Behind all these readings there seems to be a -can I call it childish- need for progression. It seems that we need to believe that human beings can develop and become better (trans)human beings. And that we are either succeeding or failing in that respect. More disturbing, in fact, the general belief that we are now better human beings, that our world is better than it has been..... Why?
What I miss in the readings is someone saying: look, the world is changing and some things will be better and other things will be less good. Generally speaking, the balance will be about the same.Boring perhaps, to read? Well, tough.
What I think might be wrong is the thinking on a large time scale. Take to your parents and your grandparents about which time was better to live in. If you do manage to get to an agreement it will probably be something like: some things were better then, others are better now. And that is what I see with my own kids too: being bilingual and having family in four different countries their lives are much richer than my own at that age. On the other hand, they lack the coziness and safety of a small community where everyone knows everyone. Is that better or worse? All I know is that it is different. It might suit some better than others, but further than that I wouldn't want to go.
Thinking on superhuman time scales blurs our vision. Is loosing yourself in Science Fiction bad? It is, if it keeps you back from thinking about the -much smaller and possibly less interesting- things that we do have influence on. Does googing change your mind? Who cares but let's make sure that our students know how to sensibly use internet searching and let's think carefully about which data we let out on the internet.
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