I can't see how it's not completely obvious to people that we need more than just the same old same old to get us the last steps there. Honestly. It feels so close. We have all the archives, the documentation, to show us how to get there.
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It's such a puzzle to me. Could it really be that we are at a point in history where we are so close to fulfilling our promise as a species—and yet, at the same time—so close to self-destruction? I suppose that's been every intellectual's thought since the Bomb.
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I think there's this fantasy that we can rewind, back to that moment before the First World War; that we can reboot the Empire, build some rockets, and achieve escape velocity from the past. I completely get it, straight up. It's just that it's not true.
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Simon DeDeo Retweeted Misha Saul
It's in all of them; most recently, for me, Skidlesky's of Keynes. (The single volume abridged.)https://twitter.com/misha_saul/status/1278178420963213313?s=20 …
Simon DeDeo added,
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Despite my ridiculous accent, and my let's say physiognomy, I felt, as a kid back in the 1990s, part of the British Empire. The idea was that all of this obvious racism was just a side-show, it would wash out, all (& we) would be forgiven.
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But I think what cracked me was the Harlem Renaissance and jazz. Reading Baldwin; listening to Charlie Parker. I suppose it's the Dream deferred. It's almost like a theological fact. You can't get to Mars until you reckon with the sin. Can't quantify that, obviously.
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Replying to @SimonDeDeo
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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Replying to @gravity_levity @SimonDeDeo
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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Replying to @gravity_levity @SimonDeDeo
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 @vgr @SimonDeDeo
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.
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Replying to @vgr @SimonDeDeo
It turns out that I don't trust myself to make any arguments whatsoever about the correct interpretation of history
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