From: Waldemar Inghdahl (waldemar.ingdahl@eudoxa.se)
Date: Mon Jun 25 2001 - 22:39:07 MDT
I wrote once on this list that there are no white spots on the map, out of reach for politics.
That the only way to retreat from politics is to retreat from civilization.
In the history of the radical movements there are many attempts to do so, none of them are illustrious.
Neither the troglodytes, that literally advocated a subterranean lifestyle, nor the group that tried to establish a free state on a coral reef that partially was under water could give a satisfactory reply to the obvious question: what sensible person would like to live in a cave or under water?
For us that value the social, economical and cultural advantages of that which the economist Friedrich A. Hayek called the extended order- a society with long reaching division of labour, well diffused contractual relations, and efficient production of wealth- a hermit's life in isolation seems unacceptable.
In 1999, after the Extro- conference I visited Jeff Riggenbach's libertarian Open House in San Francisco.
At one point my host exclaimed in an argument:
"Just if we have drugs and guns, we can all live in a toilet"
Sarcasm aside, I think that Mr. Riggenbach made a valuable point.
The state of the society we live in does matter.
It isn't the effects of the right of not having your freedom infringed that are important to the ideologically conscious libertarian.
Perhaps I will never have the desire nor the need to own an M16A2 assault rifle.
But it will be beneficial for me to live in a society where people's right not to have their freedom their freedom infringed is respected.
Perhaps I wont see it necessary for me to get cryonically preserved.
Maybe I wont find it necessary for me to utilize strong nanotechnology.
But even in that case, I would benefit from the fact that those that wish to do so are allowed to exercise their freedom.
Granted, I wouldn't make such a big profit as I could have if I had utilized those technologies myself.
But I would still make a profit.
Because I can still take the full advantage of the extended order of a society that respects people to take advantage of their freedom.
Let' s take the example of you reading this mail.
Try to envision the chain of work, the immense division of labour that necessary for you to do so.
The researchers that worked on the idea of the PC.
The prospectors that find the minerals necessary to build some of its parts.
The miners that extract them.
The designers of the various components in the computer.
The factories that manifacture the various parts of the computers.
The assemblers, often in residing in a place far far away from all of us on this list.
All the transporters, the middle men, the computer stores.
>From it's inception to it standing on your desk thousands, and thousands of various specialized individuals have worked on your computer. And I haven't even spoken about the work on the software, nor the internet, nor the work on the container ship that was necessary to ship the computer.
Now lets remove half of them.
Would you still be able to read this mail?
Could you have done all this on your own, and still have the time to read my mail?
Why do all these people do it?
Well, I would say that a majority of them don't do it because it is nice to herald the information age.
But they find that their part in the manifacturing of computers and the distribution of them, is a fairly practical and fairly moral choice to do.
But would they really do their work, if they thought that it was an immoral and unpractical act?
In the extended order of our society, 97% of the population doesn't need to be ardent transhumanists.
But they must at least find that the inception, production and distribution of these things are something that needs to be respected.
That it is a quite moral and practical choice for Mr. Chulalongkorn to supervise his part in the computer assembly plant in Bangkok, Thailand.
Now Mr. Chulalongkorn probably isn't that much of a computer wizard, but he sees that the work he does puts food on the table, gives his kids and wife a better life with more opportunities. And hey, those computers also seems to do a lot of good work in the world.
Mr. Chulalongkorn isn't a dope though.
If all impulses from the society around him- the local buddhist monks, the distilled essence of media he consumes, the prime minister, all his neighbors, the teachers of his old school- in short all venues for him to gain knowledge about the world outside his narrow field (assembling computers) tell him that the computers will destroy the bonds between people, alienate his kids, only spread indecent and dangerous information, damage law and order in his society, make the environment uninhabitable and besides no one in his right mind would buy such a monstrousity, he wont do it.
There wouldn't be a demand for something no one wants to see, nor would he feel good about himself producing such things.
You might say that the stasist hegemony hasn't given him the right facts, that he has made his decision on unsufficient grounds.
Well... no one told him differently.
No one took a different political stance and showed him another possibility that was credible.
Talk about the philosopher's responibility, and that responsibility increases even more the more radical changes you want to instigate.
Mr. Chulalongkorn stops assembling computers, what if more and more people think like him?
And the technologies often discussed on this list are so advanced to that it takes a much, much greater division of highly specialized labour in order to make them and distribute them.
Let's face it, if only a minuscule portion of humanity is involved (or at least accept it) in the transhumanist project it simply wont come to pass.
Now think of the possibility if a sizeable, not even a majority of the population, are actively pursueing transhumanist goals. That it seems like a feasible life project for quite many. The possibilities... the possibilities...
What decides this?
Ideas.
And their spreading through philosophy and politics.
Let us show that this a good set of ideas that are practical and moral for people in Kuala Lumpur, Osaka, the Ural Mountains, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Wellington, Kinshasa, and Copenhagen.
But we cannot do it if we live in a cave.
Waldemar
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