a strange moment of mono no aware

[postrodent]

Comments

[ff00ff]

What else can you do? You can't live forever, that's what I'm doing. That plan is taken, do you hear me?

[postrodent]

I had kind of hinged my earlier plans on that, but then I also figured on living in a social democracy, so. :)

[lionmage]

So does this mean you really have given up on the Ray Kurzweil fantasy of a benign Singularity that's going to make us all fabulously transhuman and immortal? Now that I'm no longer feeling the fading glow of Kurzweil's wild-eyed optimism, I'm realizing that most folks are simply not useful or interesting enough to be worth turning into transhumans

[postrodent]

All hail the new flesh

[krinndnz]

That's got a resonation with me since today I spent hours (and may spend a couple more) being a fairly direct agent of the washing-away.

[postrodent]

Um... are you working in the history refineries of the Ministry of Truth, or just slaving away for another one of those businesses that's undermining the republic? I have a curious. :)

[rainbow_gash]

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_angrynerd_geekculture/all/1

[postrodent]

Hmm, interesting. I wasn't entirely digging it until he made that comment about "pop culture pastimes will revolve around politics and farming". I'm not sure how seriously to take that. :) While I think it's interesting to try to take back those secret, hidden chambers of pre-digital culture, I'm more interested in imagining a time that has no pop culture as we know it, only a fog of zero-budget digital and physical folk art, with the barriers-to-entry largely lowered by computers and omnipresent low-end educational possibilities (instructables), and hopefully informed by the history of art as practiced by people who aren't stars.

[rainbow_gash]

I take it Bono isn't on your To-Do list? ;)

[postrodent]

No, but Bowie is, which I think makes me a giant hypocrite. Moral failures are such a bummer. :)

[eslington]

So what you're saying is, I should arrange to have my livejournal carved onto the moon with a laser?

[postrodent]

I think writing it into the junk DNA of some rats or something would be a better bet. Those guys will probably survive anything we can throw at the planet.

[wolodymyr]

I love it when you post, which isn't often enough.

Yep, it's coming whether you watch television or not, care about the virginity of your olive oil or not, buy fair trade coffee or not.

I'm going to medical school in hopes of being more useful when it happens, but medicine is basically entirely predicated on things remaining as they are. So I'm just rearranging deck chairs. Every so often, I start making plans. I need to not.

So I'm glad when you post.

[postrodent]

Heh, yes. We know it's coming, but in the meantime, _this_ system keeps on (more often than not) feeding us and (always, always, ALWAYS) distracting us. It's hard to hold this awareness in the front of your brain. And very hard to do anything about it alone. I'm trying to form a tribe, and hope to start growing some veggies this spring. I'm also trying to learn how to repair electronics, because these little boxes contain things people care very strongly about, and they'll probably care all the more when their own reality is that much more straitened. Movie theaters made major coin during the Depression, after all.

[ff00ff]

Oh, did I misinterpret the tone of this thread? Is it not the advancement of time and size of the universe making one's achievements and hopes and wants irrelevant and impermanent? I don't think being a doctor would help with that particular problem. I suppose you are talking about the coming apocalypse that always seems to be five years away?