CHAT: facing your own mortality

On Thu, 2008-06-26, Rick Harrison wrote:

> Is it arrogant to want some of your ideas to live on after you die?
>
Archivist: … the lodge has destruction ceremonies yearly …
Pandora: You destroy valuable books?
A: Oh, yes. Who wants to be buried under them?
P: But that's the point of information storage and retrieval systems! …
Information is passed on — the central act of human culture.
A: … Books no one reads go; books people read go after a while. But they
all go. Books are mortal they die. A book is an act; it takes place in
time, not just in space. It is not information, but relation.
P: This is the kind of conversation they always have in utopia. I set
you up and then you give interesting, eloquent, and almost entirely
convincing replies. … I never did like smartass utopians.

Always Coming Home, by Ursula K. Le Guin (the greatest living American
writer?)