tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post167690254882463782..comments2024-03-26T14:20:38.103-04:00Comments on The Thought Criminal: Hate Mail - Post Literacy Is The Problem Not Post ModernismUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-56330954331558437872016-08-28T12:33:39.198-04:002016-08-28T12:33:39.198-04:00In a nutshell, it all leads to selfishness; the ve...In a nutshell, it all leads to selfishness; the very opposite of morality.<br /><br />I was idly speculating last night about human assumptions about alien cultures. The most common is they are just like us, only "advanced" technologically, and somehow culturally/morally because technology inevitably leads to the power to destroy, and an "advanced" culture would have passed that breakpoint and so be "advanced" because they had survived their ability to destroy themselves.<br /><br />All such alien cultures, in other words, were flatly materialist and only not-greedy materialists because they were "advanced." Because even greed is destructive, you know (unless it's our greed and exploitation of others; such exploitation is invisible and therefore we are always "good." Of course, human culture in the future is always an American mono-culture where we either fight righteously IStar Trek) or engage in diplomacy (ST:NG) or are just doing business (Alien, and almost every other space set movie since). Even "Dune," one of the best SF novels ever written, has planetary cultures, never regional ones. Too damned complicated, donchaknow?<br /><br />Anyway.....<br /><br />So what if, I idly wondered, an alien culture was more advanced spiritually, morally? What if an alien culture took spirituality (as we call it) as the baselines of existence? Well, I suppose they wouldn't have space ships and "advanced" technology, but what if they did, but their relationship to it was radically different than ours? What if their culture was centered on the worship of a benevolent divinity, rather than on acquisition and gain (more like the Native Americans than the Europeans for whom "the love of possession is a disease with them."). Not sure how I'd properly describe/defend it; as I say, it was an idle speculation.<br /><br />But why should alien cultures be extensions of our own? If they were different, what if they were different in that way? Stephen Hawking assumes we'd encounter an "advanced" culture which would wipe us out, much as the Europeans (especially the British) did to most of the planet, most effectively to the Native Americans.<br /><br />But what if they weren't like us at all, and weren't interested in conquest and acquisition, or even evangelism (itself a kind of cultural hegemony)?Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.com