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homestead - Re: [Homestead] Stewart Brand--provocative thoughts

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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Stewart Brand--provocative thoughts
  • Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 18:53:44 -0700

However, I didn't find any "clever arguments." I found a rambling that
grazes the top of points but has no details that could really be called
arguments for his latest ramblings. Actually, it sounds more like a
desperate attempt at an attention grab. The old stand-by of "I'll say
something terribly outrageous and people will pay attention to me again."

Your perspective harmonizes with another friend, who wrote this:

Actually SB has always been a hypertechophile at many levels relative to what he promoted through WEC and CEQ, where at one point he promoted the idea of mega space stations relaying vast quantities of too cheap to meter energy back to the gluttonous human population. He also liked to promote humans as "gods" on the back covers, urging us to think of ourselves that way and "get on with it." Being an environmental contrarian could cynically be seen as a sure-fire way to revive a flagging career, just as it was/is for Rex somebody, one of the founders of Greenpeace, who has been going around for years getting big press & big lecture fees, talking to big industry and big forest products companies urging mega-clearcutting and all manner of ecological depredations in the name of reformed environmentalism, which to big industry is like being shriven of all sin, or likens to the impact of previous libertines, dopers, etc. reborn to Xianity and then going out on the lecture/conversion circuit, the worse the previous heinousness the better the proselytization; or another syndrome is well-known, whereby the young radical of one persuasion gets old and flops over to the other antipode. I just think SB has gotten old, lost his mind, continues to think we should play god, misses the limelight and the lecture circuit, and now wants Daddy (the formerly scorned Big. Corp. System) to approve of him and give him money.






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