On Sat, Sep 01, 2001 at 10:43:17PM -0700, Tim Maroney wrote:
>
> > (On the other hand, the sf community Russell and I have hung
> > around in for the last 20 or 40 years tend to be the Aussie variety, which
> > is less given to `fanboy libertarianism'.)
>
> Glad to hear it's mostly an American problem, or more properly, a USA
> problem. It's not exactly a small problem in the USA SF community, though.
You don't get it in British SF fandom, either. (Libertarianism isn't
any big deal over here; IIRC Ayn Rand never got published in the UK. The
nearest you'll get are some fans who're Tory party activists -- usually
outnumbered by the members of radical left-wing groups.)
> It's interesting to ask why there seems to be more techno-libertarianism on
> this mailing list than one might find in a random sample of science fiction
> fans.
Datum point: it's been like this since, um, 1992? 1991? (when I first
discovered the extropians list). If anything, it's a bit quieter these
days.
> My first thought is that this is because Extropianism and
> Transhumanism essays so far seem to be skewed towards consideration of the
> technological possibilities rather than the political, social or
> psychological consequences of large-scale human modification or species
> transformation. The technology buffs tend to be more right-wing and less
> patient with leftie issues like the class politics of a differentiated
> species, a la "Brave New World".
I think that's only part of the picture. The real question is *why* are
the technology buffs more right-wing? Is this some sort of political
inheritance from the Technocrat party of the 1920's and 1930's? (Weird
people, BTW!)
-- Charlie
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