Atta (9): 242: Today's kick-ass question

[Bryan Snyder]

Where's that left turn we should be taking???!!!  

Maybe that's the question Ruggles wants us to ponder... they are so easy to
spot in retrospect.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of robinlandseadel at comcast.net
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2007 11:18 AM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: Atta (9): 242: Today's kick-ass question

I think the genie's out of the bottle (this naturally traverse web we wander
in right now), I think kids are gonna get weirder, there's a new wave of
freaks on the horizon, and the era we're in will be remembered as a disaster
of epic proportions. There will probably be plenty of places where crazed
alpha males continue to hypnotize the willing masses, but there's too much
strange knowledge in the world for us to ever turn back, and pockets of
anarchy will naturally increase as information becomes impossible to manage.
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Daniel Harper" <daniel.e.harper at gmail.com>
> I've gotta head to work in a sec, but in my darker moments I worry 
> that this concept we call liberal democracy is basically coming to an 
> end. Right now it's really only Western Europe and parts of North 
> America that even pay lip service to things like freedom of speech and 
> the like, there's been a gradual creep towards oppressive religion 
> even in this country, and the forces of good can't hold off the powers of
totalitarianism forever.
> 
> I'd only be mildy suprised if we aren't living in a de facto theocracy 
> before my natural life has ended. And Western Europe isn't that far 
> behind....
> 
> On 5/17/07, Monte Davis <monte.davis at verizon.net> wrote:
> >
> >  Mike Bailey writes:
> >
> > > actually, don't you think it's really the coming thing, and that
> > lopsided power relations are
> > > gradually being phased out systemwide as unsatisfactory to all
> > concerned?
> >
> > Umm.... no. I'm somewhat sanguine about reductions in "lopsidedness" 
> > on racial, sexual, and imperial lines -- but on a 50-to-500 year 
> > time scale, I don't see that nation-states, corporations, religions 
> > -- or political systems advancing claims akin to those of religions 
> > -- are in much danger of "being phased out."
> >