[extropy-chat] Re: A Chilling Thought.

[Lifespan Pharma Inc.]

You might call that the old "dog in the manger syndrome".

Those who cannot or wish not to avail themselves try to feel better 
about their condition by
pulling any bystanders into their "party in the cesspool".

There may also be the inverse;  those who have succeeded to  crawl out 
of the cesspool
may feel that those remaining are unworthy of anything better than the 
slop they are wallowing in
so may try to squeeze all they can out of the unfortunate ones all the 
while blocking the path out
for the same ,  so that their personal self worth , ego and power might 
be increased.

Humans can be a real embarrassment at times.
Or maybe it is all part of the process of natural selection.


Adrian Tymes wrote:

>--- Rik van Riel <riel at surriel.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>On Sat, 14 May 2005, The Avantguardian wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>What if the rich are just biding their time knowing that the
>>>      
>>>
>>technology 
>>    
>>
>>>is nigh upon us and try to illegalize it SPECIFICALLY so they can
>>>      
>>>
>>get 
>>    
>>
>>>access to it while the proletariat can't? Like Cuban cigars.
>>>      
>>>
>>I'd say that is very unlikely.  After all, the rich like
>>keeping money (otherwise they wouldn't be rich), so they
>>have no interest in these new technologies not becoming
>>commodities that are safe and easily available to them.
>>    
>>
>
>Unless they want the techs to become *only* available to them.  Which
>is a common misunderstanding of technological development possessed
>by many elites, who think it is possible to restrict certain techs
>only to the rich and powerful forever.  Just look at how well the
>security restrictions on nuclear weapons have worked...er, well, maybe
>the restrictions on biotech...no, maybe the restrictions on
>cryptography?
>
>Still, while there may be some element of this, it's not the main
>driving force behind neoluddism.  Many people honestly don't grok the
>core concetps of science, and really don't understand* any other way to
>greet significant changes than fear and panic.
>
>* I'd say "know", except that they may have heard of such things as
>investigation and research to dig up the truth.  But to them, these are
>remote abstractions that other people do, not an activity they
>themselves should undertake.  (Many even think they *can* not read up
>on things, after practicing for so long the mindset of letting their
>eyes glaze over and their minds tune out at the slightest hint of
>complexity.  Reacting to complexity with mental strategies to break it
>down into understandable parts is a learned art - one that some may
>have more of a genetic predisposition towards than others, but
>ultimately learned nonetheless.)
>_______________________________________________
>extropy-chat mailing list
>extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat
>
>
>  
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20050514/52ad19d2/attachment.html>