On Thu, Feb 5, 2026 at 12:18 PM Udhay Shankar N via Silklist < [email protected]> wrote:
> The state of the world, and especially the Esptein files cesspool, has me > thinking of _Altered carbon_ (the book, not the TV show). In my reading, > the core point of the book is "past a certain level of wealth, you're not > really human any more". > > The key reasons: > > * Access to wealth, opportunities, networks and bodily modifications far > beyond what anyone at a lower socio-economic stratum can access. So much so > that you're not really comparable any more. > * Inability to perceive other people as even being of the same species, > but only as exploitable resources. > > To be clear, this is not the only artistic work to advance this thesis - > but it is the one that has made the core point in the most memorable way > for me. > > At an even higher level of abstraction, one might argue that the point of > all art is to examine the question of what it means to be human. Which > could easily be also interpreted as what it means to be inhuman. > > Thoughts? > > Udhay > > It seems to me that many "successful" folks become so because of their IQ. Once success goes to their heads, their EQ becomes inversely proportional to their IQ. Or, perhaps, they never had much EQ in the first place. The number of High IQ/Low EQ folks that are in leadership positions is perhaps the biggest causal factor for the sad state of world affairs. My highest respect is now reserved for the rare breed of folks who are High IQ/High EQ. As for the High IQ/Low EQ folks, they have a certain stink of arrogance. Once you learn to detect them, it becomes easy to avoid them! How did we become such a low EQ society? Venky
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