To the editor-

Usually I laugh at the political cartoons that appear in the paper

but the one titled “The Luddites” (in the July 2nd paper) made me realize

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that laughter, at times, can be very dangerous.

Once I was called a Luddite (and a Quaker) by a college teacher and when I

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later looked up what it meant I was flattered (even though I couldn’t

actually live up to being a true Luddite, especially when I use a

computer!). I don’t think society realizes what these advance

technologies are actually doing to their lives. What do you think the world

would be like without the printing press, telephone, and airplane? We would

be living like natives in a clean, unpolluted world and perhaps money,

coupled with destruction of the earth, wouldn’t be prevalent like it is

today.

I’m not opposed to advancement alone, only when it is destructive. That’s

right, all these new ways of living is destroying the earth we live on. I

mean now that we have the telephone we have to clear cut acres and acres of

forests for the poles and of course have a new type of telephone throwing

the old one out to where? Well as long as you don’t see your trash it

doesn’t matter right? This pattern of destruction of the earth is repeated

every time a new technology occurs. And when it occurs it’s affecting every

human on this earth. I can’t laugh at that.

Real life is disappearing at an enormous rate; real food, real

conversation, the use of our walking abilities, clean water, are all

disappearing. Life is being replaced with fake food, yelling with gestures

from cars, more room for cars than a city would need for people to live,

polluted water and, above all, laziness.

I’m not sure that stem cell research is something that would be

destructive to humans but I know of many medical advancements that have

harmed society, one of which is anti-biotics. Thanks to that technological

advancement we have mutated stronger viruses for us to battle. To laugh at

people that question what might come about from

imperfect-greedy-money-makers (and the medical field does consist of these

types of people, just consider prescription drugs) is tantamount to laughing

at people who care, such as Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King and Mahatma

Ghandi.

Lorelei Lisa van Peborgh