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#3446"Despite its suffix, skepticism is not an "ism" in the sense of a belief
or dogma. It is simply an approach to the problem of telling what is
counterfeit and what is genuine. And a recognition of how costly it may
be to fail to do so. To be a skeptic is to cultivate "street smarts" in
the battle for control of one's own mind, one's own money, one's own
allegiances. To be a skeptic, in short, is to refuse to be a victim.
-- Robert S. DeBear, "An Agenda for Reason, Realism, and Responsibility,"
New York Skeptic (newsletter of the New York Area Skeptics, Inc.), Spring 1988
#3447"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead
stuff."
-- Dave Enyeart
#3448"After one week [visiting Austria] I couldn't wait to go back to the United
States. Everything was much more pleasant in the United States, because of
the mentality of being open-minded, always positive. Everything you want to
do in Europe is just, 'No way. No one has ever done it.' They haven't any
more the desire to go out to conquer and achieve -- I realized that I had much
more the American spirit."
-- Arnold Schwarzenegger
#3449"I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest."
-- Alexandre Dumas (fils)
#3450 Well, punk is kind of anti-ethical, anyway. Its ethics, so to speak,
include a disdain for ethics in general. If you have to think about some-
thing so hard, then it's bullshit anyway; that's the idea. Punks are anti-
ismists, to coin a term. But nonetheless, they have a pretty clearly defined
stance and image, and THAT is what we hang the term `punk' on.
-- Jeff G. Bone
#3451 I think for the most part that the readership here uses the c-word in
a similar fashion. I don't think anybody really believes in a new, revolution-
ary literature --- I think they use `cyberpunk' as a term of convenience to
discuss the common stylistic elements in a small subset of recent sf books.
-- Jeff G. Bone
#3452 So we get to my point. Surely people around here read things that
aren't on the *Officially Sanctioned Cyberpunk Reading List*. Surely we
don't (any of us) really believe that there is some big, deep political and
philosophical message in all this, do we? So if this `cyberpunk' thing is
just a term of convenience, how can somebody sell out? If cyberpunk is just a
word we use to describe a particular style and imagery in sf, how can it be
dead? Where are the profound statements that the `Movement' is or was trying
to make?
I think most of us are interested in examining and discussing literary
(and musical) works that possess a certain stylistic excellence and perhaps a
rather extreme perspective; this is what CP is all about, no? Maybe there
should be a newsgroup like, say, alt.postmodern or somthing. Something less
restrictive in scope than alt.cyberpunk.
-- Jeff G. Bone
#3453"Everyone's head is a cheap movie show."
-- Jeff G. Bone
#3454Life is full of concepts that are poorly defined. In fact, there are very few
concepts that aren't. It's hard to think of any in non-technical fields.
-- Daniel Kimberg
#3455...cyberpunk wants to see the mind as mechanistic & duplicable,
challenging basic assumptions about the nature of individuality & self.
That seems all the better reason to assume that cyberpunk art & music is
essentially mindless garbagio. Willy certainly addressed this idea in
"Count Zero," with Katatonenkunst, the automatic box-maker and the girl's
observation that the real art was the building of the machine itself,
rather than its output.
-- Eliot Handelman
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