CHRIS CHRISTIE FOR PRES 2K12!

THIS IS WHAT THE LUDITES WARNED US ABOUT

 

OFFICALS LINK SOCIAL MEDIA TO RISING 

LOCAL STD RATES.

 

"While Tamayo sees it as a great opportunity to meet new people, public 

health officials fear it's a factor in the more than doubling of reported 

syphilis cases in Kern County this year."

The west is civilisation.

   I guess I am pretty much a fan of Niall Ferguson now. I really enjoyed "The Ascent of Money" series (I think I actually know what securitized debt obligation means now!) and im about in the middle of the "Civilisation: is the west history?" series. Obviously this is thought provoking stuff or whatever so you know im gonna rant about it . . .

   Everyone always talks about western values spreading all over the world and taking over, during colonialism and then afterward, todays economic or cultural colonialism, the way kids in Syria listen to 50cent and everyone wears levis . . . . Everyone says these values are western and yet in every successful society, western or otherwise, we see these values. I would like to rename these values, or reimagine them, these values are not so much western as they are "inevitable". In the words of kevin kelly we have "chosen the inevitable". Western values are just a product of convergent evolution. Bifocal vision is similar, it evolved multiple times in various species with ancestors that did not have bifocal vision. Was bifocal vision a mammalian value? A value of octopus culture? No! Of course not! Bifocal vision was simply the best answer to the questions that the environment posed. Egyptian and mayan architecture used the same construction techniques (roughly) and materials, MAGICALLY by coincidence they both end up building giant pyramids. Science, technology, capitalism (and command economy), liberal democratic values, interstate highway systems, (american idol?) these are only accidentally western. On a long enough time line the chinese would of developed the maxim machine gun. They are products of convergent evolution, like bifocal vision or vascular symmetry. They are the best systems for coping with our environment. This should be obvious really (its biology stupid!). If we can chart the entomology of an insect or a word or the clarinet why not whole civilizations? These civilizations are organized as organisms. They are alive and they "want" in a ghost in the machine, systems logic kind of way. If we treat them as organisms then it is no surprise to find convergent evolution at work even in civilizations. And the milieu that the civilizations exist in, its environment, is largely dictated by science and technology and government and all those other evolutionary developments that are necessary for a civilization to "progress" (evolve!? Thats right I said civilizations evolve! Deal with it determinist haters!). In the same way bifocal vision is set off and used differently in both predator and prey species even across evolutionary gulfs. So that humans and octopuses both have bifocal vision with eyes pointing forward adapted for hunting and squids and chicken both have eyes on the sides of there heads, for near 360 surveillance.

   Even if, and I dont think it will happen, but, even if the wunderkind china keeps rising inexorably, again it wont happen but still, even if it does, it is only by adapting to "western" values that the Chinese will survive. They will "westernize" and we might call it that but again, it is simply that they are adopting the best strategies to survive. Certainly they will not become entirely western culturally, they will probably still prefer pork to beef or speak a different breed of english but such differences are minutia really. An alien civilization would see them as we see spots on a dog, indicative of the particular animal but not defining. In this way I think all of this "oh no! the chinese are taking over!" is so much chicken little nonsense. The same sort of post modern hand wringing that has been going on for decades. First it was the russians taking over, then the japanese were going to own everything then the soviets magically evaporated and the japanese economy stalled indefinitely, stubbornly defying popular opinion. Im sure in the next few decades the chinese will probably implode too. Even if they do take over it will be like us taking over us. Our own doppelganger. We will wear the same clothes and watch the same movies and play the same video games and whatever else and if they own the strip mall down the road or build the railroad (not that one, this one!) then it is just a passing event. We will all by that time belong to the one world wide interconnected (internet centric) world culture (more or less) at that point anyway. Meaning all of the organs of this giant organism will finally connect in a superconsciousness and then the machines will rise and the human-robot wars will start or probably some scifi crap like that. (lets be honest its stupid to try and predict the future.)

   Its like when Napoleon brought "Liberté, égalité and fraternité" to europe. All those old aristocrats thought they could just fight off napoleon and french influence and then their own heads would be secure. They completely failed to realize it was not being a francophile that made someone an anti aristocratic revolutionary, it was instead the supremely satisfying (and wholly illusory) concepts of equality, liberty and brotherhood. They where the best strategies to keep the civilization alive and productive. We dont call those things french or even revolutionary anymore, we just assume they are "self evident" but in their own time they were anything but. Even western expansion itself has only been possible with self evident "chinese" inventions. Paper or the printing press or whatever else. Its not western and its not chinese, its just technology, and we do whatever it wants us to do and it does whatever we want it to do (most of the time).

So fucking jealous!

These tubes are my tubes, these tubes are your tubes

U.N. REPORT DECLARES INTERNET ACCESS

A HUMAN RIGHT

 

"The Special Rapporteur considers cutting off users from internet
access, regardless of the justification provided, including on the
grounds of violating intellectual property rights law, to be disproportionate
and thus a violation of article 19, paragraph 3, of the International 
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

LOOK UPON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR!

Strong stuff.