We do indeed live, as (author) FM-2030 points out, in a fast-changing, electronically interlocked world (“Are You Ready?” by Connie Koenenn, Jan. 11). One thing that hasn’t changed, apparently, is that a crank with a gimmick and a penchant for holier-than-thou jargon can make lots of money, even in our “post-industrial” society.
What FM-2030 has ignored (as do those who have never heard of him but who parrot his ideas) is that traditions, naming conventions, hierarchies, and old ways of doing things exist because human beings need them and the sense of anchoring and identity they provide.
Drastic changes in the human animal have been predicted or announced or attempted throughout recorded history, recently by the exponents of Marxism and fascism and more recently by the hippies and yippies. Yet in all that time, through intellectual, political and industrial revolutions, human nature hasn’t changed a bit-and is not about to transform itself overnight into the “fluid transhuman” because some guy with a name that sounds like a pop radio station teaches an Extension course at UCLA.
Written by Paul A. Berchielli and published by the Los Angeles Times on January 29, 1989