[p2p-research] Helping the Helpless (formerly: Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us)

[Edward Miller]

>Date: Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:32:54 -0500
>From: Kevin Carson <free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [p2p-research] Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us by Ralph Nader

>In reality, I suspect any such reform carried out by the super-rich
>would be reminiscent of Tolstoy's "Parable."  In that story, a humane
>farmer built larger and more comfortable stalls for his cattle, piped
>in music, provided plenty of the best food, and built an enlarged yard
>for them to exercise in.  When someone asked why he didn't just tear
>the fence down and set them free, if he was so concerned for their
>welfare, he said  "But then I couldn't milk them."
>
>I don't doubt that a reform carried out by the "progressive"
>super-rich would make the system more humane;  the last such reform
>the super-rich carried out in the New Deal certainly did so.  But the
>super-rich are probably also thinking, at least on some level, that
>treating us more humanely gets them more milk in the long run.

While I certainly understand the sentiment here, I would argue that there
are some fundamental problems with that analogy, which I have seen you use
to good effect now more than once. I think it may perhaps reveal some
underlying differences, either some form of non-utilitarian ethical system
or some anthropocentric bias.

Cows have been selectively bred for centuries in order to emphasize their
docile milk-producing natures, and it is now to the point where they could
not even survive in the wild. Second, even animals in the wild are extremely
lacking in intelligence and experience tremendous amounts of suffering. I
would posit that it is the job of higher intelligences to do what is
reasonably in their power to care for the less able, and that the goal of
our civilization and increasingly advanced technological civilization should
be the abolition of suffering in all sentient life. Just as it is our duty
to care for a crying infant, it is our duty to care for all sentient beings
on the planet which are involuntarily suffering.

http://www.abolitionist.com/

We are responsible for suffering even if we are not its cause. David Pearce
speaks goes so far as to advocate the necessity to create a pan-species
welfare state, and this is reasonable in the case of animals, the typical
response of post-scarcity people to provide the means of production is
untenable considering that these creatures are not capable of caring for
themselves. When we enter into the Age of Abundance, projects like this
become possible, and what nobler goal could there be?

We are about, and indeed morally obligated, to decommission natural
selection. Using nanotech, biotech, brain-computer interfaces, artificial
intelligence, and so forth, we will be able to modify the planetary genome,
ecosphere, climate, geography, and indeed every aspect of our material
environment. We will decide which creatures continue to come into being, and
more precisely, which genes come into being. Here is a perfect articulation
of this point by Pearce:

"It is easy to romanticise, say, tigers or lions and cats. We admire their
magnificent beauty, strength and agility. But we would regard their notional
human counterparts as wanton psychopaths of the worst kind. So just as there
is no need to recreate the natural habitat of smart, blond, handsome Nazi
storm-troopers who can then prey on their natural victims (and Nazis are a
no less natural and noteworthy pattern of matter and energy thrown up in the
course of evolution, albeit of a type now fortunately extinct), likewise the
practice of continuing to breed pre-programmed feline killing machines in
homage to Nature is ethically untenable too. It is not, needless to say, the
fault of cats that they are prone to torturing mice; but then, given the
equations of physics, it isn't the fault of Nazis they try to persecute
Jews. This is no reason to let them continue to do so."
http://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon1.htm#feline

How to best achieve the equivalent of a pan-species welfare state has been
something I have pondered for awhile now. My anti-authoritarian instincts
warn me against attempting to do this under centralized contexts. Yet
perhaps there is some way to bootstrap into a decentralized mechanism to do
this via the majority of the human population choosing to heighten their
individual empathy and compassion (though perhaps with some sort of neuro
micro-kernel which could switch it off when under threat, to avoid
vulnerability to manipulative baseline humans), sort of like a humanity-wide
MDMA trip.

Here's yet another excellent passage from Pearce's work:

http://www.empathogens.com/
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