World Enough and Time

They're terrifying. And they're rich. They're like, I don't know, Invasion From the Planet of the Delusional. I find it well-nigh impossible to believe they are real but that's just denial in the sad face of truth.

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There were times in my youth when I felt like I had a bulls-eye painted on me.

I feel that way now.

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There's a Whovian quote that fits the situation aptly, something people who alter their views to fit the facts and those who alter facts to fit their views...and the discomfort you face if you're deemed among the facts to be altered.

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jkluge.livejournal.com

Welcome to my world -- I feel like that guy every day, only without the luxurious accomodations.

And, of course, the fact that, after a week, he could leave.

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It's horrifying to an outsider's eyes, I tell you. Worse than frightening.

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silverwhistle.livejournal.com

As a European, I'd find their delusions about Europe risible if they weren't so scarily convinced by them. Do they travel much? Or do they travel with their eyes as closed as their minds?

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Presumably they only travel with each other, and only in American, and don't want to be distracted by the truth.

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attolia.livejournal.com

Sigh, where is an iceberg when you need one?

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I didn't read all of it, but I read enough of it to know I needed to print it and look at it later.

Gad.

Now you know more about the world I live in, I am sorry to say. I work with some of these people, every day of the week.

And they believe that they mean well.

As I said... gad.

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I would say that these people are living in fear, and don't want to admit that they have created it for themselves, so they cast it outside themselves and look for scapegoats. They are upset that the world isn't like it was supposed to be, back when they were dependent upon elders and everything will always be taken care of, don't you worry. I find them sad, and embarrassing, and hope that they don't ever get more control of my life than they already have....

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You hit it: they are rich. Their massive wealth insulates them from the reality that the mass of average people live within. Thus, they can speak about it in abstract terms, and even deny that parts of it exist, and there you go. Money is mind-poison, sometimes it seems.

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I would say that these people are living in fear, and don't want to admit that they have created it for themselves

Yes, well - remember my belief that fear is the root of all evil? Fear makes people hate what they fear, and if they don't understand it, they hate it all the more, even if the bogeymen are figments of their imaginations.

everything will always be taken care of, don't you worry

The downside, perhaps, of the information revolution. People learn just enough to fan the fear and not enough to learn how to cope with it.

I find them sad, and embarrassing, and hope that they don't ever get more control of my life than they already have....

Amen to that!

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they believe that they mean well.

That's maybe the scariest part of all. The person I found most frightening (and disgusting) was the black politician who thought it was perfectly okay to court votes from Ku Klux Clan members. As if ideology means nothing.

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LOL. Brilliant.

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Their massive wealth insulates them from the reality that the mass of average people live within.

And, I imagine, insulates them from a sense of the humanity of everyone else. Which is why they can become so clueless.

I shake my head in sad disbelief.

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Oh, you clever man! I didn't know the quote, so I looked it up. It's from the episode "The Face of Evil" by Chris Boucher, the words being spoken by the fourth Doctor:

The Doctor: The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.

What a wonderful quote. And yes, so very apropos of this conversation.

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I like to think that we are insulated from quite that level of venality. Of course, if and when people start dropping bombs on the world, it doesn't really matter who's on which side of anything - borders, ideologies, or wealth-barriers.

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duncanmac.livejournal.com

What bothers me is that it makes me think of Weimar Germany ... just before the Nazis took over.

Who is the Adolf Hitler ... or Nehemiah Scudder ... waiting in the wings?

[Nehemiah Scudder is a character invented by Robert Heinlein -- a preacher who leads a religious revolution and establishes a dictatorship in the USA.]

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Cycles of history, you think?

I don't think we need to worry about the German precedent. I think the world always has polarities like that; the thing is that we don't usually see the polaritary that is opposite to our own. I don't (thank goodness!) move in those circles. So when I glimpse them, it's like a horror story. But it isn't new or old or part of a trend. It's just there. And they could have disastrous consequences to the world, certainly - they've already had disastrous consequences to Iraq! - but the odds are that the world will carry on despite them.

Or so I hope.

They're really not scarier than the suicide bombers and rich right-wing fundamentalist Muslim leaders. Just... the same side of a different coin.

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Very scary! I can't believe I read the whole thing. But it was horribly fascinating! (and perhaps I'm procrastinating)

As a geneticist I do wonder, those religious groups that promote proliferation -- will they take over society in a 50 years just because there are so many? Islam and Catholicism do tend to advocate having many children.

And the educated tend not to procreate quite as much. I find that a scary unbalanced situation in the long run. 100? 200? years from now.

Not that I believe anything that the people in the article believe. But I do wonder about this a bit. Now and then.

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it was horribly fascinating!

It was.

As a geneticist I do wonder, those religious groups that promote proliferation -- will they take over society in a 50 years just because there are so many?

I don't feel terribly worried about this because there are social issues as well. The tendency of people to go for a higher standard of living (and then have fewer children), and the tendency of factors like intelligence and personality to reach thir own levels of intelligence and personality.

Yes, there is imbalance and sometimes I've astounded that civilization has lasted this long.

That being said... the worse and bigger imbalances are between the rich and poor - by which I mean, those who can eat and those who can't - those who are living in terms of suffering and those who have comfort. And that cuts across religious and ethnic grounds all the way.

Bottom line; It's an imperfect world but it always has been.

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Good points. Yeah, probably rich/poor is a lot more definitive. Just thinking as a geneticist where more procreation means better survival in evolutionary terms, but that's not necessarily the correct way of thinking about this topic.

The world -- she is a crazy place! (don't know who I'm misquoting)

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In evolutionary terms, large families have served us well for millennia. In terms of social engineering - I'm not sure that's ever under our control, unless in simply intellectual terms. We can't stop those who have unfortunate political views, but we can counter them by making our own views known - not just in the realm of war and politics (where I never have any faith anyway) but in terms of communication, art, literature, movies, TV, getting the right messages out any way that is available.

Ah - it would be a better world if everyone read Bujold!

She's a crazy world but she's all we've got.

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Definitely in evolutionary terms, but that's a very different timescale. Social stuff, well that's different like you say.

Bujold rules! ;-)

You mean we don't have any other worlds colonized yet? :-(

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You mean we don't have any other worlds colonized yet? :-(

I can't think why not. We ought to at least have Alpha Colony up and running by now!

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I've seriously come out of a book-reading spree and had to think what was actually real and true of our world. I think Heinlein was the culprit. I was quite disappointed when I left the reverie. :-)

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Heinlein can be such fun. I haven't read him in years.

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And last I checked the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, we've got close to 250 planets orbiting other stars logged in so far.

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That's where Spider Robinson got his newspaper column title, wasn't it?

The Crazy Years.

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Sounds about right!

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That gives us a place to start.

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246 places to start at last count. (http://exoplanet.eu/catalog.php) Solstation.com might have a few more ideas.

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Such a lovely big universe.

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Yes. It gives a person pause. And that is not the first time I've heard of a modern-day black American making excuses for the KKK. It seems that some people think that the KKK truly is nothing, these days, but a social club, with family outings and quilting bees and raffles to benefit the local park, and such.

Forgive the falling-back onto insipid stereotype, but I didn't invent the story; I think it's actually a Native American tale, and at any rate I heard it repeated by Iron Eyes Cody: A young Native man was looking to do something noble, and chose to walk to the top of a snow-capped mountain and back without provisions and with only a light jacket. He made it to the top, and on his way down, as he neared the treeline, he heard a weak voice calling for help. There in the snow was a rattlesnake, near death. Please pick me up and take me back into the warmth, have mercy! The young man said, But you're a snake -- I'm sure you'd as soon bite me as look at me. No, no, I'd never do that, said the snake -- please, save my life. So the young man picked up the snake, put it under his jacket, and carried it back to the green, growing area... and, just as he was taking it out to set it onto the ground, the rattlesnake bit him savagely and then jumped free. Why did you do that? the young man cried in despair. You knew what I was when you picked me up, said the rattlesnake.

See what I mean by "please forgive me for going along with idiotic stereotyping"? Sorry! But the point of the tale is clear, I'd say. I need to figure out a variant of it that carries the same obvious message while not maligning an innocent species of living creature....

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And that's the state of mind that our current acting-president dwells within. Now you maybe understand him slightly better.

Incidentally, my department chair, who himself lives with ADHD, has recognized the current Bush as a similar individual. Myself, I recognize some parts of myself in him, too. He is not, for instance, stupid or unintelligent, as some detractors have said; he does, however, have a rather pronounced processing delay and cannot verbalize quickly, nor does he remember things verbatim. This does not make him "retarded" but it does point up how quickly some people jump on using that term as an insult.

I don't like him because he's so totally out of touch with most of the people who didn't elect him. Also most of those who did vote for him. He's a fool, but he is not a "dummy."

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No, I don't understand Bush at all. Not in psychological terms - I know far too little about him to comment at all on that - I don't look at the man at all, I look at the results of his politics. He brings out the anarchistic streak in me. Amazing that anyone with a 'processing delay' would be in politics at all, let alone successful in politics. But I don't believe it's him... it's his support group which has been successful. He's a puppet, and happy to be so.

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