"Technotranscendence" <neptune@mars.superlink.net> writes:
> Are there any web sites out there for people who share our vision of
> technology, but who don't share our political vision -- and who are what we
> would classify as fascists or something along those lines? Sort of like the
> skinheads, only pro-technoprogress, life extension, space colonization,
> nanotechnology?
I have not seen anything quite like that, most of the
"near-but-not-really-transhumanists" are more new age. The followers
of LaRouche seem to be pro-technology, but only when it is big
centralized tech, not anything like the Internet or genetic
engineering. There are a few people quietly arguing for eugenics
(mostly to combat the accumulation of genetic defects that would
otherwise be weeded away by natural selection), but they do not strike
me as more than a single issue view or neoconservatives.
I think transhumanism in its current form is quite incompatible with
fascism, but this has not always been true. I re-read Stapledon's
_Last and First Men_ and _Starmaker_ yesterday, and many utopian or
semi-utopian societies he discussed would appear fascist or communist
to a modern reader (even if he also pointed out the differences in
many cases; besides, when you're a part of a planetary mind politics
as we know it become something uttrely different). The same goes for
Bernal's _The World, The Flesh, The Devil_, which suggests that the
future of humanity is a kind of cyborg communism in space. This form
of transhumanism got quite unfashionable after the war.
However, our current memes are antithetical to much of fascism because
they emphasize qualitative change over time, someting that contradicts
the pragmatic and/or philosophical underpinnings of much of
fascism. Of course a technocratic version of transhumanism could
develop where change is acceptable but only when harnessed for the
public good, but it sounds very much like this would go the way of
Soviet technological advance - it doesn't work well together with a
rigid society. Another idea that tends to fly in the face of fascists
is, as Remi Sussan pointed out, that the posthuman is a metis, a
combination of human, machine, genes and memes from whatever sources
work. This mixture is unacceptable to the fascist mindset, which tends
to empahsize unity and purity while regarding anything composite as
suspect.
To use Postrel's terminology, the tranhumanist fascists, if they
exist, should be located somewhere in the technocrat part of
stasism. But this naturally prevents them from exploring all the
possibilities new technologies would suggest, and they would be forced
to argue for just the basic effects of the technologies (nanotech to
reduce material scarcity, life extension will just extend life etc),
which we instead think about their second-level implications. This
gives us a natural advantage and the ability to do more adequate
social and philosophical analysis of what is going on.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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