependency-inducing machines.) This essential helplessness and dependency -- on such a fragile system directed by such irresponsible and often malignant powers (such as the neoliberal mafia today, but the industrial boss class has never been folks I'd care to share a bus bench with), scares the heck outta me, and not in some Rugged Individualist way... it scares me for all of us. I don't think any of us can escape the consequences. The ratchet effect has got hold of us, and how are we to get out?

As a counterbalance to the classic C for L I offer McKibben's The Age of Missing Information, a book-length musing on the kinds of information that are being lost every day as we continue on our present course... we are already in a dystopian regime of ignorance and information loss.

What scares the bejeezus out of me is the prospect of a crash that wipes out the machine-tech iron lung on which a majority of the world pop now depends utterly, without sufficient time to recover/relearn the information that was scornfully tossed aside as we embraced our dependency. We have become kinda like a rich man's children who have never had to learn real skills or get a real job; we're fine so long as the trust fund is sound, but if our family lawyer bungles it and loses the lot on a bad investment, we're totally unprepared for the real world. It's a Bubble Economy in more than one sense... there's a boy-in-the-bubble aspect to it as well.

And having said all that, gloomily, I will admit that the enduring popularity of Make Magazine, of internet Kewl Hack sites, the hacker subculture, culture jammers, technology repurposing, not to mention the legions of hobbyists who feel the deep human need to exercise manual skill, dexterity, ingenuity -- all suggest that the instinct for workmanship [Veblen], the thirst for autarky and creativity, and the tinkering gene are not extinct in us -- it's just that most of us are no longer given any useful outlet for them. The ingenuity and solidarity of local communities responding to the Katrina disaster was as inspiring as the official governmental response was appalling. It may be that on the far side of Hubbert's Peak we get a glimpse of what is best in us, not just what we fear. Maybe technocrats will even learn to scale their ingenuity down to the point where it empowers the people at large rather than aggrandising the investor and manager class and rendering everyone else dependent and mystified :-)

I can envision a soft landing without the loss of all our high tech expertise, and with the recovery of at least some (many losses are already irreversible) of the wealth of knowledge that we've been throwing away. But it is only one of a wide range of possibilities, most of which seem more likely and less palatable.

... I wish I had enjoyed the 70's more while they lasted... lately I seriously doubt that I will live to see any better days, more likely worse and worse ones. at least back then one had a sense of hope, there was still enough time to take corrective action. but that hope failed. now, all bets are off and each new survey of our biotic status suggests that the damage is worse and progressing faster than previously estimated; some mornings I can't bear to look at the climate or bio science news.

gotta go fall over... civilisation may be tottering on its undermined foundations, but we still need to sleep... if this post is less than lucid, chalk it up to a long day sorting and packing books. if all goes well, the creek don't rise and the world don't end before then, I leave the US at the end of December. [expect my posting to be very sparse from now on].

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Sun Sep 23rd, 2007 at 03:46:18 AM EST

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (4.00 / 5)

I can always count on you and "your pal Stan Goff" to whack me out of my comfort zone.

I leave the US at the end of December. [expect my posting to be very sparse from now on].

Is that sparse until you resettle, or sparse for good?

.. I wish I had enjoyed the 70's more while they lasted... lately I seriously doubt that I will live to see any better days, more likely worse and worse ones.

I think with the benefit of hindsight, in another 30 years we will come to regret not having heeded the warning signs (and dire warnings, and measured warnings) that were beginning to manifest themselves. The people who had been enjoying the 60's and 70's grew up, became sensible, and embarked on plundering instead of re-engineering society for sustainability. I cannot be responsible for political decisions made before I was 10 years old, but I have to take responsability for the political decisions made now that I'm past 30.

I can envision a soft landing without the loss of all our high tech expertise, and with the recovery of at least some (many losses are already irreversible) of the wealth of knowledge that we've been throwing away. But it is only one of a wide range of possibilities, most of which seem more likely and less palatable.

How likely do you think a soft landing is? I would be happy with mitigation of the loss of knowledge, let alone recovery of what has been thrown away.

What scares the bejeezus out of me is the prospect of a crash that wipes out the machine-tech iron lung on which a majority of the world pop now depends utterly, without sufficient time to recover/relearn the information that was scornfully tossed aside as we embraced our dependency.

In that context I have to say half the time I feel like I have a completely useless set of skills. I absolutely need a rather sophisticated culture to function in. Subsistence farming won't cut it.

Oye, vatos, dees English sink todos mi ships, chinga sus madres, so escuche: el fleet es ahora refloated, OK? — The War Nerd

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Sep 23rd, 2007 at 05:08:30 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (4.00 / 4)

I don't think it was or will be just subsistence farming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000#Islamic_world

But check out the world population back then!

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

by rg (leopold dot lepster at google mail dot com) on Sun Sep 23rd, 2007 at 05:46:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (none / 1)

The Caliphate inherited the Hellenistic and Persian cities and was an urban civilisation. Just yesterday DoDo was saying that he agrees with De that it is the large cities that will be hit the worst by the coming crisis.

Oye, vatos, dees English sink todos mi ships, chinga sus madres, so escuche: el fleet es ahora refloated, OK? — The War Nerd

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Sep 23rd, 2007 at 06:11:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (none / 1)

That almost goes without saying. Cities are already nasty places, and don't understand the concept of sustainability.

The best you could hope for is an internal split into towns and villages with live agricultural centres surrounded by dead zones.

Bulldozing houses is much quicker and cheaper than putting them up.

But anyone with a hankering for pastoralism needs to consider that a new dark ages will inevitable create a new war lord class, intent on reducing most of the population to feudal slavery just because they want to, and can.

The most likely outcome is a pre-medieval stockade system, with heavily fortified population centres in the middle of agricultural land, where the peasants are largely considered expendable.

You may be able to tend your homestead in peace in less densely populated areas, but it's not going to be an option within a couple of hundred miles of any reasonably sized city.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sun Sep 23rd, 2007 at 07:30:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (none / 1)

a new dark ages will inevitable create a new war lord class, intent on reducing most of the population to feudal slavery

umm, haven't we already got them?

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Sun Sep 23rd, 2007 at 04:36:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (4.00 / 2)

We've always had them, but politically they were mostly kept in check from the end of WWII to the early 70s.

So far, they've operated in a relatively restrained way in the West itself. What I'm talking about is the everyday experience of state-organised death and violence, which is not something most people are personally familiar with.

Once that phase starts most cities will start to look like Baghdad, only with nowhere to escape to.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sun Sep 23rd, 2007 at 06:24:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (none / 1)

"nowhere to escape to" including your little homestead in the middle of nowhere.

Oye, vatos, dees English sink todos mi ships, chinga sus madres, so escuche: el fleet es ahora refloated, OK? — The War Nerd

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Sep 24th, 2007 at 01:31:50 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (none / 1)

Cities are already nasty places, and don't understand the concept of sustainability.

And the bucolic rural paradises outside the cities do? Our whole society fails to understand the concept of sustainability.

Anyone care to define it?

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Sep 24th, 2007 at 08:16:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (4.00 / 4)

Excerpts from a article that was sent to me by a fellow traveler, the other day.

NB: My own dream has been to haul off to a ruin in the French countryside and build a self-sustainable homestead.

But, but, ahem, what John Michael Greer has to say is sobering.

Equally imaginary is the notion that the best strategy for would-be survivors is to hole up in some isolated rural area with enough firepower to stock a Panzer division, and wait things out. I can think of no better proof that people nowadays pay no attention to history. One of the more common phenomena of collapse is the breakdown of public order in rural areas, and the rise of a brigand culture preying on rural communities and travelers. Isolated survivalist enclaves with stockpiles of food and ammunition would be a tempting prize and could count on being targeted.

So what does work? The key to making sense of constructive action in a situation of impending industrial collapse is to look at the community, rather than the individual or society as a whole, as the basic unit. We know from history that local communities can continue to flourish while empires fall around them. There are, however, three things a community needs to do that, and all three of them are in short supply these days.

The pirate enclaves of the seventeenth-century Carribbean were among the most lawless societies in history, but physicians, navigators, shipwrights, and other skilled craftsmen were safe from the pervasive violence, since it was in everyone's best interests to keep them alive.

The second thing a community needs in the twilight of industrial society is a core of people who know how to do without fossil fuel inputs. An astonishing number of people, especially in the educated middle class, have no practical skills whatsoever when it comes to growing and preparing food, making clothing, and providing other basic necessities.

Well I have a number of practical skills, and I can learn more!, but in isolation they won't do me much good. Greer's analysis is well taken.

by Loefing on Sun Sep 23rd, 2007 at 12:10:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (4.00 / 5)

exactly what I meant when I said that Rugged Individualism was far from my mind. it's a nice consoling fantasy, very suited to the Western fantasty/lit tradition of the Agonal Hero, lone protagonist and star of the drama, but it isn't a human reality...

Maybe it's too soon to give up on the cities...

The author here does the usual urban snark about how icky, icky, icky it would be to catch a whiff of chicken poo in the corridors... but personally I'll take a whiff of honest chicken manure over a miasma of fine diesel particulate any day... and there is enormous potential to green the roofs and sunny faces of urban buildings.

It may be time to rethink the notion of "city" altogether but that requires a separate post and I have to run...

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Sun Sep 23rd, 2007 at 04:41:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (4.00 / 3)

Rugged individualism is an adolescent fantasy about fighting your way through the collapse itself. But what we should be concerned with is how to organise life afterwards. Because making it through a catastrophe is a lottery. The hard part is to rebuild life in the aftermath.

Oye, vatos, dees English sink todos mi ships, chinga sus madres, so escuche: el fleet es ahora refloated, OK? — The War Nerd

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Sep 23rd, 2007 at 04:52:28 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (none / 1)

It may be time to rethink the notion of "city" altogether but that requires a separate post

Rethinking the notion of city. I agree entirely. I believe that central to such a process will be the rethinking of the notion of community, in general, and relationships with one's neighbors, in particular; whether it apply to city, town, village, or rural community.

by Loefing on Mon Sep 24th, 2007 at 10:06:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (4.00 / 4)

By the 10th century, [Baghdad]'s population was between 300,000 and 500,000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad#A_center_of_learning_.288th_to_9th_c..29

That's about the size of the city where I live. I reckon you can more or less see the city limits from a (not so) tall building or vantage point.

Were DeAnander and DoDo talking about this size of population?

Put another way, maybe you can have all the top class science (well, not all, but a lot) going on in a town of 300-500,000. They would be city states, perhaps, so following the less dystopian line it may be a return to something like Italy after the plague (as you said a while back), only with better connections (no reason for entire networks to collapse I don't think), and 21st Century know-how in agricultural practices, building, materials etc.

Or, to put it another way, England has an area of 130,000 sq km and a population of 61 million--London has a population of 7 million (and the rest!); Bulgaria has an area of 110,00 sq km and a population of 7.3 million; this site gives me 43 cities with populations over 7 million, (468 with populations over a million)...

So...I'm suggesting that what was once a city would today be called a medium-sized town.

Another way of thinking about it ("it" being, how could you survive without a modern civilisation around you) is: how reduced does the world's population have to get before you see the disappearance of centres of learning? They existed in 500BC (world population: 100 million--that's the combined populations of Tokyo, Seoul, Ciudad de Mexico, and New York (more or less.)

So, if we see a collapse of world population...hmmm..

6.6 billion today?

-90% = 660 million?

-99%...

6,600,000,000 / 100 = 66,000,000?

So around 500 AD the world population (300 million) was equivalent to 5% of today's population?

Of course if life dies back to small mammal level, it might be trickier...

But I'm assuming that survivors of any catastrophes will be: (add AND/OR between each item)

Intelligent
Farmers
Rearers/butchers of livestock
Materials specialists
Builders
Educators
Computer types
Sailors
Mechanics
Bakers

etc...

Plenty to build a complex civilisation...in fact, I doubt there has ever been a society that completely lacked an aspect of its existence complicated enough for you to find enjoyable....(he types wildly.)

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

by rg (leopold dot lepster at google mail dot com) on Sun Sep 23rd, 2007 at 01:33:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (4.00 / 3)

as to sparseness: sparse (intermittent/unreliable) and possibly less than fully coherent for the next 3 or 4 months as the moving process kicks into high gear. I realise this may seem ridiculous to some of you peripatetic academics, migrant grad students etc. -- who move every 3 or 4 years with fetching nonchalance -- but I've lived in this house for over 20 years so there's rather a lot of cleaning out and organising involved. and what a lovely time to be selling a house, eh? although next year could be worse...

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Mon Sep 24th, 2007 at 01:37:26 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (4.00 / 2)

Dear, dear DeAnander ...

You are suffering a severe case of (what I call) Santa Cruzitis. A wasting disease contracted by prolonged exposure to UC Santa Cruz. Over the past 30 years I've known many sufferers and those many sufferers completely cured once they've relocated away from constant re-infection.

AFAIK, the CDC has not - yet - found the source but I suspect an insidious miasma rising from the various classrooms, lecture halls, & etc.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Sun Sep 23rd, 2007 at 01:57:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (4.00 / 2)

[???] I'm not sure what that was supposed to mean... it sounds, prima facie, provocatively condescending, as if it were about to veer into a ritual snarkfest about birkenstocks and granola (neither of which figures largely in my daily routine) -- and doesn't actually address any specific point. Care to expand a bit?

As it so happens, my credentialled function at UC Santa Cruz is to be a senior technocrat in Big Science. I am leaving the institution -- among other reasons -- because I've come to the end of my rope w/that culture :-)

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Sun Sep 23rd, 2007 at 04:34:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (4.00 / 2)

Considering I eat granola most days and am, as I type, wearing one, of several pair, of Birkies the snarkfest would be self-directed.

Let me put it this way: buried within the innards of the main library are reels of film of Upton Sinclair and other luminaries of EPIC giving speeches, interviews, & so on. This archival material is one-of-a-kind. It exists nowhere else. This film is slowly disintegrating. In the not too far distant future this film will no longer be able to be preserved. The librarians would rather see the film disintegrate than allow outsiders to come into their precious stacks (gollum, gollum) and save it.

This kind of insularity causes people at UCSC to reinforce each others neurosis' until they all turn crazy.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Sun Sep 23rd, 2007 at 06:29:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (4.00 / 3)

So... you disagree with me about some unspecified issue, and therefore I must be neurotic and/or crazy due to overlong confinement in a notorious academic nuthouse? How about specifying the issue and the point of disagreement, rather than this snide ad hominem, which is (a) uncharacteristic in my experience of yr posts, and (b) starting to get a bit irritating?

Anyway, gratuitious (and puzzling) discourtesy aside, I'm still not understanding what the point is. Far from reinforcement, I don't know anyone w/in my institution or my social circle here who feels the same sense of personal urgency that I do about demand reduction, relocalisation etc; this is yet another reason why I'm heading out -- to find a (to my way of thinking) more reality-based community. If there is a collective neurosis in effect at my institution, it manifests (e.g.) as a blind faith that fossil fuel will be cheap forever, so we should go on underfunding the local bus system and building more parking structures :-)

The fate of the film archive you mention is very sad indeed, but NIH and turf behaviour are hardly unique to any one campus or org -- seems pretty universal in my experience. I could tell some tales out of school about the inter-institutional politics of my own line of work, but perhaps better not to :-)

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Mon Sep 24th, 2007 at 01:49:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (4.00 / 2)

Granted, it's very late here and I have no business being awake, never mind writing anything for public consumption, but, and I'm sure AT will correct me if I'm wrong, I think you and geezer have misread him. Rather than prima facie discourtesy, I believe he was originally commisserating with you and attempting to give you some hope that things might not seem so bleak after your move. I suppose the comments could be read both ways, but knowing AT, I'm guessing my interpretation was his original intent. /butting in

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes

by Izzy (izzy at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Sep 24th, 2007 at 04:51:26 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (none / 1)

Hope you're right, Izzy. As I said, it seemed out of character- even after a couple attempts to elicit a substantive comment failed.

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.

by geezer in Paris (risico at wanadoo(flypoop)fr) on Mon Sep 24th, 2007 at 05:15:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (none / 1)

at first reading I thought similar to Izzy.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Mon Sep 24th, 2007 at 07:41:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (none / 1)

I apologize for not making my communications clear.

The choices are now:

Drop it.
I restate the intended communication.

Your call.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Mon Sep 24th, 2007 at 10:57:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (none / 1)

I say drop it.

If everyone in the subthread agrees, the comments can be hidden by a FPer making them "editorial".

Oye, vatos, dees English sink todos mi ships, chinga sus madres, so escuche: el fleet es ahora refloated, OK? — The War Nerd

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Sep 24th, 2007 at 11:12:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (none / 1)

Dear, dear ATinTM.....

We usually do better than this here on ET-

That's why I like to come. That's a pointlessly snarky catty shot, and is not usually your style.

I write it off to a bad hairball--

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.

by geezer in Paris (risico at wanadoo(flypoop)fr) on Mon Sep 24th, 2007 at 02:12:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (none / 1)

Possibly more locally pointed than was necessary, but I think he's right to point out that this thread is highly susceptible to all the cognitive biases that affect small groups reinforcing their opinions and prejudices without very careful examination of the logical steps being made.

I think it's fallen prey to most of them.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Sep 24th, 2007 at 08:19:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (none / 0)

You are yet to provide a "better" top-level comment, though.

Oye, vatos, dees English sink todos mi ships, chinga sus madres, so escuche: el fleet es ahora refloated, OK? — The War Nerd

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Sep 24th, 2007 at 09:55:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (none / 0)

No. Trying to think of one that isn't more contentious.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Sep 24th, 2007 at 09:57:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (none / 0)

More than the diary, or the comments?

Oye, vatos, dees English sink todos mi ships, chinga sus madres, so escuche: el fleet es ahora refloated, OK? — The War Nerd

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Sep 24th, 2007 at 10:01:24 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz (4.00 / 3)

For tired and late, you sure write well.
You covered most of my thoughts, beyond the pleasure of the book itself (which has so far gotten short shrift here).
Small addition:

In essence what technocratic culture does is to Enclose competence and knowledge in the hands of an elite caste of designers, planners, and engineers, while removing and "obsoleting" more and more skill and knowledge from the work and lives of the masses of their fellow citizens.

It goes beyond that. That "elite caste" of technocrats think they are the crown of creation, but they are thenmselves a tool- and the top of the food chain here is the corporate oligarchy- that one quarter of a percent who likely cannot (and need not) ever change a tire. They have a vested interest in keeping the "lower orders" mesmerized by technology and it's toys -ignorant- and therefore dependent and easily manipulated.
Us technocrats will then change the tires of the world for them-- and the recipients of the largest capital redistribution in history dispense the illusion of power to the technocrats to just exactly the degree needed, and no more.

Of course, it aint that simple-
But that's the next layer, Deanander.

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.

by geezer in Paris (risico at wanadoo(flypoop)fr) on Sun Sep 23rd, 2007 at 03:54:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

ETopia: a Canticle for Leibowitz | 151 comments (151 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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