[ExI] memory

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat
Sent: Friday, March 13, 2020 5:25 AM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Cc: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] memory

 

On Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 7:29 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

 

> Does anyone remember our country closing so many things, college and pro sports, even Disneyland, without going all the way back to WWII?

 

Even during WWII there was college sporting events and Broadway still had plays, they closed down a lot of stuff during the 1918 flu epidemic although not as many as they should have. Or at least that's what I read in books, I don't actually remember it, I was just a kid in 1918.

 

John K Clark 

 

 

Just a kid in 1918: me too!  I have fond memories of Jolson’s experiments with the talkies.

 

The hit the stock market is taking right now caused me to realize how much of the US economy is tied somehow to entertainment.  I am hetero to the core (as far as I know) but don’t follow sports and never have.  The canceled seasons impacted me not one bit, but to hear the radio yesterday one would think the apocalypse is upon us and we are the wretched sinners facing the wrath of a vengeful deity.  Sheesh, it’s a gaddam BALL GAME fer cryin out loud.  Grown men hurling an orb thru an elevated hoop to the wild cheering of brain-dead throngs.  

 

Well I flatly refuse to be a throng.  But it does bring up a question: if wildly-cheering throngs are crowds, is a throng one person in that crowd or can a throng be a crowd, and if the latter, what is one person in the crowd?  A microthrong?  And if what if… one is part of the faceless masses, but he looks in the mirror and discovers one has an actual face?  The mind boggles.

 

I think I recall a Star Trek episode where Kirk and crew visited a planet where they had solved every problem, resolved every conflict, and the only thing they had left to do was play and entertain each other.  The Enterprise crew didn’t like it: not enough conflict.  In modern society we create artificial conflict by setting up a terrain-acquisition arena and let our best recreational warriors battle it out while we watch.  Sheesh what a world.

 

spike

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