My point is not to condemn thrill seeking. I'm more interested in way people seek *particular* thrills, especially when a particular thrill is extremely expensive. Maybe in this case a cigar is just a cigar, but it sure seems like a smoke!
Conversation
This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. Learn more
I disagree. That's a wishful reading. I think there's genuinely a space renaissance underway, that we should actually go ahead and do the mars missions and settlements, ignore the current political imaginary epiphenomena, and see where it takes us. Am all in on this narrative tbf
2
7
Wishful as in -- for people attached to the opposite of political imaginary attached to civilizational cores and fearful of new frontier power.
1
3
To me the critique sounds like the exact dual of rough-and-ready frontier types dismissing using the right forks, at the right elite dinner parties as cheap theater, when in fact it steers the fates of trillions of dollars and billions of people.
1
3
This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. Learn more
This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. Learn more
This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. Learn more
This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. Learn more
I think you're mistaking the echo for the real thing. What you're referring to as frontier ideology is an echo -- cultural-political ephemera. It's the difference between Freeman Dyson's nuclear rocket plans and spec-fic in Astounding Stories.
1
3
There is *always* a live frontier ideology and an active world of ideas and actions at it. I think you're kinda looking for it in the wrong place, and are reluctant to acknowledge the right place because it's full of assholes. Which is a cost of doing frontier business.
Frontiers are as full of assholes as civ cores are full of hypocrites. The moral failing turns into the adverse selection that turns into the "wrong people doing the right thing for the wrong reasons" in the 2 zones.
1
4
In civ cores, you have preening, posturing people engaged in greasy pole climbing in DC beltway or Davos, obsessed with appearances and shallow theater and refining hypocrisy into a high institutional art... it's the reality of "civilization" as opposed to high ideologies of it
1
1
6
Show replies

