From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Jun 16 1998 - 15:50:04 MDT
den Otter <neosapient@geocities.com> writes:
> It would certainly be a good idea to have more transhuman parties with
> lots of good food, music and drugs. It's great fun, and effectively
> increases the sense of community (which is rather important for a
> developing movement).
You don't even need to go so far as a party (even if parties are
nice), just a dinner where you can discuss interesting stuff with
friendly transhumanists and explore the applied hedonics and art of
food is already a great way of create a sense of community.
> Anders Sandberg:
> > >Which of course suggests that we should seriously think about how to
> > >get the benefits from religion without the drawbacks. Most likely any
> > >form of comittment that provides a sense of belonging, a positive
> > >livable universe where temporary setbacks are just temproary (despite
> > >their severity) would have the same benefits. Can transhumanism become
> > >a "religion" in this sense, providing the health benefits?
>
> It certainly has all the elements to become the first truly rational
> religion: life after death(cryonics), transcension(uploading), eternal
> bliss(paradise engineering), sin & evil (entropy, deathism, statism
> etc), armageddon (singularity), ethics (rational ethics of enlightened
> self-interst), art (extropic/transhuman art) and so on. Add to this
> certain socio-political views (like pro-choice, pro legalization of
> drugs and other victimless crimes, tough on real crime, firm atheism
> etc.) and you have a "perfect package", a complete marketable worldview
> that can challenge the existing philosophies at every point. Vacuum
> control, so to speak.
Actually, it is not entirely complete. We need to create a sense of
community, a way of applying extropian or transhumanist core ideas
efficiently in new situations or for the building of
institutions. When we have that, then I expect transhumanism to become
a truly viable lifestyle, before that it will still be a lot of ideas.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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