From: Chen Yixiong, Eric (cyixiong@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Aug 04 2001 - 05:03:58 MDT
> One problem I have noted on this (and other transhumanist) lists is that
> whenever serious issues in current society comes up, someone pipes in a
> suggestion like "lets all move to a remote island and set up a
> libertarian state" (or utopian socialist state or something similar).
I do not know that this topic has such popularity on other transhuman lists, probably because I had not joined any other such list yet. Had any one provide a concrete proposal, or had worked on such a proposal?
> This is a kind of safety valve - suddenly the debate got too close to
> home and reality for comfort, so one can save onself by indulging in a
> fantasy. Which unfortunately tends to distract the real debate by
> getting into all the devilish details of sea construction, libertarian
> constitutions and which island has the nicest climate.
I think this concept has very high importantance if we want to succeed. Granted, we have a lot of difficulty in the construction of such colonies. Granted we will have to find a lot of resources, money, planning and whatsoever. Yes, I know, we may even have excitingly dangerous things like border disputes and even wars.
However, we may find it easier to move mountains than to move somewhat narrow-minded and perhaps not too intelligent people from one side of an opinion to another without cheating (meaning we cannot use psychological tactics to "brainwash" them). To succeed, we must first remove their apatheticness (for most people have the problem of apathy rather than activism), elevate their intelligence and before making them interested in seeing the flaws of their own thinking. We had not even got to the "irrationality" aspect of human thinking that seems to resists all attempts of logic to understand and compensate for it.
So, perhaps building colonies do not sound like a fantasy at all, but convincing enough people about the advantages of extropian lifestyle, well, seems to border on fantasy. We also know that if Humanity does advance to transhuman technological levels, they will surely have to explore and live in space. I don't see why we should NOT help pioneer ways to allow this (second great) migration into space to happen.
> Another version
> of this reaction is to get trapped into conspiracy theories about how
> the Powers That Be try to suppress us (unfortunately we do it much
> better ourselves ;-) instead of getting into a real political or
> cultural analysis. We need to get over this kind of distraction.
To ignore real political conspiracies would sound foolhardy, but not to question them would sound imprudent. Yes, we ought to focus and consolidate on the practical aspects of figuring out how our future would look like. I wonder if anyone had consolidated their opinions, thoughts and theories into a coherent whole.
> Well, if all else fails, read up on http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/InfoWar/
> and start implementing the Concordat. But if we would have to do that,
> then we have already failed memetically. I think we can do far better
> in the real world.
Well, it may sound great and heroic to start a conflict, but practically we ought to find a sanctuary that we can retreat to. Call it Plan 'B' if you think an info-war would work better, however, to do without it and go for an all-out info-war would not seem prudent. Hence, the importance of setting up an independent colony.
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