Hawkwind Political messages

[Jill Strobridge]

"Salt" is a similar book to Le Guin's describing completely opposite 
societies.   One highly organised and stratified based on money and 
patronage; the other anarchistic but with a kind of flexible co-operation 
with people selected at random to perform some social tasks for a short 
while (farmer, housebuilder, roadmaker, ambasador) but with no compulsion. 
Importantly both societies were limited by being colonists on a virtually 
barren planet with very restricted resources so  each had to co-operate 
internally to survive and though both developed they did so in isolation. 
Curiously the thing they shared in common was a suppression of "self".   In 
one it was considered an unacceptable desire to dominate others by force and 
in the other it was seen as a desire to break down the established social 
structures.   Particularly nice was the complete inability of each group to 
comprehend the other's mind set when they did occasionally interact! 
Written very much as a political parable of today though.

jill
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Jill Strobridge <jill.strobridge at blueyonder.co.uk>
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Owen" <chrisow at SHAW.CA>
To: <BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET>
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2006 6:12 PM
Subject: Hawkwind Political messages


Hi Jon,

I think you may be getting a bit over cynical there!
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.

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.
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?

I had this idea once of designing a whole virtual planet and society called 
Planet Viridian which I was going to put online;
I got as far as doing away with politicians, nation states, organised 
religon, military, weapons research,
medical waiting lists,  traffic wardens, social workers, multibillionaires, 
passports we could travel and live anywhere
and over population, 1 Billion max.
Everything was just about quality of life and natural morality and fairness 
and justice but I ran out of time and money!

Chris