Home, Home on the Web

I keep wandering around the internet, looking for the perfect site to settle down, but of course, there isn't any such. All the things I like to do on the web just aren't to be found on one site. Mostly, I like to write, and read stuff by other dedicated amateurs. I thought it might be a nice idea to try out a site where older people can hang out, kind of a Myspace for seniors. Alas, there really isn't any such. I signed up with Eons, which has groups and blogging, but the site is so badly designed that it actually discourages participation. And since the membership isn't very big, finding mature, intelligent people who are still interested in learning and in what's going on in the world is a lost cause. Maybe they're there, but are just too hard to find. I've been there a couple of weeks, have written a few blog posts, joined a few groups, but basically nothing is happening. Just lots of empty, echoing hallways.

I did try Myspace way back, but gave up in frustration and disgust. Aside from the horrible design, the fad for lying about your age means that even if you input an age range in the search engine, most of the supposedly mature people you find have the face and figures of movie stars or high school kids, the vocabulary of sixth graders, and the interests of the undereducated and terminally-bored.

Right now, I'm trying out gather.com and so far I like it well enough to think I might stay.

New Age "Wisdom" Meets Science

I don't understand why a fairly decent news site such as The Huffington Post would give space to a new-age "guru" like Deepak Chopra, but it does. Exploring the back pages of the site the other day, I found that Chopra was sounding off on Darwinism. He starts off: "I remain fascinated by orthodox defenders of Darwinism, who believe that the success of a scientific theory proves its infallibility." I really didn't need to go beyond that first sentence, so stunning was the ignorance it displayed about both Darwinism and science, but I did, just out of curiosity. No surprises, at all. With every statement he simply shoved his foot deeper and deeper into his mouth.

Infallibility is the domain of religion and pseudo-spirituality, not of science, but Chopra is too busy setting himself up as one of the "wise" to educate himself. The title of his article—Survival of the Wisest—should be Rantings of the Ignorant and Arrogant.

Survival of the Wisest

Remembering Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson died today, resolutely cheerful during the last years and months, even as his failing body announced that death was creeping up. It's hard to imagine someone starting a blog, knowing that he would probably be abandoning it very soon. But he did, one last wave to the world from a man who specialized in a profoundly sane form of craziness.

A few tidbits from The Illuminati Papers:

"Stupidity is a contagious sociosemantic disturbance which afflicts all of us. Stupidity murders geniuses, burns books, slaughters populations, blocks progress."

"There is nothing rationally desirable that cannot be achieved if rationality itself increases."

"Help conquer the IQ shortage: worry less and think more."

"We're living on the Planet of the Apes. Is that funny or serious?"

Ten Good Reasons to Get Out of Bed in the Morning
"This is for all you people who lie in bed every morning and wonder if it's going to be worth the trouble to get up. So the job is a drag, your friends let you down, and the price of coffee is outrageous. Listen to me. I have survived two bouts of polio. One of my daughters was gang-raped by three hoods in 1971; another, my youngest, was brutally murdered in 1976. Yet, to quote Faulkner's Novel Prize address, I still 'decline to accept the end of man.' I firmly believe that we are entering an age that will make the Renaissance look like a tempest in a teapot, and that each of us can play a role in turning man into superman."

We are entering the age of global warming. Is there still any way to prove RAW right? I think it's a challenge he would be glad to see everyone take up. At least it's a good reason to get up in the morning.

Getting Older? Don't Applaud Yourself too Much

People don't usually change much as they get older. They simply become more what they've always been. Someone who's been a good example of why the human race needs to go extinct will become a poster child for Why it Sucks to Get Old. You have a choice of whether to move gracefully into old age, or limp into it as nothing more than a bad cartoon of yourself. That choice remains open as long as you are mentally and physically functional, and capable of enhancing those states.

But the hard truth is that most people choose, consciously or not, to settle for the life of a full-time automaton and part-time couch potato. They do the job they're paid for, put on a decent show of being a good citizen, but do even better as consumers. They either die suddenly, from a heart attack, or slowly and painfully, leaving their families with memories they could have done just as well without. And when the last of the people who knew them kicks the bucket, they might as well never have existed, for all the difference they made to the world. So, how much respect are they owed, are you owed, in old age, for the achievement of getting older, but not wiser?