From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Sep 21 2002 - 13:56:59 MDT
On Sat, Sep 21, 2002 at 11:29:12AM -0700, Olga Bourlin wrote:
> Forwarding an interesting read about [some unlikely] Friends [e.g., Gore
> Vidal and Charles Krauthammer], Romans and [various other] Countrymen [and
> women]:
The article makes a few interesting points, but the author seems to be
cherry-picking his evidence. Any great power will have similarities with
the Roman empire and will use similar methods.
In order to turn this into something transhuman and not yet another "the
US is good - the US is bad" thread, let's take the big picture and
examine the relevance of hegemony for us transhumanists (OK, I admit it:
I belong to the category of people who actually use the word hegemony in
real discussions). I don't think the military aspect is that important,
not even the political one. But the cultural effects might be very
relevant to our projects.
The article claims the US affects all of mankind culturally right now;
while this is an exaggeration, it will likely be true in a few decades as
affluence rises and communications spread. We will soon be at the stage
where a single culture has global hegemony. This doesn't mean all other
cultures will be wiped out, as many globalization critics seem to think -
cultures are often far more resilient than people give them credit for,
creolization is currently spreading both inside and outside the western
culture (David Brin's discussion of our love for otherness is highly
relevant here!) and "US culture" (if there can be said to exist something
like that) is highly heterogenous and mutable too. But the situation will
be dominated by a driving core, which to a large extent will set the
cultural agenda. This agenda may be interpreted and implemented
enormously differently by different regions, but there will be an
underlying coherence. It is a bit like pacemaker cells in excitable
tissues: the fastest cells will make the other oscillate in rhythm with
them, even if the others could just as well be pacemakers on their own.
In the past incoherence has been beneficial for the emergence of the new.
One reason Europe became so dynamic was the geography favoring many
smaller kingdoms, making it possible for the local heretics to escape
across the border and try again. The same might have been true for the
Greek colonies. In big centralized regions like China, there was no such
escape and hence new ideas had a harder time becoming widespread -
especially when the central power was against them.
One fear with global hegemony is that it would simply slow the emergence
of the new. There would be no new frontiers, nowhere to escape
culturally or politically. If the global hegemony were to turn
anti-progress, it would not just stifle progress locally, but globally.
It could be potentially an eternal attractor state if the underlying
sociopolitical order were to be stable. On the other hand, a global
hegemony that enabled or promoted the new would accelerate progress
enormously (possibly at the price of non-progress enclaves, which after
all represent a kind of backup should our civilization crash). A culture
that promotes sub-cultures and difference could possibly enable this.
What kind of culture is developed will be affected by the sociopolitical
underpinnings of the hegemony, and here there might be cause for
concern. If the emerging hegemony is based on a more centralistic
"Roman" model, then there is room for ideas about protecting the good
and viruous empire from obviously inferior or misguided challenges from
outside or inside - and hence we get a drift towards the "control the
new" mode that made post-Ming China enter stasis. If the hegemony is
based on a more distributed "trader" model, where free trade and
interaction is seen as cruicial, then there will be far more room for
diversity in opinion and the creation of new institutions and structures.
It would also not be so much tied to the fortunes of a single nation, but
rather to the collaboration of a large part of independent actors - far
more resilient to disasters and mistakes than a central model.
I think we as transhumanists should think carefully about how to affect
the currently emerging hegemony to provide an environment that might
nurture our interests. A "Roman" hegemony dominated by strong
governments and allied corporations would be less amenable to accept our
ideas of continous change, adaptation, radical redesign of the human
condition and the view of history as something open. Right now there
exists some fairly pro genetic enhancement views in Asia; if they could
synergize with western ideas of individual development rather than being
suppressed by exported Western fears much could be won. If we could
inject ideas of adaptation, individuality, diverisity and change as
virtues into the cultural mainstream so that they in turn become part of
the hegemony we might lessen the risks of stable non-progress
attractors.
I fully expect to outlive many nations, and not just unstable constructs
like Yugoslavia or Indonesia, but stable nations like Sweden and the US.
Humans already on average live far longer than companies and many social
institutions; a bit of life extension and we have a good chance to
outlast many nations. The important thing is to make sure that when
nations and empires crumble, we don't get buried in the rubble.
Hegemonies might last far longer, so we should be even more careful with
them.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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