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When I was in college I was close to the poet-professor Nikki Giovanni, who wrote a poem called "Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We're Going to Mars)". The thesis was that the only way we'll be ready for a journey to Mars was if we first reckon with Middle Passage.
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Hearing her explain it at the time, I thought it sounded crazy. I didn't get it. It's such a bizarre experience hearing nearly the exact same argument come from you 16 years later. And bizarre that I (almost) understand it now. Makes me feel like I owe her an apology.
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Hmm this seems factually wrong to me. It’s a fine poetic-religious sentiment to imagine some karmic balance between moral development and technological progress, but it doesn’t seem to be backed up by history.
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Replying to and
I think (part of) her thesis in that poem specifically is that embedded within African-American culture is a kind of technology for dealing with fear, isolation, feeling inhuman, + other things. And you can't hope to get to mars without understanding and embracing that technology
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I’d buy an economic argument perhaps, that an unjust society cannot produce the magnitude of per capita surpluses required to sustain programs past a point. But cultural essentialist arguments about lack of specific bits of moral progress holding back specific technologies, no.