“Yes! To be like the Hu-Man! To laugh, feel, want! Why are these things not in the Plan?”
Posted on 09/15/2002 12:24:08 AM PDT by ramdalesh
Before we become terminally war crazy over the middle east let us consider "The Fable of the Geys".
Zeta Reticuli was once a beautiful place, just like earth. It was called Lyria. The people there were called Apexian. They were a highly advanced, technological society just like earth. They had their wars and their famines, just like we have. In fact there isn't anything very special about them at all. They were just like us.
When the Grey (Apexian) culture developed nuclear technology, and atomic bombs they did what we did. They developed an underground infrastructure, including bomb shelters, and underground military complexes. They toiled over international conflict for many generations hoping to avoid the inevitable nuclear holocaust. All the while their scientific technology advanced and their population grew.
A cultural shift changed this society forever when in one generation scientists penetrated the Apexian genome, developed cloning techniques, global telecommunications network, nanorobotic and antimatter technology including anti-gravity, and anti-matter nuclear explosives unlike any previously discovered. This generation was at the height of their biological capability. They were at the "apex" of their natural evolution. So as to not interfere with the natural process of evolution they conducted most of their experiments in secret. Cloning technology was forbidded on the planet surface, but experiments were continued underground. Religious wars began in the midst of this scientific climax.
It during that generation; during the generation's apex; that the greatest and most terrible war began. It was the most destructive war the planet ever suffered. The people who lived on the planet's surface were forced to take refuge in bomb shelters and underground civilization became a replacement for the once beautiful above ground natural world. Eventually an anti-matter bomb was detonated on the planet's surface and the surviving civilization was forced underground, forever, indefinately.
The Apexians, just like humans, were creatures who throughout their history learned to adapt in order to survive. The shock of surviving a nuclear holocaust was so great that many decades passed before the underground culture began show any signs of productive life.
They were immobilized. Their history erased. Their identity, and their soul was sucked out of them. They were betrayed by their intelligent nature, and as a result were sentenced to an eternity in prison. They would never again farm on the surface of their world for the rest of time. Their progeny cursed forever to the dark underworld that was to be their prison until the developed interstellar space travel.
Though the surface of their world was gone, the underground very very advanced technoligically, so to speak. The collected technologies of the underground was all that was left for the survival of their species, and civilized life. Scientific advancement in genetics and cloning proved to be very useful for food production, but only for a short time. They were to be ruled by the superior clones who lived underground before the war if they were to survive,
There's not enough prozac in the universe to heal the wound of post war Apex. Cloning techniques advanced very quickly. Food scarcity, social disruption, crime etc.; non of this could be approached the way it was before. In the underground, genetic rescripting was law, and the survival of the species relied completely on advancing cloning techniques. As the population grew resources became scarce, so they operated on the sensory organs. Eyes, ears, tastebuds, height, weight, cranial size,food consumption, emotional processes, cognitive and communication processes were all rescripted. In only a few generations the entire apexian species genetically mutated from humanoid to grey.
This new being was the Gray. This cloned byproduct of nuclear holocaust was infinitely smarter, desinged to require minimal food, light, heat, and affection. They were designed to not feel anger, sorrow, loss, attatchment or love. Developing a culture and a history on post-war Zeta Reticulai meant surviving as a clone, and coping with the dark cold eternity of the underground post-war military infrastructure. They became a culture of cloned military scientists. They required no government so to speak because they could not continue to exist as a species with the ever present guilt of emotion, consuming essential life energies.
They endeavored to escape from their prison. They worked obsessively at those two problems. Survive, and escape. When they completed the technology for space travel they began to work on the new problem.
Why do we exist, why do we love, hate and question? What is to become of us? Is peace so unbearable that we will eventually condemn ourselves to a passionless eternity of it?
Why are they here???
You also, in your comments about technology and mathematics, fall into the common error of confusing means and ends, substance and procedure. We can employ technology without losing our soul as it were. We can have modern conveniences, and still recognize the family and spiritual values as the foundation for the social order. It is not our technology that has destroyed our traditional purpose--although it may have diverted the attention of some who should have been defending it--but an onslaught of those seeking to destroy reality, not through technology, but via class warfare, and egalitarian manipulation of the natural order. The enemy of the family, is the advocate of an undifferentiated, classless humanity.
In short, you are flirting with the demon, you think that you are fighting.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
But Phantom Lord told me that Apex was the Peak of Good Living!
"At what point does must and cannot intersect on a graph?"
Ro-Man, "Robot Monster".
Sounds like nonsense, until you realize that you have just described the whole science of "fuzzy logic" to a tee.
"You are in error! Recalculate!"
The Great Guidance, "Robot Monster".
No I did not. The signs entering the city say that Apex is the Peak of Good Living!
"Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegrams, self acting mules, etc. These are the products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowlege objectified.
The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree social knowlege has become a direct force of production and to what degree, hence the conditions of the process of social liofe itself have come under control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it."(qtd. K Marx, Grundrisse p. 409)
"For the first time nature becomes purely an object for mankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subjugate it under human needs, wether as an object of consumption or as a means of production" (qtd Grundrisse p. 706)
In the communist manifesto he implies that the industrial state of the world is a bad thing. In fact it is more like an anti-human plague, and will eventually crush itself.
The counter arguement of course is that the industrial state of the world is exactly perfect and beautiful. Human life itself are the outgrowth of industry. Stars and planets are put in their orbits by Morman Super-engineers, and that intelligent life are given to those planets by genetic superbiologists who have forseen all of the foibles of planetary life, and the interspecies DNA sequences which make life planetary life pleasant. None of this would even exist without industrial capitalism driven to the peak of its highest potential.
Yes, I am opinionated; so is everyone else on FR; however, I'm certainly not young , but I am virtuous .
You're projecting. You need help ... a lot of it and quickly. :-)
I believe it to be close to unethical to speak on the topic of the personality of another. To open yourself up to criticism at that level is often dangerous. That is politics. John Searle said once, philosophy is like football with no pads. What we do is smash our opponent with an idea, and the goal is to win. In philosophy, we argue, and the higher arguement prevails.
On the topic of myself... I am infinitely smarter than you. I win! , ok, finitely smarter but still "To thine own self be true"
Because our government has never met an immigrant they didn't want to overide a native born Americans vote with. At least the Gray requires less resources, at last a break for American taxpayers.=o)
I'm done with you, this thread, and your silly posts. You also happen to be boring, BTW , and there are so many other, more worthwhile, interesting, and insightful threads to read here.
Have fun . Mental masturbation holds no charm for me. LOL
And are you suggesting that pontificated nonsense is serious philosophy? All man has done in the inventions that he mentions, is to apply the laws of nature to specific purposes. This hardly represents the triumph over nature--or Nature's God--to which the sociopath would like to persuade the gullible, his constituency of those who are unhappy with reality.
"For the first time nature becomes purely an object for mankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subjugate it under human needs, wether as an object of consumption or as a means of production" (qtd Grundrisse p. 706)
More of the same sort of silly pontification by a sociopath intent upon organizing the world's malcontents into a movement, which seeks to repeal reality.
The counter argument is not as you state, that the industrial state is perfect or beautiful. Far, indeed, from it. Man, himself, is far from perfect; and while some women are beautiful, humanity as a whole can be pretty tacky, certainly tawdry, etc.. We are a species of very diverse types, all of whom have had to struggle to survive, although some have actually managed to thrive in the process. Collectivist delusions, which seek to promote a better life by ignoring the natural dynamics of human action, can only get in the way of more of humanity reaching the point where they may actually thrive.
Marx was, I repeat, a sociopath, bent on mischief. He has nothing to offer any of the struggling sub-types of Mankind.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
I keep saying the words but Gort keeps coming after me....Aahhhhh!
I don't know about his personal behaviors. I disagree with Marx on several points, and consider his thinking to be simple minded if not mischevious.
The modern world is much different then Marx's era. The contemporary worldview I have colors my interpretation of Marx works much differently than Stalin, Lenin, Kruschev, Sandino, or McCarthy. For example, how does one define globalism?..
.Protestors seem to concentrate on corporate exploits in other countries which focus on profiting from inexpensive laborers. The sociologist, and the anthropologist points out that the internet has made nationalistic and cultural differences more transparent. As a political thinker, my view is that Globalism is an abstraction which we have not yet reached. It is yet to be objectified in the real world so it cannot be properly defined. This is similar to my view of Marx. Whatever mischief came as a result of his works were due to his and his readers(particularly Stalin) oversight, negligence, and arrogance. A so-called prophetic work cannot be translated in to a real life understanding because the conceptualization employs too much hope, and idealism.
The great differrence between philosophy and politics is that political thought need not waste its time processing the lofty achievements of intellectuals. Utopian schemes are useless in the business world. If you want to help the poor and downtrodden teach them how to live and improve their condition, instead of how to protest and lay the blame elsewhere.
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