From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Sat Jun 30 2001 - 07:22:31 MDT
From: "Damien Broderick" <d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 2:04 AM
> Indeed. This is the main disagreement I had with Greg Burch's excellent
> address at Extro5--it was far too structured by the rhetoric of conflict
> and even battle. This *might* turn out eventually to be literally true,
and
> in some instances is already, but I find it a self-defeating choice of
> analysis and semiotic tactics.
In matters of culture, Damien, I value the opinion of few others as highly
as yours. Thus your comments in this vein have continued to reverberate in
my mind since I first began discussing my Extro5 talk with you. On the one
hand, you seem to have a very strong point in criticizing adoption of the
rhetoric of conflict, or even an analytical framework that could lead one to
perception of conflict in this arena. On the other, I cannot help but be
guided by history in these matters -- as I sought to stress in my talk at
Extro5.
The conflict between these two points of view lies behind the three
different strategies I described in that talk. The truth is that large
portions of humanity probably aren't really polarized in their thinking
about progress in general and the incremental augmentation of the human
animal that marks the path to post-humanity. Thus, appeals to the "middle
ground" is indeed the best strategy for the short term in seeking progress
in the transhumanist agenda. And some periods of history evidence the
success of cultural compromise, or at least the benign neglect of
fundamental cultural contradictions. Look at the West in the 19th century:
While the scientific world peacefully went about its business, the
mainstream culture continued to be "religious", adopting the fruits of
science and technology in a fairly peaceful, incremental fashion.
But there are other times and places when the fundamental contradictions
between basic ideas and values have come into open and sometimes bloody
conflict. The social and political implications of the Enlightenment
ultimately could not be glossed over and the convulsions of the American and
French revolutions and their nationalist sequelae in Germany and elsewhere
were the result of the inescapable conflict between the liberal world-view
and that of the ancien regime. Likewise, although the traditional centers
of cultural power in the Chinese world struggled for 100 years to find a
peaceful way to accommodate the ideas and values seeping and then rushing in
from the West, the Sinitic world was ultimately rocked by violent tectonic
shifts in which hundreds of millions died during a revolutionary struggle
that may well not have ended yet.
The question is this: In which sort of period do we now find ourselves? I
have no love of bloody revolutions -- far from it. I WANT the transition to
post-humanity to be a peaceful one in which not only physical violence is
avoided, but even wherever possible the kinds of cultural cleavages that do
violence to cultural continuity with the best of the past. But I think we
have to be clear-eyed about the real possibility that this may not happen.
Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
http://www.gregburch.net
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