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ANARCHIC_ROBINSON
March 14, 2010
The Kim Stanley Robinson
talk at The Anarchist Bookfair,
March 13, 2010
Robinson's central point is that
Science itself is a functioning THE_SCIENCE_CONSPIRACY
anarchy of a sort.
An example of utopian ideals of
cooperative exchange, openness
and transparency.
Scientists are characterized
by very little interest in material
gain: the difference between the I wonder if he's taken into
post-doc and the tenured prof is account consulting fees.
only a factor of 4 in income. Professors in technical fields
have access to a number of
sources of income outside of
salary.
Kim Stanley Robinson did an
excellent job with this
talk... and he was absolutely
brilliant compared to some of ANARCHIST_BOOK_FAIR
the other speakers.
He wanted to argue that the left had
unfairly villified Science; he was making He also makes a distinction
the point that the scientific world has a between capitalism and
very egalitarian, anti-materialistic culture capital, which is an
interesting move.
In the Q&A period he made the very
gutsy move of defending genetically He uses a definition of
modified food (making the point that "capital" he attributes to
it wasn't fundamentally different Marx: the surplus value of
from traditional hybridisation). work.
He suggested trying to disentangle (Oddly enough there
the power games of capitalism are lefties who
(e.g. patenting life forms) with don't believe that
the goals of biological science and wealth *can* be
technology created, which not
even Marx would've
Supporting human life with agreed with.)
less environmental impact.
Someone in the audience
suggested that this wasn't
such a great thing...
Robinson's response was that My response would be: if there
the one thing that needed to are too many human beings and
happen to solve the we need massive dieback, try to
over-population problem was imagine that dieback happening
"social justice for every in this room instead of off in
woman on the planet". Africa somewhere.
(And that was an I would bring up the Dave
applause line that Foreman/Murray Bookchin
completely won over controversy, and suggest
the crowd.) that if you think it through
a little, you'll probably
want to back off from that
He went on to make the point position, just as Dave
that there's a "positive Foreman did.
feedback" loop here,
i.e. there are two things (Which would at least
that we want "improved show some familarity with
living standards" and "lower the anarchist lit.)
population growth" and doing
one helps do the other. WHAT_ARE_THEY_TO_ME
Other borrowed phrases
he used...
"The vanity of small
differences." --Freud
CIRCULAR_FIRING_SQUAD
"The cruel desert
religions."
Who was that from?
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