From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Oct 01 2002 - 06:04:06 MDT
On Sun, Sep 22, 2002 at 09:04:14AM -0700, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> On Sun, 22 Sep 2002, Charlie Stross wrote:
>
> > Look for little things like global bans on stem sell research, a big
> > down on anti-aging research -- because if you don't die, how does Jeezus
> > get to judge you? -- and so on.
>
> It is rather unfortunate that the U.S. is stuck with essentially
> a 2 party system that requires that the issues of defense and taxes
> (where I tend to agree with the Republicans) to be lumped in with
> things like abortion, stem cells and environmental issues (where
> I tend to disagree with the Republicans). A multi-party system
> like Israel or Germany might make it much easier to get a
> coalition of forces that is more extropic.
Not necessarily. A two-party system promotes more polarization than a
multiparty system, it seems (after looking at my polsci visualisations) -
all the six major political parties of Sweden think roughly the same,
with different biases (do you want green-flavored, left-flavored,
liberal-flavored or classic social democracy with your taxes?). The
important thing is whether new and different ideas can break into the
system. Right now the party systems in western democracies seem to be
hardening in a worrying manner, which means that they won't easily adopt
new ideas or worldviews.
For example, suppose I wanted to influence my government the traditional
way. That would involve joining a party, and then spending around 8
years showing my loyalty and reliability; after that I would maybe get a
chance to be elected. Of course, if I disagreed with the party line I
would have to vote according to it anyway, or (and this was claimed as a
wonder of democracy by a politician just last week) I could get a
temporary replacement to vote correctly while I was standing aside
righteously. To affect the party line I would have to get into the deep
networks and councils, a process that apparently takes many decades of
intrigue. Understanding the political culture and its codes is essential,
which explains why so many Swedish politicians are second (or third!)
generation politicians.
Of course, there are other ways of influencing politics; becoming a
politician to influence politics right now is like trying to influence
the layout of a road by becoming a roadworker. The real place to be is on
the memetic battlefield of society, making others understand and
appreciate new concepts and convince them that they need to be
implemented. That may still run into problems if you end up with a
political class isolated from everybody else and their worldviews.
Transhumanism in suits and ties works, but it is hard work. But
the conference food is usually good :-)
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:17:22 MST