As I read the daily papers, and listen to the media I am reminded of FM’s predictions in Upwingers and Telespheres where he wrote- “The stronger mass communications within a country the stronger the people the more vulnerable the government” and Eventually …all dictatorial regimes will have disappeared. They will have receded into history along with tribal systems, monarchies-colonial rule” How right FM was. The internet cannot suppress the desire for change.
Dear Alan, you seem to miss the point. FM is talking about the information revolution and the use of the internet- these were not around during the rise of fascism and communism!!! You have only to look at the internet and the events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, etc. to understand what FM was talking about.
You are correct, Flora; overall things ARE better, or blogging at the Pessimists Club would be the way to go. But the pain, dislocation, heartaches, all of it, are the same as in the ’40s. We two are faraway, safe, we don’t have to experience the reversals of fortune, the endless back & forth the residents of the Mideast experience. Just this weekend (Easter 2011) a hundred were killed in Syria. A hundred isn’t so many deaths, but to those killed one death is one too many, to say the least! Plus the injured aren’t happy unless the injuries are very superficial… like, say, if bullets only shoot our hats off we are going to feel very lucky.
All the same, if the casualty rate remains fairly low (1939- rate rather than 1945 rate) then it is acceptable to those of us sitting in the bleachers watching the football players get their legs broken. What I don’t like is schadenfreude; you aren’t enjoying this, FM wouldn’t have enjoyed it, but some think it is exciting, they gloat over it. During the last decade, men at transhumanist sites were gloating about America’s difficulties in Afghanistan and especially Iraq. The wars were probably mistaken, botched, however it was nothing to feel good about unless a guy is Charles Manson or Jack the Ripper. It is revolting that men enjoy death & mutilation, as if combat is a sport or a video game. It makes me want to give up, knowing how callous some men– very many– are… violence wouldn’t exist to such a degree and on such a scale if such wasn’t the case.
I have been hard on FM, thought he was so busy with tech and the other positives that he somewhat neglected a greater depth in examining other aspects.
I grew up in the ’60s and absorbed the New Frontier outlook– which WAS exciting. However I never dreamed it would be like this; or to write it more accurately, didn’t prepare for it. Someone imagining the possibilities in 1968 wouldn’t necessarily be prepared for the unexpected realities to arrive decades later.
Now they have arrived! So my flaw is sour grapes, living to see the future yet not accepting the fleas coming with the dog; perhaps FM’s flaw was he projected his own integrity on a world where integrity is not very much valued– and please remember how corruption (whatever one defines it as) is trickle down.
We do want to accentuate the positive, however don’t we want to carefully examine the negatives so as to be prepared to minimize them as the future moves along?