🚀 go-pugleaf

cas@muffin.pronet.com (Craig Sanders) writes:

>cjmount@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Christopher Mountford) writes:

>[blah blah blah blah blah - more crap deleted ]

>> Of course. And that's a problem. It's just plain old ordinary everyday
>> ignorance. It's not a conspiracy. It's not about demonising men. It's 
>> about opening minds. It's a difficult thing to accomplish en masse.

>Well you may as well just fucking give up if that's what you're attempting.
>Enlightenment en masse is a contradiction in terms.  Not only are the
>majority of the human race just plain dumb (how else can this world be
>explained?), but opening minds just can not be achieved on a mass scale
>- you may be able to convince one or two in one-on-one conversation,
>you can even shock a dozen or two into wakefulness with appropriately
>outrageous actions and statements, but you just can't wake up sheep with
>the same sort of mass-marketing techniques used to induce and maintain
>their sleepy stupor.

I agree that I would be a naive idealist, as opposed to a rational idealist
to think that I have or could have achieved very much in the way of opening
minds. Indeed I never expected to make much headway. But every little bit
does contribute to the general raising of awareness. The world is obviously
fucked. Many people have an innate ability to see this, but also remember
that there are plenty of things which have changed. Slowly over centuries,
just beyond the timescales of human thought. We see this in history and 
literature and philosophy. I think the very thinnest edge of the wedge of
an elightenment, maybe not of "the" masses, but of the significant proportion
of people who *will* think, is who I am aiming at. Perhaps I don't present
as a revolutionary, I am utterly bored of the possiblity anyway, I just 
don't want to shut up because of the pathetic idea that there is no use
in making a point. Things do change, and *people* do it. There are always
thinkers amogst the herd, those who will reach for the light, come out
of the cave. To see things more purely than they would reasonably have been
expected to given their circumstances. I am someone who thinks of themself
as convincable of truth. I think it's "out there". And so are plenty who
listen to honest attempts to raise the human race out of the bullshit,
bit by bit. Perhaps that's the antithesis of cyberpunk, but I think cp
can be detatched from particular human reactions to a postmodern cultural
ghosting.


>-- 
>cas@muffin.apana.org.au

>    "Organise a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it
>     does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty."
>                              -- Hakim Bey, The Temporary Autonomous Zone


Never Underestimate the Human Response.

Engine.