From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Jul 17 2002 - 02:01:47 MDT
The point here seem to be that "sex is optional" rather than "sex is
sin" or "sex is wrong" - although given the memes drifting around since
the last 2000 years it is easy to fall into those traps. The step from
cybergnosticism to real gnosticism isn't that far.
Transhumanism is all about questioning the human condition, so
questioning sex is clearly also on the agenda. Just like our criticisms
of the utility of death one can level criticisms as the utility of sex -
and they do get roughly the same emotional intensity from people.
[ One of the best ways of causing a stir at a cocktail party today is
to declare oneself asexual - it causes much more interest and frission
than outing oneself as gay (old hat!). People immediately rush in to
defend sex. Very amusing, and extremely similar to what happens when
one declares oneself an immortalist. ]
However, while death is viewed as something negative by most
transhumanists (there are exceptions, such as Freeman Dyson in _Imagined
Worlds_ where he considers death a necessity in order to prevent
posthuman insanity) due to its irreversible character and the way it
prevents beings from implementing their life projects, sex is not
clearly negative. It may take time from other things, but also produces
pleasure. In fact, many here would likely argue that we need a more
sensual transhumanism and that the goal should not be to turn ourselves
into singularity-worshipping monks. The important thing is to make the
sex drive, just as death, something under voluntary control (and itself
subject to enhancement - be it wiring it to the stock market, amplifying
the pleasure response or connecting it recpiprocally with the partner's
hypothalamus).
The problem in doing this kind of careful criticism is that we need to
get away both from the common assumptions about the "natural" human
condition, and the gnostic ideas of sex as something that has to be
removed because it is sinful - neither set of assumptions are valid in
our reasoning, but they are extremely prevalent in our culture.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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