[extropy-chat] it's easy to laugh at luddites...

[Jef Allbright]

On 9/23/05, Al Brooks <kerry_prez at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> However wasn't it absurd for our friend FM to have announced publicly he
> was 'ageless' when he was a grey balding 69 year old? This was a form of PC
> that was-- or is-- almost morbid.
> And there are 60 year old women who diet and think they are going to look
> like Hillary Duff or Jessica Simpson.
> Myths To Live By-
> "You're just as young as you feel".
> "you're just as pretty as you feel".
> We are amused by ludds who think global warming will destroy us yet we
> want to think our very own bodies are not much more amusing than we think
> they are? Perhaps not all is vanity, merely most is.
> "My daughter is in college and she's a perfect angel". What, she doesn't
> menstruate?
> "I'm 73 years old but am as robust as a young man". Yeah right, you just
> came home from the Junior Prom.
> "After all that skin treatment, how do I look?". Gosh Grandma, you look
> like Tutankamen.
> The new mythologizing is our bodies are temples-- albeit not temples
> coating the spirit; the new secular mythology is: we are all gods and
> goddesses waiting to be immortalized. Said it before, will say it again: the
> loftiest person is still only the highest ape preening in the mirror when no
> one is looking.
>

It might be enlightening to take this up a level and apply the same
observation to the vanity many people exhibit for their current mental
"self", so often considered in isolation and as if it possessed intrinsic
value independent of its environment of interactional possibilities and were
worthy of indefinite static preservation.

- Jef
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