From: Mike Linksvayer (ml@justintime.com)
Date: Sun Sep 05 1999 - 01:33:31 MDT
Craig Presson wrote:
> To minarchists, the main challenge is to define how to contain government.
To libertarian theorists, anarchist and minarchist alike, the
challenge is to consider how to contain coercion.
> To libertarians in general, of course, the main challenge is how to get there from here.
And that's quite a different challenge.
I subscribed to extropians years ago because discussion largely
revolved around three of my primary interests at the time:
anarchocapitalism, extreme technology, and extreme self improvement.
(A discussion which also included my fourth primary interest at
the time, extreme music, would have been too much to ask for...)
I'm no longer nearly as interested in anarchocapitalism, or in
libertarianism or politics in general. While certainly I think
it is useful to think about challenges to and replacements for
(where desirable) every single facet of the state, anarchocapitalism
simply seems really irrelevant right now. I also can't really
call myself an anarchocapitalist (or anything else) anymore.
Given the paucity of examples of "there", it seems preposterous
to zealously advocate any one "there" or stable libertarian system.
One could even argue that there's no there anywhere, libertarian
or otherwise, i.e., there is no stable political system.
What we're left with is constantly trying to ferret coercion out
of society, without claiming to have knowledge of a "... and they
lived happily ever after ..." system. One could draw a probably
deeply flawed analogy to fallibilism.
I actually think anti-market anarchists set a reasonable example
here: they have even less in the way of solid plans or historical
precedent. What they do have is an ongoing committment to
oppose whatever they (often mis-)perceive as authoritarianism.
I didn't mean to go off on this track, but here I am, so one more
very tenuous point on libertarianism and anarchism: Bartely
(pancritical rationalism) argues that a justificationist
metacontext gives irrationalists an excuse to reject
rationalism and be no less rational than rationalists, since
rationalism cannot justify itself. It seems that a similar
argument could be made about any libertarianism that claims to
possess ultimate moral answers. It's very easy to argue that
libertarianism cannot be consistently applied -- rather than
"at what point do we allow an irrational committment?" the
question is "at what point to we allow coercion to have been
initiated?" If libertarianism is viewed as an ongoing
committment to root out coercion, then the aforementioned
argument against libertarianism, and excuse for any amount
of coercion, is eliminated, in the same manner that Bartley's
pancritical rationalist metacontext eliminates a major
argument against rationalism and for irrational committment.
My interest in extreme technology has not waned. However, I'm
much less certain that a singularity-like situation will
occur real soon now. This in spite of the many remarkable
advances of the last several years. I figure I'm just older.
What interests me most these days is extreme self improvement.
Realistically I can't personally do anything to immanetize the
eschaton, but gosh, even given current technology and this
society, I have more things to do to make myself healthier,
stronger, wiser, more skillful, more learned, and more
ecstatic than I need to fill up a heretofore normal lifespan.
Which leads me to ask ... are there any examples of people
committed to radical self change and improvment as a
primary goal without any prospect of indefinite lifespan
or supernatural immortality? It would seem to indicate
that the human spirit is lacking if there aren't many examples,
that the prospect of a greatly extended lifespan was required
to make people consider radical self improvment a worthy
lifetime goal.
-- See From: and Organization: above.
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