[FRIAM] Santa Fe Plaza Riot

Wed Jun 3 16:17:27 EDT 2020

Well Merle, we may just have to agree to disagree. I see AI and robotics as
simply more advanced tools to help us individual Homo sapiens to live
comfortably during our limited time of existence, and having more time to
spend enjoying our sister and brother species without destroying them.

On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 2:02 PM Merle Lefkoff <merlelefkoff at gmail.com> wrote:

> The part you got wrong, Gary, was the last part.  There will no doubt be
> fewer of us soon--many fewer according to the best estimates-- and perhaps
> we will survive on the planet living in small communities, growing and
> storing food, enjoying a local shared economy, and trying to flourish.  But
> until we deeply acknowledge how hard we try to hang onto some version of
> our present material privileges (AI and robotics as the new slaves), we
> doom our species, along with our sister and brother species who help us
> survive.
>
> On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 12:44 PM Gary Schiltz <gary at naturesvisualarts.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Does it make me a sociopath for me to hope big cities *do* collapse and
>> become a thing of the past? People who know me well understand when I say I
>> like persons, but not people, which is to say that while I treasure
>> individual friendships and relationships, I at best tolerate crowds. I
>> think we have not evolved the psychological mechanisms to live together
>> in great concentrations. Our advanced civilization is much too young to
>> qualify as having stood the test of time, a few measly tens of thousands of
>> years is such a small blip in time compared to the time life has existed on
>> our planet. I personally believe that the Earth would be much better off
>> with under a billion (highly educated) people, with AI and robotics
>> providing for the bulk of our material needs, and that is something we
>> should as a species strive for. But then, I could be absolutely,
>> completely, wrong about all this, and instead just be a sociopath. I hope
>> not.
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 11:48 AM Merle Lefkoff <merlelefkoff at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Biofilm, huh?  I think you may be on to something.
>>>
>>> Returning a long-overdue book to the downtown Santa Fe library last
>>> evening, I took a walk thorough the plaza to see how our "phase two" was
>>> coming along.  There were about 40 police strolling about--with only a few
>>> pedestrians, locals all wearing masks, and a few unfortunate tourists (not
>>> wearing masks, evidently not needed in the biofilm).  There had been a
>>> rumor of a demonstration which had not materialized.  So the officers were
>>> enjoying the evening "break", as they told me.
>>>
>>> I can't sleep at night worrying about how we're going to keep peace in
>>> the valley in the near future as the quickening collapse of our systems
>>> becomes logarithmic.  Many big-city police are recruited based on former
>>> military service.  Also, many who get a high from dealing with violence are
>>> attracted to policing.  The recruits are then trained as warriors, not
>>> peacekeepers, today even dressed for duty on the "front lines".  Beyond the
>>> systemic context of racism, poverty, etc. etc., the elected city mothers
>>> and fathers who theoretically "control" local law enforcement either don't
>>> give a damn, or they're scared of the very powerful police unions.
>>>
>>> I'm old enough to remember the release of the President's National
>>> Advisory Commission on Civil Disorder, known as the Kerner Report,
>>> FIFTY-TWO years ago in 1968. After surveying 24 "disorders" in 23 cities,
>>> the final conclusion was that "Our nation is moving toward two societies,
>>> one black, one white--separate and unequal". The report then went on in
>>> extraordinary detail to describe the challenges of pervasive racism and the
>>> absence of political will to provide the federal money needed to intervene
>>> AT THE SYSTEM LEVEL.  It was quite remarkable to read again; every word
>>> could have been written today; President Johnson immediately dismissed the
>>> report, released on February 29; and on April 4 Martin Luther King was shot
>>> dead.
>>>
>>>
>>> https://hystericalcolorblindness.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/kerner-commission-report-pdf/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 9:47 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Aside: Do you avoid using the Reply mechanism on purpose? The subject
>>>> seems to be a normally formatted reply, but there are no References:
>>>> headers in your posts. This prevents threading clients from treating your
>>>> post as a reply. It seems like you're using the Gmail web client. But I
>>>> haven't read email headers in awhile. So who knows?
>>>>
>>>> I entertain a long-running (longer than usual for me) ill-formed
>>>> hypothesis that as our population density approaches the carrying capacity
>>>> of the earth, such isolation will be more and more rare. And that diversity
>>>> will also go down. We'll become more of a biofilm (or superorganism) on the
>>>> surface of the earth and less of a seething constellation of differentiable
>>>> agents. One hitch is that as climate change worsens, some places will be
>>>> the exclusive playgrounds of the wealthy (wealthy enough to own the water
>>>> and supply chains to move goods to these rarified places). So you
>>>> optimistic elitists living in compounds like Santa Fe (parasitic off those
>>>> of us who might still function more naturally as climate change blossoms)
>>>> will become more and more isolated while the rest of us become more and
>>>> more like a biofilm.
>>>>
>>>> So you'll need to cling to your diversity while it lasts because WE are
>>>> coming for you! >8^D
>>>>
>>>> On 6/3/20 7:41 AM, Jon Zingale wrote:
>>>> > I personally find the Santa Fe police force to be very good at being
>>>> > empathetic and encouraging peaceful conflict. As someone who has spent
>>>> > half of my life living in dense urban centers, I often feel a
>>>> responsibility
>>>> > to witness when I see police interactions with others. Moving to
>>>> Santa Fe has
>>>> > done a lot to remediate my feelings around the police. Further, while
>>>> there is
>>>> > a very long way to go wrt race and equity, the discussion has been
>>>> explicitly
>>>> > in motion here in New Mexico for a long time. Is it possible that our
>>>> apparent
>>>> > /isolation from the broader unrest/ is a sign of maturity within our
>>>> social
>>>> > discourse? I have some concern that there may be a rising pressure
>>>> > across the diverse regions of our country to abstract away our
>>>> differences,
>>>> > and to behave as if the discourse is /everywhere the same/. Doing so
>>>> in
>>>> > many cases would erase the very good work that has been hard-won.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> ☣ uǝlƃ
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
>>> President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
>>> emergentdiplomacy.org
>>> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>>> merlelefkoff at gmail.com <merlelefoff at gmail.com>
>>> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
>>> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
>>> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
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>
>
> --
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
> merlelefkoff at gmail.com <merlelefoff at gmail.com>
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
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