Vegging vs. Geeking [Re: Intelligent Design - the Creationists]

[kent mueller]

Well, so many of the causes of the Right in America are just irrelevant,
finally.  A anti-flag-burning amendment to the constitution? Like we're
knee-deep in half-burned flags out here. Prayer in school? Don't sweat it,
buddy, as long as they keep giving tests, there's gonna be prayer in school.
An anti-gay marriage amendment? Come on, maybe half of 5-10% of the
population wants to marry...can they do worse than heteros with a 50%
divorce rate? Intelligent Design?

Bill Hicks had a line about "Why are so many of the institutions of society
falling apart? Because they're IRRELEVANT!!" (paraphrase). Scares the hell
out of conservatives American or Islamic that that might be true.

Times of uncertainty send weak people on snipe hunts for crutches and scape
goats. Usually, the sane pull the insane back before it's too late, but you
never know in America, the pendulum of public opinion here has a tendency to
slam from side to side, instead of modulating around the middle.

Kent 

> From: David Casseres <david.casseres at gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 11:01:30 -0700
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: Vegging vs. Geeking [Re: Intelligent Design - the Creationists]
> 
> On 10/5/05, jporter <jp3214 at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> 
>> On Oct 4, 2005, at 10:43 PM, Rcfchess at aol.com wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> From: Rcfchess at aol.com
>>> Date: October 4, 2005 10:43:27 PM EDT
>>> To: artkm at execpc.com
>>> Subject: Re: Intelligent Design - the Creationists' Latest Wheeze
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Don't think it's really accurate (or maybe it is, come to think of it,
>>> in a way) to call it "willful"; people get conditioned to not think,
>>> to accept the stupidities that they've been brought up to believe are
>>> right and automatic and unquestionable...not that that's acceptable if
>>> we want a better world. I suppose you could say it's willful that they
>>> choose to remain ignorant rather than allow themselves to at least be
>>> open to considering other points of view...this is not meant to be
>>> interpreted as being in favor of creationism, which is not a new idea
>>> at all, just a phony redressing of old, antiscientific, religious
>>> doctrine, which is totally unthinking. That, in a way, is the most
>>> obnoxious thing about it: its hypocritical nature, pretending that
>>> it's open-minded when in fact it's exactly the opposite.
>>> 
>>> RF
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> It seems the great fear- and let's be honest- that's what it is, fear,
>> of the "scientifically minded" in this debate, is that their children
>> are somehow going to be indoctrinated with "phony" "old" "anti-
>> scientific" doctrines, which will somehow turn them into unthinking
>> automatons, despite the fact that no one is attempting to ban the
>> teaching of "straight" science in the classroom.
>> 
>> The real underlying cause of this fear, I suspect, has nothing to
>> do with "truth" or objectivity, but the realization by parents that
>> the majority of their kids, given the choice,  would much rather
>> skip school altogether in order to veg out in front of Star Wars
>> videos, or play video games, often with highly religious or magical
>> overtones- and this, at a time, when as Neal Stephenson suggests,
>> we are as dependent as ICU patients on the highly complex
>> technological  support systems which keep us alive.
>> 
>> Scientists and technologists have the same uneasy
>> status in our society as the Jedi in the Galactic Republic.
>> They are scorned by the cultural left and the cultural right,
>> and young people avoid science and math classes in hordes.
>> The tedious particulars of keeping ourselves alive, comfo-
>> rtable and free are being taken offline to countries where
>> people are happy to sweat the details, as long as we have
>> some foreign exchange left to send their way. Nothing is
>> more seductive than to think that we, like the Jedi, could be
>> masters of the most advanced technologies while living simple
>> lives: to have a geek standard of living and spend our copious
>> leisure time vegging out.
>> 
>> If the "Star Wars" movies are remembered a century from
>> now, it'll be because they are such exact parables for this
>> state of affairs. Young people in other countries will watch
>> them in classrooms as an answer to the question: Whatever
>> became of that big rich country that used to buy the stuff we
>> make? The answer: It went the way of the old Republic.
>> 
>> Parents are scared that their kids are going to opt for vegging out
>> instead
>> of geeking out, as Stephenson suggested in that op-ed piece. Eastern
>> Science may very well eclipse and dominate Western Science, which
>> will be the ultimate victory for eastern philosophy, and the cultures
>> that
>> produced it.
>> 
>> jody
>> 
>> Read Stephenson here:
>> 
>> 
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17stephenson.html?
>> ex=1276660800&en=a693ccc4ec008424&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
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