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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Not a good thing
  • Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 15:44:01 EDT



> I see
> little I can do about the Monsanto Monster and its ilk.

There is little any of us can do. Globally at any rate. In our own little
lives ('and rounded with a sleep') though we can do more. Or as the person
I'm
in a mood to quote today (John Seymour) said:

" I am only one. I can only do what one can do. But what one can do I will
do!"
(see: http://www.resurgence.org/resurgence/articles/healing.htm)

Do you remember the SiFi flick "Silent Running" where all the biomes of Earth
were being maintained on pods in space until the Earth could be replanted?
The protagonist was the only one, only human being, who had actually eaten
real
food. When he comes into the ship's galley with a canteloupe and cuts it
open, the rest of the crew say "Whew, get that thing out of here, it stinks!"




>
> An article in the May-June 2005 issue of Utne Reader gave pause. The title
> is HUMANITY: The Remix; Is building a better human the key to utopia--or
> the world's most dangerous idea? The author is Alyssa Ford. While the
> article is about transhumanism, the parallel with food crop bioengineering
> is apparent.



> "Today human intelligence, in the form of technology, is about to make
> possible the elimination of pain and lives filled with unimaginable
> pleasure and contentment,

Hmmm. Haven't we heard all this before? We are much more along this path
that we were decades ago. Are we more content, more filled with pleasure,
freer
of pain? This vision disregards one important human trait: We jade to
things very rapidly. Whatever pleasure one experiences in overabundace
becomes the
base line ... losing it looms as the most tragic and miserable of
circumstances but maintaining it means nothing. We are hard wired to
identify and
address things that threaten us. Eliminate all those and we begin to become
morose
and invent things to be threatened by.


> What's more, with
> our contact lenses, artificial heart valves, and cell phones, we are
> cyborgs already. Smallpox vaccine and anesthetics for childbirth pain were
> once both renounced as insults to God.

Now we are finding out that anesthetics during childbirth compromise the
child's health, often permanently. Technology has always been a two-edged
sword.
When we discount the part of our lives where technology is only cleaning up
its own messes, what it offers is very greatly reduced.

James




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