BLDGBLOG: Comparative Planetology: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparative-planetology-interview-with.html"

(((This interview's great. It's like sitting down for a coffee with a gifted science fiction writer who actually thinks seriously about real issues. Modest little things, like completely reformating entire planets including our own. I kinda get it about the modest green lifestyle promoted here... I have to admit my quality of life has improved radically ever since I stopped owning a car... but in a green, low-carbon-burn lifestyle, where's the *coffee* s'posed to come from? Does Mars have coffee? How 'bout Antarctica?))

Link: BLDGBLOG: Comparative Planetology: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson.

"People try to do stupid technological replacements for natural primate actions, but it doesn’t quite give them the buzz that they hoped it would. Even though it looks quite magical, the sense of accomplishment is not there. So they do it again, hoping that the activity, like a drug, will somehow satisfy the urge that it’s supposedly meant to satisfy. But it doesn’t.

"So they do it more and more – and they fall down a rabbit hole, pursuing a destructive and high carbon-burn activity, when they could just go out for a walk, or plant a garden, or sit down at a table with a friend and drink some coffee and talk for an hour. All of these unboosted, straight-forward primate activities are actually intensely satisfying to the totality of the mind-body that we are.

"So a little bit of analysis of what we are as primates – how we got here evolutionarily, and what can satisfy us in this world – would help us to imagine activities that are much lower impact on the planet and much more satisfying to the individual at the same time. In general, I’ve been thinking: let’s rate our technologies for how much they help us as primates, rather than how they can put us further into this dream of being powerful gods who stalk around on a planet that doesn’t really matter to us...."