The ugly truth of science

[alice wellintown]

Look into a Astro-Biology textbook, or into an Astronomy Webpage, and you
will see beautiful artwork. Artistic simulations of what the data from
distant space probes fed into computers is adding up to. With the space
probe, the computer, we can build entire worlds, above and beyond the
confining fact of nature, and these built worlds are nothing next to the
transformation wrought by science and technology, which has extended our
bodies to manipulate and change the world to fulfill its very own, often
evil and cruel plans for it and its unwitting inhabitants. Much as
Science/Technic claims to educate and warn, Science and Technology has
shown how to destroy before we understand. In P we have several
unmistakable examples. We have the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This, of course, is the Science/technology destruction that continues, even
after we exit the Theatre/Theater to hover above our heads in equations we
can't understand, but in common sense parlance, it's the fucking bomb, and
Science and Technology is only a hindrance to our grasping the
sphincter-tightening reality.   Science/Technology has altered what is to
be a human by giving the species the capacity to totally denude our Earth
with war that escalates to madness and chaos. Remember WWII? madness.
Chaos. GR is a reminder and a warning. Isn't it? Even if the anti-bomb folk
are now pro-bomb for everyone folk, even Iran and N Korea have a right to
the bomb, no? Even if the MAD men are now Peace Men who want to prevent
proliferation while maintaining a huge advantage, even if the threat keeps
the peace or whatever...we have been transformed by the bomb.

McCarthy does delve into this, BYW. _The Road_ is set after some kind of
holocaust that burns the Earth to a crisp.

 In any event, the Earth, the Planet Earth no longer seems a home that we
can live on forever. Science played god, and so we poor preterit must
accept a home, a garden that is not eternal, but has an end to it.

The Second Coming of Science-Technic is Modernity without Restraint.


But don't worry poor fellow, Science-Technology will make you immortal,
ship your frozen head to a new planet or to a space station. The
limitations of Science and Technology, once we see that it has extended our
capacity to Destroy Earth and holds out space stations and frozen heads as
compensation, are clear enough to a common thinker who reads and thinks,
and who knows it's OK to be a reader and thinker even if this opens one to
accusations of Luddism.

Science and Technology is , of course, valuable. We are not going to
abandon it. But we need to understand how Science-Technology has altered
the Earth to make it yield more to satisfy immediate wants, and in the
process has destroyed its beauty, what took Earth with no plan at all,
billions of years to create, Science-Technology has destroyed in a few
thousand years. But not to worry, Science-Technology has photographs and
beauty too. The pink sky over the industrial motherboard is sublime!

Extreme examples? Yes. But there they are. The Bomb. Man-made global
warning or whatever term you prefer.
Extreme examples made weak arguments. But consider how powerful they are. A
Paradox is useful. Contradictions are often powerful. Common sense is often
more powerful than logic. A Carpenter is often more important than an
Astro-Biologist.

So how close to the bleeding edge do we need to go? Do we need to force our
Scientists to pull a trigger and blow a child's head off? Would that bleed
into his/her mind deep enough and disturb the comfort he/she takes in
mouse-clicking a village to dust? Do we need to strap a Scientist to a
Drone so he/she can see what he/she has done? Are mediated Deaths an orgasm
in the chamber of the white visitation?

The specifics are not  important. Technology and Science now destroy much
of the beauty in the world that we don't yet  understand. It then sets its
own beauty before us. Science-Technology is obviously misguided. The German
Sickness is an epidemic in its fields.


More dangerous is the fact that the Prince must always keep his Military
Industrial Complex on the Bleeding Edge.

Will Obama move drones into Syria? He has Patriots in Turkey.

What are we poor subject to do? Is it OK to read like a Luddite?

For among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be
despised, and this is one of those ignominies against which a prince ought
to guard himself, as is shown later on. Because there is nothing
proportionate between the armed and the unarmed; and it is not reasonable
that he who is armed should yield obedience willingly to him who is
unarmed, or that the unarmed man should be secure among armed servants.
Because, there being in the one disdain and in the other suspicion, it is
not possible for them to work well together. And therefore a prince who
does not understand the art of war, over and above the other misfortunes
already mentioned, cannot be respected by his soldiers, nor can he rely on
them. He ought never, therefore, to have out of his thoughts this subject
of war, and in peace he should addict himself more to its exercise than in
war; this he can do in two ways, the one by action, the other by study.
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