From: Corwyn J. Alambar (nettiger@best.com)
Date: Wed Nov 15 2000 - 12:02:45 MST
I'm not going to quote it here - but let me being with a hearty "me too!".
Now, to try and clarify some of those questions, let me try to repose them, and
add a few of my own.
(a) What are we doing to extend both the quantity and quality of our lives?
In this I mean - there's a lot of diet information out there, exercise,
nutrition, supplements, etc. What of it works, and what's bunk? What
are we all doing, colelctively and as individuals, to try and extend
and enhance our own biological lives so that we are well enough to
take advantage of the better life extension technology down the line?
Where are the threads on nutrition, etc.? I don't see them much, but
I would imagine this is one of the core things we can do, as individuals
today, to assure we live to see more of the future, instead of waiting
for some technological savior to come and uplift us from our unhealthy
lives.
Ironically, some of th ebest advice I've gotten on health, nutrition,
exercise, etc. comes from one of those mystic, green types that seem to
be generally denigrated around here. Maybe if we listened with open
minds instead of closed ears to some of what they had to say, we could
learn something.
(b) What are we and can we do to benefit the movement out of the gravity
well and into space?
Of all the transhuman technologies, space habitation is the one closest
to realization. Why then do we sit and debate nanotech, uploading,
AS, and other things that may be tens if not hundreds of years away, when
the biggest barrier to space exploration and settlement, other than
NASA/ESA/Energiya/etc., is the cost of getting out of the gravity well?
Satellite launches are a multi-billion dollar business; there HAS to be
someone out there with enough marketing savvy to begin mining venture
capital - and aren't at least SOME of us genuine rocket scientists? If
we can mine the satellite launch process as a source ofincome, we could
suddenly have what ever non-mainstream political and social group wishes
it had - a power base, economically.
It would be a simple matter from an inexpensive launch mechanism to full-
scale private habitation in space, to manufacturing and community
formation. Keep the company private - or at least majority-privately
held, and construct a business plan that runs in the 50-100 year span.
I've been constructing a near-future sceince fiction universe on almost
this premise, and it's incredibly feasable; the more research I do, the
more feasable it seems. Where are the people working for this?
(c) People who are not economic libertarians have significant greivances; why
aren't we addressing these?
Things such as overseas labor conditions, personal sovereignty, artificial
scarcity in key needs (such as housing), environmental degredation, and
the oft-proven link between agrochemicals and cancer are concerns raised
again and again by those across the political spectrum. These are not
political concerns, but social ones.
Are these things dismissed because they're the hard questions, and we want
to only answer the easy ones? Or are they simply inconvenient for the
political and personal philosophies of some of the speakers here? We
are intelligent; we should all be capable of rising above cheap rhetorical
devices and knee-jerk dismissals to consider issues at the fundamental
level. I vote Browne in the election, not because I beleive in economic
libertarianism, but SOCIAL libertarianism - an increasing number of
people who were formerly of the Liberal(/)Democrat mold are looking for
an alternative to the Mommy/Daddy state especially in terms of direct.
discreet personal sovereignty, and LIbertarianism has all the right
things; but it seems it's too busy trying to be a splinter off the
Republican Right, rather than along a different poltical axis entirely.
So what about these social issues, the ones that transcend simple
political pigeonholing, despite our attempts to do so. Let's consider
how to take some of these issues from the statists, and turn this to
our advantage. No one wants to see people starving in the street -
how do you manage to feed people or enable them to feed themselves
without turning to handouts and massive government subsidies? How do
you assure a stable food supply with fewer and fewer externally added
chemicals, while addressing the fears of "outbreaks" and possible
negative reactions in those whom eat these new foods? It's all about
tradeoffs in the real world - if you fear the Greens so much, find
what their issues are and present solutions to the issues that fit
with your mode of thinking, instead of simply dismissing them as non-
issues.
But now I've started to rant, which is a signal for this to end. But in
closing, I'm going to steal a series of questions from J. Michael Strazynski
(sp?):
Who are we?
What do we want?
Why are we here?
The answers aren't as easy as you might at first thing.
-Corey
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