So it's a thousand years in advance, and somehow (somehow) we haven't blown ourselves to smithereens. But we're at such a state with such advanced technological prowess that we're basically able to inhabit an infinite number of planets just because we wanna. So the idea comes up, after another thousand years of multicultural sensitivity and political correctness, that groups of people united by culture or ideology can move to their own planets and do their own things.
Which starts out very nicely. Each planet gets along fine, and of course there are plenty of liberal hippies who want to stay on Earth so they could work through their differences in a cosmopolitan sort of way. But after a few years, the other planets begin to roil up in disagreement, and after many years these planets are divided again along similar proportionate lines because of ideological and cultural differences that become apparent.
People are flabbergasted. At last they had a chance to break up differences so that each difference has its own planet, and this should mean unity city. So why are people disagreeing again, even to the point of warfare?
Because, you know, it's not about objective differences that divide people. It's about a certain spirit of disagreement that the people have. This spirit intentionally seeks out differences, working from the apparent ones, but gradually moving to smaller and smaller details. Which brings me to the planets: their differences are incredibly small, even pettifogging from the perspective of those on Earth, who are caught up on "significant" differences like entire religious differences, or completely opposite identifications on political and ideological spectra.
But what happens on the planets is they also have their own spectra, but after enough time what would qualify as significantly different for Earth -- say a 1 and 10, or 3 and 8 -- eventually gets down to a 1 and 2: what was only slightly, to the point of not even being noticeable, different on Earth becomes a world of difference on the other planets.
Because of our spirit of divisiveness. What drives this spirit? Could it be the herdlike spirit of gravity, which holds fast to whatever small detail a group of people could identify with for no other reason than because they can identify with it? That there is some type of mysterious anxiety associated with seeing differences in other people? That really we're truly afraid of difference, because on some level we feel threatened by it?
Well, sure. So we keep looking closer and closer, giving stronger and stronger attention to that unfounded vague anxiety, until we finally find a displaced target in the infinitesimally small differences of another person, a stranger, who dresses slightly different, or wears his smile in a different way, or puts too much creamer in his coffee.
This is why we're killing one another. This is why we don't sit next to strangers on trains and buses despite the shadow of social alienation that's strangling us as a society. We automatically expect the worst, which has had great survival value in the past, but ultimately we're treating headaches by cutting off our own heads.
"The enemy is within. Don't confuse me with him." -- Elliott Smith
Which starts out very nicely. Each planet gets along fine, and of course there are plenty of liberal hippies who want to stay on Earth so they could work through their differences in a cosmopolitan sort of way. But after a few years, the other planets begin to roil up in disagreement, and after many years these planets are divided again along similar proportionate lines because of ideological and cultural differences that become apparent.
People are flabbergasted. At last they had a chance to break up differences so that each difference has its own planet, and this should mean unity city. So why are people disagreeing again, even to the point of warfare?
Because, you know, it's not about objective differences that divide people. It's about a certain spirit of disagreement that the people have. This spirit intentionally seeks out differences, working from the apparent ones, but gradually moving to smaller and smaller details. Which brings me to the planets: their differences are incredibly small, even pettifogging from the perspective of those on Earth, who are caught up on "significant" differences like entire religious differences, or completely opposite identifications on political and ideological spectra.
But what happens on the planets is they also have their own spectra, but after enough time what would qualify as significantly different for Earth -- say a 1 and 10, or 3 and 8 -- eventually gets down to a 1 and 2: what was only slightly, to the point of not even being noticeable, different on Earth becomes a world of difference on the other planets.
Because of our spirit of divisiveness. What drives this spirit? Could it be the herdlike spirit of gravity, which holds fast to whatever small detail a group of people could identify with for no other reason than because they can identify with it? That there is some type of mysterious anxiety associated with seeing differences in other people? That really we're truly afraid of difference, because on some level we feel threatened by it?
Well, sure. So we keep looking closer and closer, giving stronger and stronger attention to that unfounded vague anxiety, until we finally find a displaced target in the infinitesimally small differences of another person, a stranger, who dresses slightly different, or wears his smile in a different way, or puts too much creamer in his coffee.
This is why we're killing one another. This is why we don't sit next to strangers on trains and buses despite the shadow of social alienation that's strangling us as a society. We automatically expect the worst, which has had great survival value in the past, but ultimately we're treating headaches by cutting off our own heads.
"The enemy is within. Don't confuse me with him." -- Elliott Smith
