From: Forrest Bishop (forrestb@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Wed May 29 2002 - 02:17:44 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: Hal Finney <hal@finney.org>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2002 3:28 PM
Subject: Re: life and time is too precious
> Curt Adams writes:
> > So not everything the government's done in the past 10, 20, or whatever
> > years is good. Big surprise. My air is cleaner, life expectancy longer,
> > job more interesting, computer faster, I have the WWW, there's more
> > tolerance of alternative lifestyles, significant moves to drug legalization,
None of which are due to government employees actions per se, unless we consider the cleaner air in the US a result of the Triffin
deficit (industry is destroyed at the source of money creation). Notice the provincialism (my air, I have the WWW)- an entirely
normal phenomenon. Large sections of humanity are worse off now than 10-20 year ago- economic depression/recession, foreign
occupation (mostly by Americans) degradation of education (e.g. the uS) and the associated decay of civility.
> > I no longer fear being blown to kingdom come,
Eh? This risk has not gone away by any means. Why, Shrub was out rattling the nukes just the other day.
> > even socialists accept the
> > market, etc.
Yes, sort of. Unfortunately, there is a resurgence of Marxist/Communist/socialist/statist mysticism, cf some of the WTA material,
Homeland Security, Communitarianism, and the associated academic bodyguards of the CFR, Trilateral, et. al. ad nauseum.
> > There's no obvious metric of whether 1992 or 2002 is better,
> > but the metric of "what Curt wants to live in" enthusiastically supports
> > 2002.
>
> That's a good reminder of something we tend to overlook. It is often
> easier to focus on what is wrong than on what is right.
? IMO the opposite is more evident.
> Plus there is
> a political incentive to emphasize bad things in order to get people
> riled up and motivated.
>
> But as Extropians we are supposed to be (dynamically) optimistic.
> That means avoiding the trap of believing we are caught in a downward
> spiral. Sure, some things are going wrong but many things are going
> right as well. Who would have predicted five years ago that such
> Extropian topics as brain enhancement and genetic engineering of humans
> would be hot discussion items in the New York Times and The Economist?
> My mind is still reeling that the staid Times worriedly saw us heading
> towards a world whose streets were crowded with superhuman beings.
The number one concern of the members of the ruling class, now as always, is to quash their potential competitors, human or
otherwise. Hence, toxic emissions like the NYT and Fukuyama essays are to be expected.
> Curt has an excellent point about the superiority of 2002 over 1992,
> and the comparison gets even stronger as you go back in the decades.
> And the amazing part, which most people still don't get, is that it
> will probably continue to be true in the future. 2012 will be that much
> better than 2002, and 2022 even better still.
The future is unknowable. It is entirely possible that we will live in an updated version of the Dark Ages by 2012. In my view, we
are most of the way there already.
> We have every reason to be optimistic. Our ideas are incredibly strong,
> and despite the inevitable backlash, we are in favor of giving people
> what they want: strength, beauty, intelligence, health, and long life.
> That, my friends, is an unbeatable package.
Yes it is, it only requires a reasonable being to find acceptance.
Forrest
-- Forrest Bishop Chairman, Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering www.iase.cc
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