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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: George S. Montgomery who wrote (23291)	7/6/1998 5:52:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

George, we did make momentary contact over a year ago when one of those evanescent truces descended on the thread and folks stepped back and talked about core beliefs and not simply the veneer of ideology that passes for belief. Anyway - I took a risk that I'd merely X you off with my admonitions, but I see with delight that we're talking about pretty much the same thing. Anyway: We are a transient or intermediate species. I tend to agree. What's weird or different this time around is that we have a direct conscious hand in our intermediacy. We get to write the script for evolution, not merely act the lines we were handed. This is supremely cool. It is also mindblowingly perilous. I take comfort in the idea that even if the Righteous win a war or two, their grip on truth is not all that long. A thousand years, tops (with Egypt the glaring exception. It too was nutcrackered open). So: Homo sapiens Mark 1 is presently at a cusp of nascent self-awareness from which at least two self-aware species will spring. Homo sapiens Mark 2, and (defies description) sentient machines evolved from our current fascination with semiconductors. Both these races will share a trait: deliberate feedback into the genetic makeup or blueprints of their children. I am an optimist: I see our transiency as not an aberration, but a midwife sort of thing. We are the progenitors. Greg Bear and Charles Sheffield wrote really neat science fiction about this infancy. We are bediapered godlings sucking on the keys to the thunderbolt room. Let's hope we don't find the goodies inside until we know what they are. But it won't happen that way - the only way to master the thunderbolts&assorted divine legacies is to mess with them, see how they work, write the manual. I'm wagering we don't totally toast our butts in the process.