Does History Repeat Itself?

by **Aaron** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 10:30:35

Before I get to that...

A friend recently commented to me about how Americans who travel abroad seem to have a unique attitude about the experience than travelers from other countries.

He said that to him, it seemed like the Americans around us, (we were on a scuba vacation), treated their surroundings as if they were in an amusement park back home. You know these places where each section of the park has some "theme" like WildWestLand, or Cartoonville etc...

Like their predisposed disposition was to regard the country they are visiting as a section of some amusement park.

"Welcome to MexicoLand!"

"Gee mom... everything is SO authentic!" "It's amazing! How do they do that?"

What's funny is that I began to notice visitors from other countries with similar predispositions. Like the Japanese tourists were walking around like the place was a museum. Our Canadian neighbors milling around like they didn't really think they should be there & would be asked to leave any moment. Cool Italians in their tiny suits, sipping espresso and looking for all the world like they were sitting back home. Aloof Israelis always sectioning themselves off from the crowd, in a kind of cultural quarantine. And the Australians with the easy smiles & friendly outgoing natures walking freely among every group without seeming to notice.

What's really uncomfortable, is despite being aware of this, I still find myself viewing the world through American colored glasses.

And then I was reminded that people like the folks in here, are actively redesigning that paradigm by interacting in new & interesting ways.

Dissolving geographic boundaries, defying conventions & norms, and creating a new world view impossible before the Internet.

I'm wondering about the downstream effects of this unprecedented melting pot experiment.

Like the way the Open Source revolution is force-feeding the business world a new model through the fiat of international consensus.

Open Source is a simple idea that has changed the face of software development and integration. It's basically an unaffiliated group of technologists around the world, who volunteer the time and skill to contribute to building & maintaining software which is license free for everyone.

Everything we use here, (almost), is Open Source. From the web server OS, to the bulletin board, email server, even live Voice/IP, it's all Open Source.

As you can imagine, there are many businesses who are not thrilled by this development, since they sell competing products. And some have even taken the attitude, if ya can't beat em... join em, and actually sponsor Open Source projects. (HP, IBM etc...)

Could this same idea work in other areas of human endeavor?

If we had enough people around the world who participated, could we force-feed common solutions down TPTB's throats?

Even if they don't like it? (Perhaps especially if they don't like it?)

hmmmm....

--------------------------------------------------

Oh yeah... the point of this thread... lol

I was watching a small piece on cleaning Mt Rushmore, and I wondered if some ancient Egyptian had stood beneath the Sphinx, and wondered what future people might think of what they had made?

Did our theoretical ancient observer entertain even for a moment, the possibility that his whole civilization would decline & collapse many times during the long years between now and then?

And that some people like ourselves would dig & sort through their ruins, trying to understand who they were?

So of course I wondered what some future observer would make of Mt Rushmore? New York? Or Stone Mt Georgia?

Kinda humbling...

by **BiGG** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 11:12:25

Future "observers" are screwed! They have what some would call an advantage over their predecessors of today in that they will have recorded material.........but ......... the bad news for them is that they will have to dig through every kook, crackpot, clown, & soothsayer that got recorded like the nonstop barrage of them on the Internet.

Jesus, the conspiracy theory-of-the-day crowd will keep them busy digging through a bunch of ridiculous-shit for centuries alone!

by **MacG** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 11:38:41

Interesting post!

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', ' ')
And then I was reminded that people like the folks in here, are actively redesigning that paradigm by interacting in new & interesting ways.

Dissolving geographic boundaries, defying conventions & norms, and creating a new world view impossible before the Internet.

I'm wondering about the downstream effects of this unprecedented melting pot experiment..

by **PenultimateManStanding** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 12:39:08

There was only one Oil Age and only once will humans get to live like prosthetic giants, so in that regard, history does not repeat itself. There may be two Stone Ages, so in that regard, history does repeat itself.

by **Bandidoz** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 12:45:33

History inevitably repeats itself, because the lesson from history is that we don't learn from history.

by **RonMN** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 13:07:54

Considering you question...it's really too bad they didn't finish Mt. Rushmore! There was supposed to be a long tunnel carved into it & many record stored there (something like a copy of the national archives). but the tunnel never got completed.

Most unfortunate. I've been thinking about writing a page from a book & trying to translate it into every known language to leave a "rosetta stone" for future generation...it sounds like a cool thing to do, but i just never seem to get around to it.

by **PenultimateManStanding** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 14:39:26

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RonMN', ' ')
Most unfortunate. I've been thinking about writing a page from a book & trying to translate it into every known language to leave a "rosetta stone" for future generation...it sounds like a cool thing to do, but i just never seem to get around to it.

by **0mar** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 15:15:40

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RonMN', ' ')
Most unfortunate. I've been thinking about writing a page from a book & trying to translate it into every known language to leave a "rosetta stone" for future generation...it sounds like a cool thing to do, but i just never seem to get around to it.

by **SidneyTawl** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 15:27:14

LOL

Cleaning the SPINX.

SOOOOO, thats the reason for what appears to erosion and what gives the Spinx its "odd" shape and appearance.

They just cleaned it all the time.

One guy say's it older than what current Egyptologist say and its from a period when it rained after it was built possibly due to climate change.

Egyptologist come up some babble double speak to make it fit their current model,

AND LO AN BEHOLD AARON, has found the answer that keeps Both camps happy.

They just kept cleaning and pouring water over it day after day after day.

can't keep the gods angry you know, need that daily bath.

LOL.

heck Aaaron you could be right.

life is like a box of cracker jacks or is it chocalate.

by **sdcoyote** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 15:45:35

The cleaning of Rushmore...

It should be cleaned all right!!!!!

In many ways Rushmore was/is the ultimate slap in the face to the Lakota tribes. They always considered the Black Hills (Paha Sapa) to be most sacred and in their creation stories was the birth of humanity (and buffalo). The treaties of 1858 and 1868 both promised that the Black Hills would remain in Sioux hands forever. Gold, of course, changed that. The supreme court in the 1980's agreed and tried to give the Lakota money instead of the land. The Lakota refused.

The decision to carve out the hills with president's faces whose policies allowed the elimination of entire tribes of native peoples would be somewhat like carving a likeness of Saddam into mountains surrounding Kuwait.

One of my young Lakota students wore a t-shirt to class the other day with a stamped picture of Sitting Bull, Gall, and others who fought at the Battle of Greasy Grass - (Little Big Horn). Underneath it were the words "Fighting Terrorism since 1492."

by **Aaron** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 15:59:05

Kind of like that quote:

They name subdivisions after the ecosystems they destroyed to build them... Shady Oaks, Timber Forest etc...

by **SidneyTawl** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 16:01:34

Aaron,

Please tell me that you don't work for the company in based in Houston that also provides service for.

"Everyone's Internet". ISP name

ST YT

by **Pops** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 16:04:36

Our ‘great pyramid’ will be Yucca Mountain.

by **DomusAlbion** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 16:45:40

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'O')ur ‘great pyramid’ will be Yucca Mountain.

by **PenultimateManStanding** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 16:52:39

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DomusAlbion', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'O')ur ‘great pyramid’ will be Yucca Mountain.

by **DomusAlbion** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 16:55:58

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DomusAlbion', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'O')ur ‘great pyramid’ will be Yucca Mountain.

by **Aaron** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 17:17:35

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SidneyTawl', 'A')aron,

Please tell me that you don't work for the company in based in Houston that also provides service for.

"Everyone's Internet". ISP name

ST YT

by **PenultimateManStanding** » Tue 12 Jul 2005, 17:38:38

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DomusAlbion', '
')Sorry PMS. "Nothings new under the Sun"
I think Canticle for Liebowitz covered a similar idea fairly well.

by **Macsporan** » Wed 13 Jul 2005, 03:45:31

Allow me a small contribution on my favourite topic: history and its repetitions.

The Roman Empire suffered from an energy crisis too.

This took the form of two terrible pandemics that swept away between a half and a third of the tax-base/workforce in the Second and Third Centuries AD.

This left the Empire with not enough people to support army, bureaucracy, urban life and aristocracy.

Unmoved by all this these parasites simply put up the taxes and invented new ones, and instituted a form of low-tech totalitarianism to compensate.

Within a century they had run what was left of Rome into the ground and it collapsed before a barbarian onslaught.

If this history repeats we can expect the US government/corporate/military/industrial/congressional complext to sit on the post PO world like a great stone idol and bleed us all dry before it's inevitable collapse.

Then and only then will the traumatised survivors able to start a new kind of life.

I'm sorry that I cannot bring better news, but hey, who said History was fun?

Hope this is useful.

by **I_Like_Plants** » Wed 13 Jul 2005, 04:04:05

Open Source scares the Kosher shit out of "the Chosen" from Bill Gates (Goetz) on down, they can't make a single silver shekel much less a pound of flesh from it.

Does History Repeat Itself?

Does History Repeat Itself?

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