From: Aina & Bones (goldengarden@arjang.mail.telia.com)
Date: Tue Aug 07 2001 - 11:00:49 MDT
Is Extropianism mainly for American's? How many Europeans are on this
list and how much, if any, european philosophy is in your
Extropianism?
How will the transhumanist movement deal with people's fears: the
pessimism/realism that experience engenders? Will technology really
change how people are or will people have to do that for themselves?
The degree of optimism on this list concerning the future is
definitely infectious and I'd really love it to be as e.g.. Mr.
Broderick envisions but People have milked the meme concerning the
power of science to improve the human condition to death.
The egg heads (no offense intended) have been saying that technology
will solve this and that and remove this and that for centuries now.
Technology has indeed developed the cures for many diseases and
increased crop harvests etc. but most people don't get the benefit of
it.
Will what most people get out of a time and technology that can
produce diamond houses cheaply be a diamond bullet in the head? If not
why?
Will Transhumanism become a sort of super technocratic society in
which technologists develop technology only for themselves or can
others join? Will it be the third word that matches: aristocracy,
racism.......... transhumanism?
After all this biotech superman thing is basically a child of National
Socialism. Sure, now one can in theory claim that with gene
manipulation even defectives CAN be healed. WILL they be healed?
Are the words can and should synonyms?
Over the time (years) that I have been a member of this list I have,
from time to time, noticed what I (perhaps wrongly) interpret to be
disdain for poor/uneducated/less intelligent people in many postings
so I wonder Will everybody get a better body or will there be a races
of super humans and slave race that serve them?
What is to stop Transhumanism from becoming the scientific arm of
future dictatorships?
Can Libertarianism be summed up like this: all the freedom, justice,
health and life that money can buy. If so how does that change things
from the way they are now?
Is or will Transhumanism be nothing more than intellectual confusion,
moral imbecility, and willful ugliness elaborated into a
self-conscious ideology: the worship of wealth, power, novelty and
machinery? Will it become the ultimate expression of what many call a
culture less and materialist America: a sort of burger and coke
religion?
Must Transhumanism demand spiritual pathology. Obviously not since Mr.
Broderick seems to allow for something else, as it were, but how many
transhumans can make allowances for that which they cannot see?
For me the ends justify the means but it seems that in Transhumanism
the means is the end. Is this a fair judgment?
There are those who say that Libertarians and individualists are most
likely to be solely concerned with their own egotistical and
Narcissistic gratification. Since there are a few here on the list I
ask would you refute this claim and how/why?
How would a Transhumanist egalitarian/collectivist effort express
itself? Would they go for a Borg type society as in Star Trekk?
Why not find ways of extending the use of our already existing brains
instead of making new ones? If the mind can work outside of the human
body why go for any form of containment at all? Is it possible to
exist without limits?
Since our instincts and emotions are our driving forces if we insulate
ourselves from them or get rid of them what will our motivating force
be?
Are people in general in greater danger of being mistreated by
transhumans/extropians than, white people are of being mistreated by
negroes?
In attempting to become more than human will we become less?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against science and technology. I'd
install a bionic leg today if I could -_- It's just that I have lived
a lot of my life in what you would call primitive circumstances and
have taken a long time to learn about all the different stuff you guys
talk about here.
In reading up I have found questions which have bothered me but I did
not want to trouble you all with my lack of knowledge/understanding.
However since some people on this list seriously wanted to discuss
whether or not white people are nicer than black people I figured that
my questions won't be the most stupid ever brought up on the list.
So, as the progress of technology fuels its own acceleration and
rushes us into the future at exponential speed will we vanish up our
own anuses?
Mr. Bones
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