Notes for the Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul - Rudy Rucker

Notes for The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, by Rudy Rucker
Twin Towers
Four Facts: The twin towers fell. The terrorists were Saudis. Bush invaded Iraq.
Most people feel Bush made a wrong decision.
“Ah,” someone might say, “if nobody wanted to fight, we’d be invaded. Look at the
twin towers. The world’s not safe.” And I would submit that the administration’s reaction to
the twin towers was exactly the wrong one. Instead of jumping into the repetitive tit-for-tat
class two Israelis-versus-Palestinians mode, the government should have gone class four.
What would make men kill themselves while destroying a part of our lovely New York City?
What system produced them? Isn’t there a way to get in and jolt it in some totally
unexpected way, something more original than rocket fire vs. car bombs?
Emigration
Before virtually every American presidential election, I’ve heard people say, “If so
and so wins, I’m leaving the country.” But they never do. The only time my friends ever
emigrated was during the Viet Nam war, a time when the hive mind was undertaking the
wholesale slaughter of a generation. But most of the time, for most of us, things aren’t bad
enough to make emigration seem reasonable.
If national elections were to be stolen over and over again, the answer might be armed
revolution, not emigration. At some point, a significant number of people might feel
compelled to go to D.C. and fight in the streets until the regime were to be deposed.
However long it took them, however dearly it cost.
Artificial Life
Machines will never be alive ⎯ because they aren’t born with cunt juice on them.
The multiversal web.
The parallel worlds of the quantum multiverse are in many senses the same as web
pages. Can I use the web as a model for the universe itself?
I’m a Rebel
I’m congenitally rebellious, prone to opposing every form of group opinion. Seeds
for this attitude would be that I grew up as a younger brother, that I was youngest and most
intelligent boy in my grade school classes, that I barely escaped being sent to die in the
government’s war in Vietnam, and that for many years I was a pot-smoker and thus a
criminal.
My feeling is that essentially everything in the newspapers or in the history books is a
trick, a lie, and not really worth talking about. The survival strategy of some elements of
society consists of a two-step process:
• Frighten people.
• Sell them protection.
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