Silly people. You travel to another planet with a high tech spaceship and build a new civilization on it, and then you think you're so cool that you don't need to teach kids cursive any more. For shame!
Your sarcasm is noted, but bear in mind that we are already so dependent on technology that if it all went away, the ability to read and write 'by hand' would be the least of our concerns. That, to me, is the point of Snowshadow's story.
Back in the 60s it was a common trope that a nuclear war would send the survivors "back to the stone age" (everybody assumed they would be among the survivors). This is quite true, but we have forgotten just how "nasty, brutish, and short" that lifestyle was.
Earlier, we saw one of the peripheral characters, whose name I forget, revelling in fighting and killing. She considered this an adventure. I find that horrifying, but I have no doubt that it is true to life.
So yes, we are losing the skills our less technologically adept ancestors used to get by, and yes, if it all comes crashing down due to solar storms, ecological collapse, pandemic, asteroid strike, or nuclear war . . . we would be in deep doodoo (those of us who were unlucky enough to survive).
I am not saying that technology is a bad thing. It has made our lives immeasurably better, and there is more to come. We should, however, appreciate that it is fragile, and act accordingly.
Being an Apache, her friends attitude is completely normal. And the natives are being natives.
Read up on what is going on in Africa RIGHT NOW and you will get even more horrified.
Read up on the Zulu when ruled by Shaka and you will get sick.
You are correct. Seeing the things people do to one another does make me sick. Fortunately, that is not all there is to humanity.
Look, I get it. There is a huge endorphin rush to surviving a fight to the death. And when we lived in small tribes, it was a very effective way of improving the fitness of future generations. But we don't need to do it that way any more. We are on the verge of directing our own evolution. What our descendants will do with that power is probably beyond our present imagination. I doubt it will include death matches.
P.S. The reference to tribes is not meant to be a put-down of Native peoples. It's only a few thousand years since every human on the planet was a member of a small tribe, my own ancestors included. In evolutionary terms, that's yesterday.
"But we don't need to do it that way any more."
Sez you.
"We are on the verge of directing our own evolution."
If that doesn't absolutely terrify you, then this discussion is over.
"What our descendants will do with that power is probably beyond our present imagination."
I can imagine quite a bit. More than you, apparently.
"I doubt it will include death matches"
…………...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
How many kids of the _current_ generation know how to read (or write) cursive?
Heck, how many know how to write _at all_?
That's a pretty strange room . . . with wall installations that for all the world look like faces . . . hehe
Is she going to tell her mom about the noise she heard?
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