So tonight...

[silveradept]

...was interesting. Things are falling into place, slowly enough, even though I'm probably going to be running around like a chicken with my head cut off for the next week or two. I had a dayshift of work, and that was interesting by itself. Then strange things tonight and stranger things, perhaps, tomorrow. After all, a day where you find someone laying out our options in case aliens invade has to count high on the weird factor. Then again, smoking bottles might up it a bit. Then, that which might be an interesting skill - how to sidestep absolute truth and still make things useful.

Any volunteers? Or rather, voluntaryists? It's only about making a society where people are utopically aligned with each other, and there is no State acting on us... and all accomplished through entirely nonviolent means. It'll take a while, that's for sure, if this is to succeed.

So, what have you vandalized today? Is it merely physical, or mental, or emotional?

It's the curse of being able to see both sides of the mirror. The American Culture class is going to show us what the subcultures thought and felt, and how they were crushed, and we'd be idiots not to see the same thing happenign in our society, albeit at a much faster pace. The question we have is not trying to find something to define us, but figuring out how it's going to stay far enough ahead of the machine to be something uniquely defining, and not just a "fad."

Ay, there's the rub. Hippies and Beats and Punks will get eaten by the mainstream too quickly now to flourish as a counterculture. So how do you nest yourself inside long enough to gain strength to survive and fight off the mainstream long enough?

Comments

[rimspace.livejournal.com]

a day where you find someone laying out our options in case aliens invade has to count high on the weird factor
I don't know, I've done that myself before now. I tried to work out what would happen if an advanced race using staging bases on Mars and Ganymede (and capable of fast movement between them and high earth orbit - using hyperspace in fact) decided to attack Earth directly. I needed it as part of my universe.

I came to the conclusion that we'd be toast. The only possible thing that could save us from, at best, slavery if not extinction was if another race capable of defeating our attackers stepped in.

Technically we'd be centuries, maybe even millennia, behind any race capable of interstellar travel. This would render pretty much all our weaponry virtually usless - fission or fusion bombs might be usable, but normal projectile weapons and probably most of the more experimental stuff would be like gnats on an elephant. With time and effort we might be able to create devices powerful enough to be usable, but that would need interntional cooperation and a lot of warning.

Mooneyham's suggestion of attacking bases is possibly rather silly - any race capable of getting here will probably have done so in sodding great ships. Ships that will have remained in orbit while the attack force used the gravity well to their advantage. So even if we did manage to destroy a base on the surface, relacing it would probably be fairly easy for the attacker. Especially if they have facilities to harvest the asteroid belt or near earth orbiting rocks. And even if we did manage to deal a significant blow, I doubt they'd just have one ship, or even one fleet. And besides, if they just want the planet, grabbing a few asteroids and dropping them on major population centres would be a much easier way for them to eradicate opposition than a prolonged ground war.

I could go through his other points but they all have weaknesses.

Of course, things change slightly if it isn't a frontal assault. But the outcome then depends on exactly what they want...

[silveradept]

I can agree that if First Contact were with a hostile race, we'd all be toasted unless things were radically different than they are now. The only hope we might have is that the government really has been hiding advanced technologies from us just in case. Beyond that, we could very well be done for if someone decides to invade.