brdfrd reappears!

good stuff! i wish i could comment on all of it, but having not been at work for 1.5 days, i'm kinda busy. however, i'll throw down some stuff now and maybe some more later after i've had some time to digest. "Firsthand experiences and pleasures are personal and unmediated. No one, in the name of progress, will take away from you the experience of lying on a beach, walking in the woods, sitting in a comedy club, or shopping at a flea market. But firsthand experiences aren't' always rewarding. For example, waiting in line is a firsthand experience, but we have been trying to invent ways to avoid it ever since we first queued up." I think the thing that scares me about this, like cloning, etc., is the subjectivity of phrases like "aren't always rewarding" versus the permanence of phrases like "take away from you." There may be some who would argue that lying on a beach isn't as rewarding as standing in a line. That sounds ridiculous, but I think it's always important to remember that, while choices about what is and isn't "rewarding" in the present (e.g., discipline doesn't feel to rewarding now but is over the long term) where we are myopic anyway, technological "giving and taking away" can be both socially and materially permanent. Bill Gates (like the Alphas in Brave New World) may be able to give us what we want--but at the expense of taking what we need. "Where else could they turn? How far off the mark might it be to simply say that the postmodern condition is essentially post-personal and that's why we irrationally personalize everything...?" To me, politics seems just another realm of the specialist. Though I disagree with much of what he says, Michael Moore seems to be bringing the concept of democracy, self-rule, issues-oriented versus entertainment politics (a la Aaahnooold) back. His tactics are a little weird and intrusive sometimes and perhaps focus more on him than the problems at hand. But he is concerned with social justice and is pushing that into the face of the specialist politicians--liberal as well as conservative. When it comes down to it, our problem is superficiality more than almost anything. We care, and do, too little as a nation. We think too little; we talk too much; when we do think, we think about how to make ourselves richer. That post-personalism seems just another symptom of the deeper evil of superficiality