Invasion Day and the future

[busker]

In Australia, the day that the first British settlers arrived, Jan 26, has been a public holiday since the 1940s. Since about the same time, there have also been protests by the aboriginal groups, who call it “Invasion Day”. Much like Columbus Day in America.

The settlement of the new world, including Australia as part of that, is 250-300 years old for the most part. 12. That’s outside of the three-generation limit of living memory by quite a bit.

Why does the settlement of the new world need to be celebrated? It’s no different than Hitler celebrating the conquest of Eastern Europe if he’d won the war. 

The focus should be on settling Mars.

[milo]

In Australia, the day that the first British settlers arrived, Jan 26, has been a public holiday since the 1940s. Since about the same time, there have also been protests by the aboriginal groups, who call it “Invasion Day”. Much like Columbus Day in America.

The settlement of the new world, including Australia as part of that, is 250-300 years old for the most part. 12. That’s outside of the three-generation limit of living memory by quite a bit.

Why does the settlement of the new world need to be celebrated? It’s no different than Hitler celebrating the conquest of Eastern Europe if he’d won the war. 

The focus should be on settling Mars.

Governments create these holidays and celebrations to push nationalism.  Citizens struck by nationalism are less likely to revolt.  It is also celebrated as some sort of public mandate or a mandate from whatever ridiculous gods or fairies they believe in.

[busker]

But also, if Europe hadn’t settled the new world, the world wouldn’t have made the progress it did in science and engineering, as there’d have been no markets for those services

Niall Ferguson gave a talk on the “killer apps” that Europe developed in capitalism, the joint stock company, separation of church and state, and science. That model is at an end, and the Asiatic one, of dedicated coordination, is the new paradigm, to further mankind’s growth

So colonisation was good in the long run, in much the same way thst the Holocaust was good for the Jews as it gave them the state that they’d been looking to re establish for 2000 years. But instead of celebrating it, which is backward looking, we should look towards the future, and celebrate only the promise of a coming AI age, with sapient Chinese robots

[milo]

If you consider life as a race and the goal is to get to the end of it you develop a particular type of self destruction that nobody admires but when we consider society as a race with the goal to get to the end of it everyone applauds.

Most of the developments we applaud could have been considered inevitable. I'm not a luddite and I am not one who insists the past is better because it mostly sucked as well but for all the development the world is doing most of it isn't dripping down to improving humanity or improving life at this point so I am skeptical of any points made that we need to rush mankind's "growth".

[busker]

If you consider life as a race and the goal is to get to the end of it you develop a particular type of self destruction that nobody admires but when we consider society as a race with the goal to get to the end of it everyone applauds.

Most of the developments we applaud could have been considered inevitable.  I'm not a luddite and I am not one who insists the past is better because it mostly sucked as well but for all the development the world is doing most of it isn't dripping down to improving humanity or improving life at this point so I am skeptical of any points made that we need to rush mankind's "growth".

But let us take the incredible changes in just the last 15 years.
15 years ago, sat nav was a must when renting a car 
Now, app based maps do the job. Far better than static sat nav.
Electric vehicles.
The cloud! You can run incredibly complex models on the cloud that you’d break your head over 15 years ago
Phone based delivery apps. I can’t remember when I last ate at a restaurant 

And so forth.

Are we not happier today than 15 years ago ?
I think so, there’s more free time, don’t have to go into work every day, and there’s streaming and better phones 

I think life in the 90s was fairly barbaric, though at the time it looked like we were doing so much better than the cavemen of the 70s, who had telex

[milo]

If you consider life as a race and the goal is to get to the end of it you develop a particular type of self destruction that nobody admires but when we consider society as a race with the goal to get to the end of it everyone applauds.

Most of the developments we applaud could have been considered inevitable.  I'm not a luddite and I am not one who insists the past is better because it mostly sucked as well but for all the development the world is doing most of it isn't dripping down to improving humanity or improving life at this point so I am skeptical of any points made that we need to rush mankind's "growth".

But let us take the incredible changes in just the last 15 years.
15 years ago, sat nav was a must when renting a car 
Now, app based maps do the job. Far better than static sat nav.
Electric vehicles.
The cloud! You can run incredibly complex models on the cloud that you’d break your head over 15 years ago
Phone based delivery apps. I can’t remember when I last ate at a restaurant 

And so forth.

Are we not happier today than 15 years ago ?
I think so, there’s more free time, don’t have to go into work every day, and there’s streaming and better phones 

I think life in the 90s was fairly barbaric, though at the time it looked like we were doing so much better than the cavemen of the 70s, who had telex

no, technology is advancing and the speed is increasing.  It is not far off that humans will be irrelevant and it seems inevitable at this point that some future generations of us will no longer be organic but rather data based.

Yah, GPS is great.  I used to use maps.  Maps were great too for reasons that people today will never understand.  And they were a great metaphor as well.  Pocket based computers were always inevitable but their actual usage ends up just being to endlessly scroll pre fed media and people actually don't seem happier at all for doing it though I am sure nobody would want to live without it.

I could live without a better phone forever and as much as I use it and rely on it I doubt it has made me objectively happier.

Free time?  I suppose but is it really free when everyone has to scroll at least 6 hours a day on their phones?  I am not one to judge the values of others but even people stuck in the cycle recognize the additional time isn't bringing them happiness.

Multiple studies have shown Gen Z to be the least happy generation since studies have started and it looks like Gen Alpha will beat them at least at that.

[wasellajam]

Off topic but

this is the brilliance of making room for threads like this on a poetry site, seems it has already sparked at least two new poems. Thank you busker.for posting it.

[milo]

Off topic but

this is the brilliance of making room for threads like this on a poetry site, seems it has already sparked at least two new poems. Thank you busker.for posting it.

I have always said the thing I liked about the site best is the discussion.  If the discussion is about poetry, that's fine as well but poets need to be masters of the rhetoric and topics like this do keep the blade sharp