From: GBurch1@aol.com
Date: Sun Dec 19 1999 - 06:28:56 MST
The evolution of transhumanism in general and extropianism in particular as
our ideas gain a wider audience was on my mind when I wrote an editorial for
Extropy Online Magazine earlier this year:
http://www.extropy.com/eo/editorial2.htm
This thread has prompted some further thoughts in the same vein. The "look
and feel" of our micro-culture will inevitably change as more people become
aware of our ideas and their implementation begins to have an impact in the
wider world, and also as the makeup of our membership changes with time.
We're certainly going through a period of evolutionary change in
transhumanism and extropianism now: The insights that the founders of this
world-view had so many years ago are now being borne out and a LOT of people
are coming to realize that we are entering a period of rapid, QUALITATIVE
change.
As our ideas move out into the wider world, they will inevitably encounter
misunderstanding and resistance. By definition and self-selection, we are
people who look forward to this period of fundamental change with a positive,
rational outlook and who look hard for ways to avoid the kinds of problems
many are coming to fear. This positive, proactive approach is not nearly as
common in the wider society in which we live. The vast majority of people
have not really considered the primal, instinctive basis of the fear of new
things.
More specifically, most people still harbor some unreflective notion of
"spirit" or "elan vital" that is inimical to our basic value of automorphism,
or at least casts as hubris our program of taking our biological and
cognitive fate into our own hands. As sciences such as artificial
intelligence and genetic engineering give rise to technologies effecting
people's everyday lives, more and more people are brought face to face with
fundamental philosophical questions that can only be answered successfully
with reason and rational optimism. Whenever, as will increasingly occur,
transhumanism encounters the "Frankenstein reflex", it is because the work of
the Enlightenment is unfinished.
People like Max and Natasha and Ray Kurzweil are doing work of great value by
pushing the envelope of comprehension of our ideas into the realm of mass
culture. But inevitably, the texture of discourse in that realm will be
quite different from what we are used to here. Articles like the one in
WIRED about EXTRO4 will be an increasingly common phenomenon. As Robert
pointed out, few people have the personal professional freedom to openly
espouse the entirety of our program. In fact, I have become increasingly
concerned that developers of key transhumanist technologies will not be able
to communicate openly about their real goals, because such communication is
premised on a philosophical world-view that threatens so much of the
pre-Enlightenment mind-set that is still current and potent in the world.
Perhaps this concern reflects a kind of "professional paranoia" engendered by
a life in the law.
Nevertheless, I remain optimistic that institutions like Extropy Institute
and the work of its members in spreading our ideas and values will ultimately
prevail in creating just enough of a fertile cultural seedbed that the
transhumanist program will be able to continue at a rapid pace. But I don't
believe that this is an inevitability. There ARE examples of societies
turning their backs on useful new technologies. As John Lienhard pointed out
recently in his wonderful radio program "The Engines of Our Ingenuity", the
French pioneered the technology of interchangeable parts for machines, then
rejected it because of the threat it posed to government control of industry
through the traditional system of licensed guilds
(http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1252.htm). We will have to work hard to make
sure that our ideas and values are accepted by enough people that we have a
good chance of success.
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
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