HW: Hawkwind Political messages

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Thu, Dec 14, 2006 at 10:12:13AM -0800, Chris Owen typed out:
> Hi Jon,
> 
> I think you may be getting a bit over cynical there!

	It wouldn't be the first time, fear not ;-)

> I do appreciate the irony of the Hawkwind Passports although there is probably 
> good reason why they want to know who will be coming to private events.

	One could argue that it's been forced on them by the kind of 
over-regulation that's stopped so many other British festivals, and that 
would be fair enough. I'm not trying to suggest a sinister agenda here 
or anything.

> Ultimately, I do think the music is most important but the message in the lyrics
> is also important and I happen to sympathise with 95% of it, especially the inconvenient truth. 
> I am an engineer myself and so I am against ludditism, but then Hawkwind were always known for 
> not being against new technology and for not being afraid taking the latest musical equipment 
> and using it however they wished.

	Hawkwind's own adoption of technology has always been a credit 
to them; their attitudes to technology of bigger import than 
synthesizers has sometimes been a bit more ambiguous though. Ron Tree's 
fulminations about genetic modification are perhaps a bit of a one-off, 
but the difficult zone of sentient robots and other self-aware machines, 
and cloning, `Earth City'... Both Calvert and Brock have tended to see 
two edges to matters of technological progress I think.

> As for "stop the world I want a ticket to get off" well we will need a space program to do that
> as well as a new home to go to; Planet Hawking? Planet Hawkwind? Planet Viridian?

	We are at least getting *closer* to being able to build personal 
spacecraft :-)

	<snip Viridian plans>

> Everything was just about quality of life and natural morality and fairness and justice but I ran out of time and money!

	I have similar misgivings about that as I do about Mike's 
solution to be honest; it could work as long as everyone within it 
remained ideologically committed to it, but as soon as a body of people 
get the idea that they could advantage themselves at the cost of others, 
it's doomed IMO. This sort of problem with being `rightly guided' is why 
we keep coming back to creaking uncomfortable solutions like democracy 
to keep that element well tied down... Yours,
					      Jon
-- 
"When fortune wanes, of what assistance are quantities of elephants?"
	    (Juvaini, Afghan Muslim chronicler, c. 1206)
 Jon Jarrett, Fitzwilliam Museum, jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk