Ned Ludd lives on

From:
To:
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 8:37 PM
Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: Ned Ludd lives on

[snikt]
> Honestly though: If you want to drive her and her kind nuts, point out
> where the internet came from. DARPA anyone? And they should stick by
> their principles and not use such a heinous creation. And if they
> hate technology so much, start walkin'.
>

You're assuming that those people are able to maintain logical coherence
between what they say and what they do; unfortunately, that is not the case.
It seems that they use the same kind of "selective reality filtering" so
popular among religious fanatics. They have a dogma do defend (or, rather,
to impose to normal people) and they use *every* resource in hands to
achieve that goal - including the ones that should be taboo according to
their beliefs. And so, we have luddites using the Internet to make
propaganda, and totalitarian middle-east governments using TV (one of the
fruits of the decadent Western world) to brainwash their populations, and so
on. For them, science and technology is evil just in the extent in which
they don't serve to amplify their powers.

As everyone here knows, this kind of fanaticism is harmful not only to our
dream of space colonization, but to the survival of Humanity as a whole.
Therefore, I think that it is also important for us, besides being part of
organizations related to space, be also part of organizations pro-science,
pro-Humanism and pro-Rationalism. In Brazil, I participate of the Brazilian
Skeptics Forum and of Ceticismo-BR, two embryonic NGOs dedicated to those
causes; I'm also considering joining the Sociedade da Terra Redonda ("Round
Earth Society"). In the United States, there are much older and
well-established organizations, like the Skeptics Society and the Committee
for the Scientific Investigation of the Claims of the Paranormal (sometimes
I think that environmentalist nuts should also fall in the "paranormal"
category ;-). Joining such organizations, we can add political weight to
them and counteract those people wanting to bring Humanity back to the
Middle Age.

> Sean Masters
[snikt]

Lucio Coelho