

The Children of Silicon Valley - cageface
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/jul/17/children-silicon-valley

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api
After reading a little I thought "yep, this is gonna be another conservative
screed." Kept reading and yes, it's another conservative screed. I realize the
author(s) might think they are liberals, but they're not. They're
reactionaries.

I can't be a conservative. I have eyes. I can't be a reactionary either
because I've studied history, and I don't buy the sugar coated version of it.
There is nothing worth going back to, and there is little worth conserving
except insofar as it serves as a platform and scaffolding to build something
else.

I just can't for the life of me understand how someone could be _truly_
satisfied with this existence enough to want to conserve it... to protect it
from change. Sure, some people are randomly selected by the genetic lottery to
be handsome, intelligent, or born to wealthy parents or in a wealthy nation. I
guess if you were one of those people _and_ never bothered to contemplate
beyond these immediate realities, nor to ponder the fundamental and utter
brutality of that lottery itself, you might be satisfied.

Meanwhile the rest of us are trying to find some way -- be it through
spirituality, technology, art, science, or religion -- to build a ladder tall
enough to climb out of the hell that is the Darwinian process that gave birth
to us.

I'm not saying I hate my life. I actually lead a pretty good one. I have
people I really love, a good job, a great looking future. I guess I got a
decent lotto ticket. But when I open my eyes and step outside myself and look
objectively at the whole reality of my circumstance and those of the people
around me, I can't help but remember that I'm in hell.

So yes I sympathize with "disrupt everything," even though it's reckless and
sometimes amounts to little in the end. At least it's trying to do something.
I even find myself sympathizing on some level with religious fanatics. I don't
share their metaphysics but I understand what could lead a person to that
place. The thing that could make a person fast until near death, blow
themselves up to achieve martyrdom, or drive nails into their own hands in
imitation of Christ... that's the same fundamental dissatisfaction with our
position in the universe that makes us spend years trying to solve hard
technical problems and build rockets to the moon. If we were satisfied we
would do none of these things. We would eat, drink, be merry, and die.

