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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
modified food (making the point that definition of
it wasn't fundamentally different "capital" he
from traditional hybridisation). attributes to
Marx: the surplus
He suggested trying to disentangle value of work.
the power games of capitalism
(e.g. patenting life forms) with (Oddly enough there
the goals of biological science and are lefties who
technology don't believe that
wealth *can* be
Supporting human life with created, which not
less environmental impact. even Marx would've
agreed with.)
Someone in the audience
suggested that this wasn't
such a great thing...
Robinson's response was My response would be: if there
that the one thing that are too many human beings and
needed to happen to solve we need massive dieback, try to
the over-population problem imagine that dieback happening
was an increase in "social in this room instead of off in
justice" for every woman on Africa somewhere.
the planet.
I would bring up the Dave
(And that was an Foreman/Murray Bookchin
applause line that controversy, and suggest
completely won over that if you think it through
the crowd.) 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 (I guess that
that we want "improved would've at least
living standards" and "lower had the virtue of
population growth" and doing showing some
one helps do the other. familarity with the
anarchist lit.)
Other borrowed phrases WHAT_ARE_THEY_TO_ME
he used...
"The vanity of small
differences." --Freud
CIRCULAR_FIRING_SQUAD
"The cruel desert
religions."
Who was that from?
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