From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Sat Sep 21 2002 - 22:14:11 MDT
(reply at bottom)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Anders Sandberg [mailto:asa@nada.kth.se]
> Sent: Sunday, 22 September 2002 5:27
> To: extropians@extropy.org
> Subject: Re: A New Roman Empire?
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 21, 2002 at 11:29:12AM -0700, Olga Bourlin wrote:
> > Forwarding an interesting read about [some unlikely]
> Friends [e.g., Gore
> > Vidal and Charles Krauthammer], Romans and [various other]
> Countrymen [and
> > women]:
>
> The article makes a few interesting points, but the author seems to be
> cherry-picking his evidence. Any great power will have
> similarities with
> the Roman empire and will use similar methods.
>
> In order to turn this into something transhuman and not yet
> another "the
> US is good - the US is bad" thread, let's take the big picture and
> examine the relevance of hegemony for us transhumanists (OK,
> I admit it:
> I belong to the category of people who actually use the word
> hegemony in
> real discussions). I don't think the military aspect is that
> important,
> not even the political one. But the cultural effects might be very
> relevant to our projects.
>
> The article claims the US affects all of mankind culturally right now;
> while this is an exaggeration, it will likely be true in a
> few decades as
> affluence rises and communications spread. We will soon be at
> the stage
> where a single culture has global hegemony. This doesn't mean
> all other
> cultures will be wiped out, as many globalization critics
> seem to think -
> cultures are often far more resilient than people give them
> credit for,
> creolization is currently spreading both inside and outside
> the western
> culture (David Brin's discussion of our love for otherness is highly
> relevant here!) and "US culture" (if there can be said to
> exist something
> like that) is highly heterogenous and mutable too. But the
> situation will
> be dominated by a driving core, which to a large extent will set the
> cultural agenda. This agenda may be interpreted and implemented
> enormously differently by different regions, but there will be an
> underlying coherence. It is a bit like pacemaker cells in excitable
> tissues: the fastest cells will make the other oscillate in
> rhythm with
> them, even if the others could just as well be pacemakers on
> their own.
>
> In the past incoherence has been beneficial for the emergence
> of the new.
> One reason Europe became so dynamic was the geography favoring many
> smaller kingdoms, making it possible for the local heretics to escape
> across the border and try again. The same might have been true for the
> Greek colonies. In big centralized regions like China, there
> was no such
> escape and hence new ideas had a harder time becoming widespread -
> especially when the central power was against them.
>
> One fear with global hegemony is that it would simply slow
> the emergence
> of the new. There would be no new frontiers, nowhere to escape
> culturally or politically. If the global hegemony were to turn
> anti-progress, it would not just stifle progress locally, but
> globally.
> It could be potentially an eternal attractor state if the underlying
> sociopolitical order were to be stable. On the other hand, a global
> hegemony that enabled or promoted the new would accelerate progress
> enormously (possibly at the price of non-progress enclaves,
> which after
> all represent a kind of backup should our civilization
> crash). A culture
> that promotes sub-cultures and difference could possibly enable this.
>
> What kind of culture is developed will be affected by the
> sociopolitical
> underpinnings of the hegemony, and here there might be cause for
> concern. If the emerging hegemony is based on a more centralistic
> "Roman" model, then there is room for ideas about protecting the good
> and viruous empire from obviously inferior or misguided
> challenges from
> outside or inside - and hence we get a drift towards the "control the
> new" mode that made post-Ming China enter stasis. If the hegemony is
> based on a more distributed "trader" model, where free trade and
> interaction is seen as cruicial, then there will be far more room for
> diversity in opinion and the creation of new institutions and
> structures.
> It would also not be so much tied to the fortunes of a single
> nation, but
> rather to the collaboration of a large part of independent
> actors - far
> more resilient to disasters and mistakes than a central model.
>
> I think we as transhumanists should think carefully about how
> to affect
> the currently emerging hegemony to provide an environment that might
> nurture our interests. A "Roman" hegemony dominated by strong
> governments and allied corporations would be less amenable to
> accept our
> ideas of continous change, adaptation, radical redesign of the human
> condition and the view of history as something open. Right now there
> exists some fairly pro genetic enhancement views in Asia; if
> they could
> synergize with western ideas of individual development rather
> than being
> suppressed by exported Western fears much could be won. If we could
> inject ideas of adaptation, individuality, diverisity and change as
> virtues into the cultural mainstream so that they in turn
> become part of
> the hegemony we might lessen the risks of stable non-progress
> attractors.
>
> I fully expect to outlive many nations, and not just unstable
> constructs
> like Yugoslavia or Indonesia, but stable nations like Sweden
> and the US.
> Humans already on average live far longer than companies and
> many social
> institutions; a bit of life extension and we have a good chance to
> outlast many nations. The important thing is to make sure that when
> nations and empires crumble, we don't get buried in the rubble.
> Hegemonies might last far longer, so we should be even more
> careful with
> them.
>
>
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
> 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
erm... so that means "the US is bad", right?
Emlyn
;-P
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