About that rant...

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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