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    21st Century Ideas: When it's aweful.

    What do we do if the initial excitement of our Superthreats wears of and it just becomes uninspiringly awful?

    Started by: Tsunamipants Raves:3

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    It's interesting to see the role of fear in our intellectual lives. It worked for Bush and it's working for Superstruct. It reminds me of the traffic jams caused by accidents, when people want to watch.. I wonder if a Somailian Child-soldier when playing Superstruct would be attracked to this section. The horrible truth may be that War and Superthreats are not very exiting when you are really in it. You are just sitting around in some cold place waiting for nothing. And when you got out for a pee, you get shot by a sniper. Not very glorious is it. That's my fear, that our Superthreats may be demoralizing and lack any glory or excitement that might motivate or unite us.

    I realise that this won't be a popular corner of Superstruct, we'd rather just discuss the plagues and explosions. It's more entertaining.

    Perhaps we could reinvent the popular lifestyle of the 16-th century, that of the intellectual recluse. It seems everyone is into permaculture and self-supporting nowadays. The ancient hermits were terrifically self-supporting they even lived lives grazing like cattle on the shores of the Dead Sea. The 6-th century was the Golden Age of Grazers, it even became a known profession.

    When you hear the interviews with those who witnessed the second world war, you get the impression that romance might be the answer to the boredom of a Superthreat. Love... as in the ability to transcend oneself. Love, Paul W. Kahn identifies this transcendence, the power of the human spirit to overcome the limitations of being an individual, as our most human trait. We believe in it firmly, he suggests, and it is the source of our biggest fear, that time and space may be truly limited for us. It is a threat to our picture of humanity.

    Ideas are easy. Execution is hard. Especially hard when you are pushing your idea uphill with a hundred counter intentions and distractions pushing it down here. Excitement ahd glamour are not the stuff of which the most important contributions to our lives are made. Often just hard work with a solid sense of satisfaction that I have contributed to building a positive future is best you can expect. However, once it is all done and we have a big party at the end of the universe, it is those contributions that stick with you as being.

    Ideas are easy. Execution is hard. Especially hard when you are pushing your idea uphill with a hundred counter intentions and distractions pushing it down here. Excitement ahd glamour are not the stuff of which the most important contributions to our lives are made. Often just hard work with a solid sense of satisfaction that I have contributed to building a positive future is best you can expect. However, once it is all done and we have a big party at the end of the universe, it is those contributions that stick with you as being.

    I have done this in roleplaying games for years - people accused me of being a very very negative person - and i can handle it. I like looking in the places people are scared looking at, and learning.

    I have worked with many people who survived WW2 and the reality for them sucked. However, they did whatever they had to survive. Remember that nature does not care about how you win it just matters that you do win. I.E survive. Survival is not pretty...it is brutal its ugly and it leaves scars.

    Fear is a great motivator. The problem is getting the right kind of fear - just enough fear makes you take something seriously and put effort into avoiding it, too much fear creates helplessness. We need to avoid going too far into the "helpless" zone.

    "Shaping Things" by Bruce Sterling contains this cautionary passage: "What we really ought to fear is not "Oblivion" but irretrievable decline. This would be a grim situation in which we all knew that humanity's best days were behind us, and that none of our efforts, however brilliant or sincere, could redress the mistakes humankind had already committed. Hope has died within us as a species; our hearts are broken; animal vitality keeps us on our feet, but the only satisfaction we have lies in inflicting harm on ourselves and others." When I saw the Superthreats in the GEAS report, that passage was my first thought: have we already passed that point? Did I pass that point decades ago, when I chose art over math and science courses? Can I catch up in time to be in any way qualified to even look at the data?




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