There’s a great deal to mull over there, but one of the chief thoughts I take away from my reading is this: the influence of fiction, cinema, and music over all these developments is truly remarkable — or, to put it another way, I’m struck by the extent to which extremely smart and learned people find themselves imaginatively stimulated primarily by their encounters with popular culture. All these interrelated movements seem to be examples of trickle-up rather than trickle-down thinking: from storytellers and mythmakers to formally-credentialed intellectuals. This just gives further impetus to my effort to restock my intellectual toolbox for (especially) theological reflection.
14 thoughts on “Text Patterns: accelerationism and myth-making”
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We will push the human race forward no matter how many billions have to die in the process of reaching utopia.Report
@leeesq
Utopian thinking can certainly be dangerous, but then so can complacency. Every economic, social and political idea we have was a new one at some point, and if you get into the habit of condemning every attempt to change the world for the better you may end up missing something important. I’m sure there were any number of people who thought the Founding Fathers were making a huge mistake by rejecting tried-and-true monarchism for some utopian experiment with democracy.Report
My objection is not to new ideas or their implementation but using people as things to implement said ideas and not stopping to see if your implementation is causing more suffering than necessary. People as groups or individuals should not have to be blood sacrifices on the alter of progress varyingly defined. How you implement the ideas are just as important as what ideas you are implementing.Report
See, they’ll make a conservative out of you yet!
(I mean, seriously, you sound just like Buckley standing athwart history. And you’re correct)Report
Liberals have their own version of Buckley’s standing athwart history. We usually use it against economic and technological dislocation rather than social dislocation.Report
The best part is that they do it while calling themselves “progressives” with a straight face.Report
This is exactly like when Harry told Hermione that they needed to use Quidditch tactics against Voldemort.Report
Wait, is he saying that telling stories based on extrapolating technological and cultural trends is some sort a new thing?Report
Maybe he’s trying to accelerate that view to a speed at which you don’t notice it’s not new.Report
In the vein of this story, read this one.
It’s a fun Guardian story wondering if inequality might lead to speciation.
We’re going to miss the Creationists, when they’re gone…Report
What makes you think the Creationists will be the species that disappears?Report
It seems to me that a huge dose of punctuated equilibrium right into everything is likely to get people to rewrite their priors.
Which, after I say it out loud, sounds silly and trite.Report
Ha ha, I’m not at all surprised to see Warren Ellis cited there. He wrote a short novel recently, “Normal”, which is basically about the kind of derangements you get when people think about the future too hard. It’s pretty good, a sort of horror story that Kimmie’s friends would write (although nothing about methane clathrates as far as I could tell.)Report
DD,
My friend writes quite highly regarded horror stories, yes.
The lonely assassins should ring a bell, no?
(Please to draw connections that i Did Not Actually say).
(Although more relevant is his work on Katawa Shoujo, exploring how disabled children might escape realities through the use of the internet and alternative personas).Report