From: Corwyn J. Alambar (nettiger@best.com)
Date: Wed Dec 06 2000 - 15:51:52 MST
Just a small nitpick here, butI have to ask a few questions...
> Transhumanism without a commitment to extropy is just transhumanism.
> This can turn into an extropic society, or it can turn out in a
> dystopic socialist nightmare.
This statement is phrased as an either-or - either one commits to extropy
OR one ends up with a dystopic future. I would definitely beg to differ
here - one could come up was a fairly palatable and reasonable future without
the sort of committment you bring up.
Additionally, the use of "socialist" as a synonym for "evil" or at least
"extremely undesireable" seems to be more of a personal moral and political
value judgement. While I will agree that socialism as currently defined is
antithetical to libertarianism as it is currently defined, this sort of
demonization removes a lot of the intellectual weight from the arguement.
People seemt o be best motivated by fear - which is why the dystopic view of
the future is the one most prevalent. The socialist dystopia and the fascist
dystopia are fairly familiar - but there are also anarchic dystopias, and even
libertarian dystopias, some of which we have seen presented in mass media.
(witness the anarchic systems of the Mad Max films, or the semi-libertarian
dystopic thread hinted at in Mission Impossible:2 where a single rogue
individual could have unleashed an outbreak of a virulent plague created as
a testbed for a potential cure for most viral ailments.) (Yes, I realize
these examples are from films - but they are also from mass-market, POPULAR
films. These are the images that percolate in the general public's mind, at
least here in the US. Need I mention the implicit technophobia in everything
I've ever read or seen based on the work of Michael Creighton(sp?)?)
If one really wishes to bring about an extropic change, one needs to combat
ALL these dystopic images and ideas, because they instill a fear of progress,
technology, and the future in general that can be very difficult to root out.
If one wants to instill hope, one shouldn't talk about fear in any way that
could feed back onto the intended object of hope.
Hmmm - that was longer than it needed to be. Time to change the subject and
start it as a new thread?
-Corey
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