From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Fri May 24 2002 - 07:48:47 MDT
--> Amara Graps
> Robert J. Bradbury:
> >For Amara and Gina, I would offer up the question of whether or not,
> >in Greg Stock's posthuman world, you feel it should be legal to
> >allow other posthumans to turn their empathic feelings down to zero?
>
> 'legal' ? Hell no. I hate laws, especially coercive ones.
>
> However, if one turns empathy to zero, I think it would be a pretty good
> and quick way to destroy the human and trans and posthumans races.
>
> Try decoupling the humans' passion for life from their reverence for
> life, because that is what is really behind your question. Empathy is
> strongly linked to a care and respect (and love, if you will) of beings
> around you. Nice trick if you can do that, if you that's what you really
> want. Do you think posthumans would have a passion for life if they had
> zero care for their fellow beings? For their offspring? I'm not talking
> about living one's life for others, Robert, because you have to want to
> live life for yourself first. Instead, I'm talking about the growth and
> challenges and education and sharing experiences that other living
> beings can provide in your environment, if you are awake and not asleep.
> My interest in living a passionate life would disappear in a very short
> time.
>
> Would you want to live in that kind of future? I wouldn't.
What you're describing would seem to sound like some of the underpinnings of
the cyberpunk genre. Loss of empathy, passion for life replaced with passion
for technology, loss of consensus societal value for individual humans and
their concerns. Just to drop a hundred books into the backdrop of the
conversation there.
[Aside: you know, I really don't think anyone arguing back and forth in the
past few days on this and similar topics really disagree on ethics/morals.
It's all factual/societal-opinion-as-fact items that are being debated. Very
similar to the current abortion debate. e.g. what is human, what is the
value of a potential human, etc, etc.].
Reason
http://www.exratio.com
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