Category: Culture

Human culture. Ape’s culture. Human stupidity.

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The ability to build up knowledge over generations, called cumulative culture, has given humankind language and technology. While it was thought to be limited to humans until now, researchers have recently found that baboons are also capable of cumulative culture. (1)

We believe culture is about language and technology.
But this is not culture.
Apes have language and technology (“tools”).

Look at a great painting.
Listen to a great piece of music.
Just stand by Hagia Sophia.

This is culture.
Things we cannot express in words.
Things we can just sit in awe and admire.

Get your iPhone my dear ape.
Leave culture to humans…

Mars exploration, culture preservation, priorities…

Creating a permanent human settlement on Mars by 2025 will require serious training. To prepare its future astronauts for the task, the Netherlands-based private spaceflight project Mars One announced its plans to construct Earth-based outposts that replicate the cramped, isolated, crazy-making conditions of a Red Planet colony. (1)

Such projects makes one realize we are having all the wrong priorities. We spend so much time considering what to do with preserving life, that we have forgotten what life is. What is most important in such a mission is not the oxygen supply, but the systems or processes that will keep astronauts sane. The systems or processes that will preserve our culture even when we are going to another planet.

Culture preservation “systems”.
Psychology preservation “systems”.
Life preservation systems.

In descending order of importance…

After all, what is meaning to colonize a different world only as a lifeless set of flesh and bones? It is the culture of Parmenides and Aristotle that Mars needs, not our dead lifeless bodies.

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