From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Wed Apr 17 2002 - 10:11:57 MDT
I think that a distinction between extreme means and extreme ends (and
subsets of both) should be made. Dovetailing with our recent discussion
of the laws of war, and current western predeliction with personal
safety and distain for personal sacrifice for others, I think that it
can be said that there is extremism and then there is extremism, which
is not to say that there is marklar and marklar (;)). It would be
considered extreme to be willing to sacrifice one's own life to further
an end, but not morally repugnant, while it would also be extreme to
sacrifice the lives of innocent bystanders (i.e. civilians) to the same
end, but this *would* be morally repugnant.
Another test of morality is to ask "Who *would* you be willing to kill
to guarrantee a transhuman future?" A luddite? What sort of luddites
would be moral to kill, and what sorts would not be?
We are, after all, talking about the future of the human race, and if we
don't establish a tranhuman future, then Planet Earth is doomed to a
rather dismal malthusian extermination from disease, hunger, and lack of
resources. If we don't build a tranhuman future, billions of people
*WILL* die. No ifs, ands, or butts. This *WILL* happen if the Luddites
win.
To analogize, if you KNEW in 1936 that the Holocaust was guaranteed to
happen if certain things didn't happen, what steps would you consider
morally acceptable, and what ones unacceptable, in order to prevent that
future from occuring?
This is why I think that a little extremism in defense of extropy is no
vice. This is not to say that there isn't anything I wouldn't do. I've
been most vehement about the laws of war here, and I stand by the
standard of behavior they demand.
The difficulty, though, is that the Luddites are not a nation, not an
army, but are engaged in an organized opposition to the future we
envision as most desirable. They have the advantage in money, in public
sympathy, and command the high ground in the school and university
system, and their dogma is far more accepted in the halls of government
and the media. The terrorism they perpetrate is generally accepted by
the general public as just.
It is often said that Germany lost WWII because it lost a mere handful
of its best minds (primarly nuclear physicists), though it is as often
said that the wars end was preordained by industrial logistics, just as
the Cold War's result was ordained by the relative efficiencies of two
economic systems. Both of these ignore the Nietcheian Will as a force
involved in either result. A free people will always be more motivated
to triumph over an enslaved people than the reverse, but only if the
free people recognise that there is a conflict and are determined to win
it.
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