Prometheus,

That is what I remember too. 2001 bored me because it was just another one of those pieces about tyranny that offered no real insight into tyranny.

You are supposed to be impressed by HAL exercising conscious volition. In art, these are tricks by “artists” to promote themselves, to get an audience. Real art is utilitarian. It does something to improve your life. Personally if its only function is to hang there and impress you it annoys the hell out of me.

Robert Whitaker wrote this:

“I am a priest, my job is to keep you from Sin, which I define.”

“I am a doctor, my job is to keep your heart beating.”

“I am a professor, my job is to provide you with an Education, which I define.”

“I am a guru, my job is to help you escape the Wheel of Life.”

“If you ask anyone you PAY about making life worth living, they will laugh out loud.”

“That is NOT their table.”

That is what the “inevitable future” is, just another trick. Just another hustler inducing you to buy a ticket for something that delivers no real value.

That is what all the McCain and Obama supporters are doing when they take the effort to punch their ballot. Purchasing a ticket that offers no real value. All of them are believers in “the inevitable future”.

As one gets older one’s explanations become simpler. In the days before experts and Mommy Professor this was very enlightening to the young. “There has never been a Love like my Love” was perfectly understood. But the oldster did not dismiss it.

The oldster treated it as something he remembers. But the oldster also remembers that he bobbled it. He can tell the youngster how it was, but not how it should have been. After all he is just sitting there on the porch talking. He is not SELLING solutions.

Today that porch talking oldster is the LAST person the young ‘uns will ever talk to who is not SELLING a Final Truth.

The oldster knew about the element of sex, but he didn’t dismiss it the way a Puritan Elder would. To him the Elder was a lot more childish than the young guy or girl he was listening to was. To that person, his love was new and unique. The Puritan said, “I was what you call in love when I was your age.”

“Get over it! I did!”

That is the same lesson Mommy Professor teaches. That is the same lesson the Greatest Generation teaches. The Greatest Generation, as the name implies, is the only source of Truth.

Here is the essential difference between Porch Talk with a real oldster:

The oldster does not depend on DRAMA. The Greatest Generation has been told that it represents the Only True Knowledge, the Only True Experience which is being in that mystical experience called “COMBAT” in the “Last GOOD War.”

Mommy Professor explains that he is the final stage of the Truest Truth. Mommy Professor is dramatically undramatic. He tells you what you have heard and then WHAT REALLY IS.

There is no roll of drums because Final Truth is beyond a roll of drums.

The oldster will tell you what he has learned and then go in to supper.

One thing that destroys any attempt at real futurology is that it consistently ignores the obvious. This is because a professional expert is supposed to be in on details that only an expert would know about. It occurred to no one that the total absence of any prediction that the USSR was about to go out of business was a major, catastrophic failure on the whole industry of Sovietology. But if a professional Sovietologist had mixed up a street in Moscow with one in Kiev, it would have pointed at and disgraced him

Such a mistake in street names would have caused quite a hubbub. I have yet to read a thing about why all these pros missed the fact that the whole thing was about to go kaput.
What we hear in all such cases is, “let’s not start assigning blame.”

After all, the only people “qualified” to expose such total errors are other “professionals.” And all these professionals are totally forgiving of each other. No expert wants to be held to the standard of getting things RIGHT. Like Sovietologists, their job is always to make predictions that appeal to those presently in power.

Experts do not expect their predictions to be back checked. They do not back check each other. Their job has nothing to do with accuracy, so there is something vindictive about anyone who makes a point of such errors. “Assigning blame” is unprofessional.