From: Hughes, James (James.Hughes@trincoll.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 10 2002 - 10:10:15 MDT
<D0E05C36533D994FA0DBE06B54BBFE790249A62A@EXCHANGE3.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu>
Sender: owner-extropians@extropy.org
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org
Brian wrote:
> Socialism is
> a plague meme IMHO, and a "socialist transhumanist" is virtually a
> contradiction in terms.
I don't think so. Olga, since publishing my essay "Democratic transhumanism"
<http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/DemocraticTranshumanism.htm> I've found
quite few socialist transhumanists around the world. There are lots of kinds
of transhumanists that aren't well represented on the Extrop list. You may
enjoy the discussions on wta-talk http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wta-talk/
where we have been discussing these issues with a good deal of civility,
mutual respect and diversity of views.
And kudos to Greg Burch for this appeal:
> Now, I realize that there is a vastly disproportionate measure of
> libertarianism among the culture that's grown up around the origins of
> cyberspace -- but this culture is practically unique in its lack of
> connection to the mainstream world, with its deep grounding in the
> cultural and political history of the last two hundred years. Outside
> of it, most people assume as a given that a powerful state is a
> necessity, that public goods can only be provided by or must be
> regulated by that state and that the absence of a such a state would
> result in injustice at best and violent chaos at worst. Libertarians
> may believe all this is wrong, but heaping scorn on people who express
> these ideas does absolutely *nothing* to further the cause of liberty,
> since it only acts to further marginalize libertarian ideas.
>
> Greg Burch
> Vice-President, Extropy Institute
> http://www.gregburch.net
-----------------------------------------------
James J. Hughes Ph.D.
Secretary, World Transhumanist Association
http://www.transhumanism.org
jhughes@changesurfer.com
P.O. Box 128, Willington, CT 06279 USA
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:17:29 MST