 
To: angst+@CMU.EDU
Subject: mythic engineering, O.Col caveat
From: wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (Bill Eichman)
Comments: Validated
Message-Id: 
Date: 	Sat, 21 Nov 1992 05:30:10 -0500
Organization: The Heart of Gold BBS, Lemont PA

>From:   Thomas_Price@KANGA.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU
>If there's going to be a cultural leap ... we need new myths.
>(Actually, there's more detail available than that -- we need a new
>spatial experience (which we have -- telemedia) out of which come the
>related developments of a new mathematical consciousness, a new monumental
>architecture, and new myths ... Oswald Spengler's _Decline of the West_
>is the relevant reference book here) So we need people able to hack
>around with them. The problem that I see so far is that most people
>working with myths are fruitcakes. What we need are talented people
>who have a *cynical* take on the hippie worldview: all religion is metaphor,
>all magic is either metaphor or electromagnetism. The human body produces

Everything you say above is very, very true.

All I can say is _go for it_, seriously, do it, in whatever way you can.
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^
Mythic engineering is tough to talk about, occuring as it does in the
collective and the unconcious, with only it's iceberg tip sticking out
into the world of words and text. Give it a shot-- I'm listening.

You guys are unlucky enough to be blasted with my myths, in the form of
my writing. Blast me with your myths. They all fit together somehow....

I only ask one thing-- don't tell me what society should do-- tell me
what _you_ are doing, and going to do. Bless me with the bottom line!

>populations it spreads into. Nowadays we need to fight with every weapon
>we have, and there's more out there than (the vital weapons of) corporate
>legal organization and biotechnology.

Absolutely. Each/all has/have unique skills to contribute.

>I agree and on pragmatic, temperamental, and ethical grounds I suggest that
>the easiest and most secure self-defense will be poverty and mobility.
>If you've got nothing but the clothes on your back, a rucksack with notebooks,
>your incoming mail, and the enduring friendships of your scattered
>co-conspirators, "they" can't break you and they won't need to kill you.

That's pretty much my plan, although leaning more towards poverty and
innocuousness. A semi-mobility, but I personally don't figure on being
too nomadic. More migratory-- south in the winter, north in the summer.
If I can.

>talking about as much of a frontier as the ocean -- the post-cataclysmic
>social consciousness, to be precise -- and I don't think it'll be nearly as
>hard to live as a Humanist Mendicant, so to speak, as it will be to organize
>sea-stations of the kind Bill has been posting about.

You know, I'm beginning to realize that you guys have gotten the wrong
idea with these O.Col posts. Let me explain myself a bit more.

Those posts _Were Not Meant_ for the camc list. I posted them mostly for
curiosity's sake. Those essays were specifically crafted memetic
viruses, aimed at the Extropians maillist. The extropians are capitalist
right wing technosupremacists, anti-environmentalist, anti-socialist,
who beleive tyhey will soon be immortal, that nanotechnology will soon
bring unlimited plentitude, and that technological progress alone can
lead to the "singularity" that lifts humans into transhumanity.

I think you guys are getting pain reactions from the very points that
bring the extropians pleasure. I'm playing with mythic and memetic
engineering with those essays, and you guys are picking up the noise of
the memetic/mythic explosion.

Don't take the O.Col post's at their apparent face value. If you read
them carefully you'll see their modest reality-- try to be aware of the
fact that they're 'intentionally designed persuasive propaganda' for a
specific group of people, before you react to them, or judge them.

I don't think it's going to be hard at all for me to retire in the
caribbean, and build an ocean 'community' down there. I expect it to be
very _poor and innocuous_, but I damn well intend to do it.

But I'm not suggesting it for any of you. I don't think we have to worry
much about weapons or buying the patronage of nations. Yes, I want to
buy a crummy little desert island-- so sue me... ;-)

>Has anyone else here thought of Humanist monasticism, or an organization
>along the lines of the religious orders? They kept learning alive through
>the Dark Ages and, being as they are based on close working relationships
>among highly disciplined human spirits

Yep; that would be a good thing to do. I hope you can figure out a way
to make it happen.

One of the things I need is the place and means to have kids around, and
to provide schooling for them and everyone. So, whatever religious order
I'd be in would have to have the facilities for families. Families means
a community-- so I guess what I want is a 'spiritual' community.

Sex is my downfall. I love, love makes me reproduce, and children make
the life of a holy or humanist mendicant scholar impossible.

(Hell, I'm almost a holy and humanist mendicant scholar right now, as
anyone whose seen my beat up old house would attest.... ah, but I want
to have more babies with my lady love; and so once more, I need, or at
least want, community.)

The bottom line is go for it, do it, make it happen, let it happen. If I
can give you a hand, from my position in this blasting community mythos,
I will do my best. But it all depends on you. Dream it, and be it.

Later, Bill


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