Philosophical quandary
Mar. 29th, 2002 01:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
garoteI'm recently confronting the idea that the human race is a mass of behaviors that will NOT ultimately sort itself out into a peace-loving utopia of broccoli eating intellectuals who always talk through their problems eloquently.
In fact, history and training are forgotten just as often as they are learned, and in the end we make NO progress except in narrowly relative terms, based on the records we leave behind for future generations to stand on.
This irks me because, I always thought there was some Star-Trek like progression to be made, that would provide eventual escape for us all.
But what do we have to work with, in this avenue, except genetic engineering? And that's a cop-out ... we would no longer be human, to be sure, but we would also be guiding our own evolution in an incestuous desire to indulge the vison-of-the-era.
When people are able to select the physical and mental characteristics of their offspring, what do you see coming up in this society? A big tall man with an 11-inch schlong and a very pricesely determined build, and a 5-foot-11 readheaded nobel-prize-level genius girlie with breasts like teapots.
Whoop de goddamn doo. Fifteen years and the trend will shift, when these people flood the planet, and everyone will want fur, green skin, lizard tongues, claws, and fire-breath. Once again, whoop de goddamn doo.
No, the only thing I see really uniting us and driving us towards a higher purpose, is to discard our humanity like a disused gall-bladder. Ascend into space, assimilate the entire known universe, blah blah blah... But hey, if that's the commonly agreed upon path of enlightenment, ... what gives it any merit?
Perhaps the path to enlightenment is to freeze all our works into one big crystalline lump of data, and die the hell off, and call it a day, so to speak. For everyone.
In fact, history and training are forgotten just as often as they are learned, and in the end we make NO progress except in narrowly relative terms, based on the records we leave behind for future generations to stand on.This irks me because, I always thought there was some Star-Trek like progression to be made, that would provide eventual escape for us all.
But what do we have to work with, in this avenue, except genetic engineering? And that's a cop-out ... we would no longer be human, to be sure, but we would also be guiding our own evolution in an incestuous desire to indulge the vison-of-the-era.
When people are able to select the physical and mental characteristics of their offspring, what do you see coming up in this society? A big tall man with an 11-inch schlong and a very pricesely determined build, and a 5-foot-11 readheaded nobel-prize-level genius girlie with breasts like teapots.
Whoop de goddamn doo. Fifteen years and the trend will shift, when these people flood the planet, and everyone will want fur, green skin, lizard tongues, claws, and fire-breath. Once again, whoop de goddamn doo.
No, the only thing I see really uniting us and driving us towards a higher purpose, is to discard our humanity like a disused gall-bladder. Ascend into space, assimilate the entire known universe, blah blah blah... But hey, if that's the commonly agreed upon path of enlightenment, ... what gives it any merit?
Perhaps the path to enlightenment is to freeze all our works into one big crystalline lump of data, and die the hell off, and call it a day, so to speak. For everyone.
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no subject
Date: 2002-03-29 11:35 pm (UTC)I was actually thinking about this very subject just a few days ago. It really seems like technology has changed, and scietal 'norms' have changed, but fundamentally people are exactly the same as they were 1000 years ago.
We don't seem to be a whole lot closer to "just all getting along" than we ever were, you know?
Then again, maybe we are. After all, I wasn't alive back then; I only 'know' about ancient societies what this society's books have taught me. Reality could be very, very different.
Y'all know I could complain about 9000 things that I think need to change. Really though, if all of those things actually changed it would probably make me happy for about 10 minutes. It would just give rise to all kinds of other problems.
What am I talking about?
Maybe I should be doing something morally reprehensible right now instead of writing this.
-A