Re: 'reactionary'

From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue Jul 11 2000 - 21:55:32 MDT


At 06:52 PM 11/07/00 +0200, "scerir" <scerir@libero.it> wrote:

>Yes. But what is the right english term?

For extropians/>Hs? `Transformative'? `Progressive' should seem
appropriate, but it has a freight of dismal 20th century baggage, ranging
from marxism to slam-bam-pave-over-the-universe.

>In a catholic-socialist regime are the extropic
>(extropian?) principles *revolutionary*?
>On the contrary, do they rather
>suggest *eversion*?

Not a term in common use in US or UK-style English. See below.

>*In Italy*, and in the opinion of those hurried
>writers, extropic principles
>(or the genoma project, or the singularity concept,
>or the mind loading, etc.)
>*appear* (at the present time) *eversive*,
>not revolutionary.

In English, `eversion' is turning something inside out. I don't know how
this could be applied as a metaphor to politics.

`Revolution' implies a drastic rotation that upends a hierarchy, putting
peasants in charge of aristocrats, say. I believe the metaphor derived from
the Copernican model of the solar system - which was, of course, also
revolutionary in our sense.

Since transhumanists expect almost total reorganisation and re-creation of
technologies, sciences, economics, social order, the very structure of
conscious agents, I don't think a pallid term like `revolutionary' is
suitable let alone sufficient. :)

Damien Broderick



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