From: dalec@socrates.berkeley.edu
Date: Sat Aug 28 1999 - 11:58:07 MDT
A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of singularity...
Somebody has said that the lefties on the transhumanist lists
really have to take responsibility for their failure to succumb to the
machinery of Friedman, that they need to make a case for their perverse
hesitation to embrace straightforward "market realities," or else their
viewpoint will never get off the ground, never have an impact on
transhumanist discourse at large. This seems right to me, and I regret
that I don't feel competent to make that case. As a first baby-step,
tho', I will voice of few hopes that may represent a point of departure
for the very important work of delineating a transhumanist left, in the
hopes that others will pick up the thread.
I remember that the Village Voice once claimed that extropians
were the last people on earth who maintained Karl Marx's faith in the
power of capitalism and science to utterly transform the world in positive
ways, whatever the violence and devastation of that transformation. I for
one have always taken that claim seriously. I believe that a singularity,
whether it is a hard one or a soft, is the best shot we have at something
like a Revolutionary event. And because the Powers will be *us* I think
it matters that we instill a horror of ubergoo and similar threats NOW. I
think it matters that we instill a love of diversity as both an esthetic
and a pragmatic value NOW.
I know that bad things happen to good people and good things
happen to bad people, but so long as human action takes place on an
institutional field where the "actors" include governments, and churches,
and media networks, and NGOs, and multinats, and globe-girdling crime
cartels, it just doesn't make sense to me to ever say that anyone
absolutely *earns* either their good or their bad fortune. And so long as
that is true it seems to make sense to me that we should strive to
ameliorate the worst of the suffering and create spaces in which people
can develop their potential to the benefit of everybody. That will be as
true in the far-flung future as it is today.
Leftropians of the world, fan out!
Best, Dale Carrico
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