From: Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Jun 21 1997 - 04:26:24 MDT
On Thu, 19 Jun 1997, Kathryn Aegis wrote:
> Unfortunately, many new ageish cults have adopted the symbols and
> artistic style that used to be within the domain of those who
> considered themselves pragmatic futurists. Reading up on Heaven's
> Gate really opened my eyes to the appropriation of verbiage and
> symbology to create a veneer of scientific appropriateness.
Yes, "cosmythology" really irritates and worries me. It would be
interesting to see how the new age crowd reacted if one used their
terminology to describe something hard and normally considered
unspiritual, like (say) national economics or bridge building :-)
> Whether organizations like Extropy should accomodate this and change their
> own style is another question. Any symbol might be interpreted in a
> cabalistic manner; why should we limit our artistic expressions?
Exactly. We in Aleph have even bigger problems with this than ExI;
our logo *is* cabalistic (the hebrew letter Aleph). One solution we
came up with to make the cover of our handbook look non-new age is to
surround it by a plasmid: new age and genetic engineering usually
don't mix (let's ignore Rael for the moment).
> I would rather that effort be put towards correcting these
> (previously discussed) citations of Extropy Institute as a cult and
> getting hard information out about transhumanist thought in
> general.
I think this is a good idea. We should not let others decide what our
symbols and ideas means, that is up to ourselves.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
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