Skyhooks are a reality. A rebuttal to Daniel Dennett.
In China, the old men hang out in the park all day. As an old Chinese man, it's pretty amazing you made it to old age, given the sieve your government uses to weed out the risky from the maybe risky to the probably not a risk but what the hell, totalitarianism über alles. So you beat the odds and survived a paranoid brutal state apparatus, a civil war, Japanese invasion, the Cultural Revolution, the 100 Flowers Campaign, the 2nd 100 Flowers Campaign, modernization, innumerable deaths from accident or negligence, and entropy in general, you've now got two options: chess or kites.
I love watching the old guys play chess, flanked with an avid audience, shouting recriminations and tactical narratives like a square dance with meta-algorithms. Carpeted with tea leaves and topped with a plume of smoke that never leaves.
But the smoke gets a bit much. So you find yourself with a row of old men wearing metal harnesses, staring at the heavens. They fly homemade kites that are quite small, but sturdy fabrications of chopsticks and garbage. They look like ladybugs. They launch their kites by hooking onto another's line and riding it up for a bit, then jerking their own string, setting their kite free. It's so friendly. So neighborly. Like the only part of communism that is actually true. The only bit that didn't get fucked up or corrupted. And those kites fly!
They are tethered to metal harnesses and large spools that house thousands of feet of high tensile string. The kites are so far far away, they are hardly even specks in the vacuous sky. Some are completely invisible to their tethered owners. But it's not about the kite. It's about the line. That ineffable force pulling at you from the heavens. Like a backscratch from god. Or a high five from the sublime. Something that makes you feel grounded and connected to the universe. A message from beyond that doesn't say much — doesn't have to say much, just, it's ok, you're not alone.
Image: Orangutan Foot by Lisa Roet
In China, the old men hang out in the park all day. As an old Chinese man, it's pretty amazing you made it to old age, given the sieve your government uses to weed out the risky from the maybe risky to the probably not a risk but what the hell, totalitarianism über alles. So you beat the odds and survived a paranoid brutal state apparatus, a civil war, Japanese invasion, the Cultural Revolution, the 100 Flowers Campaign, the 2nd 100 Flowers Campaign, modernization, innumerable deaths from accident or negligence, and entropy in general, you've now got two options: chess or kites.
I love watching the old guys play chess, flanked with an avid audience, shouting recriminations and tactical narratives like a square dance with meta-algorithms. Carpeted with tea leaves and topped with a plume of smoke that never leaves.
But the smoke gets a bit much. So you find yourself with a row of old men wearing metal harnesses, staring at the heavens. They fly homemade kites that are quite small, but sturdy fabrications of chopsticks and garbage. They look like ladybugs. They launch their kites by hooking onto another's line and riding it up for a bit, then jerking their own string, setting their kite free. It's so friendly. So neighborly. Like the only part of communism that is actually true. The only bit that didn't get fucked up or corrupted. And those kites fly!
They are tethered to metal harnesses and large spools that house thousands of feet of high tensile string. The kites are so far far away, they are hardly even specks in the vacuous sky. Some are completely invisible to their tethered owners. But it's not about the kite. It's about the line. That ineffable force pulling at you from the heavens. Like a backscratch from god. Or a high five from the sublime. Something that makes you feel grounded and connected to the universe. A message from beyond that doesn't say much — doesn't have to say much, just, it's ok, you're not alone.
Image: Orangutan Foot by Lisa Roet
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