From: Steve Nichols (steve@multisell.com)
Date: Tue Jan 01 2002 - 08:19:36 MST
Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2001 19:09:00 -0800
From: Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc>
Subject: Re: Politics, Extropians
> > >
Hi Folks
Sorry to have to butt in every now and then on the cosy, Extropian world
view,
but events move quickely and have clearly overtaken "transhuman" philosophy
in all of its forms. No one picked up on my posting about "archeological"
evidence
we are already posthuman, but never mind.
Transhumanism occurred during the late C19th thru the C20th in developed
nations. Any "futurist" philosophy must help describe and explain the
"post-human"
or "after-transhuman/ human" condition, all other discussions are
historical.
> > >Back when I first heard about extropians, one of the major attractions
for
> > >me was the combination of transhumanism and libertarianism. In fact,
> > >that's how I thought of extropians -- as libertarian transhumanists.
> >
> > Why?
>
>>Because I am unaware of any other defining trait of extropians, as
distinct
>>from all transhumanists.
>I never figured out why there needed to be a differentiation at this
>stage. I consider myself a transhumanist first, and then I'm a member of
>Extropy Institute because it's the only corporate organization that has
>been working to create a transhumanist movement. The principles work well
>for me, and the philosophy seems to pay attention to changing times and
>from what I see, is able to keep up and direct itself to the advances quite
>nicely.
<snip>
> > >I'm not sure what distinguishes extropy from plain transhumanism, if
not
> > >advocacy of non-statism. Can someone help me out here?
> >
> > Good question. Actually, basically nothing other than a word
> > "Extropy". Now, if we begin to unravel some of the history of how
> > transhumanism got stated you would learn that there were Upwinger
> > Transhumanists, Transhumanist Artists and other smaller groups of
futurists
> > who felt aligned with the transhumanist futurism. But, really, the word
> > and ideas were first generated in the extropian community. The word
> > transhumanism came out of the extropian philosophy. Not the other way
> > around. However, FM-2030, wrote his view of what a transhuman is and I
> > think that his "ideology" was significantly transhumanist.
I wrote & published the posthuman manifesto back in the 1980's independently
of
any knowledge of any of the above. History of Posthumanity pages are at my
multi.co.uk site somewhere ......
>
>>I'm guessing you mean to say, "significantly extropian", as that would
neatly
>>wrap this up. If not, I don't understand what you do mean.
There is clearly an overlap and confusion between these terms. "After-human"
overcomes such fuzzyness since it has no value judgements, principles or
prescriptions, just refers to what follows the "human" historical era.
>No, significantly transhumanist. FM was not an extropian, although he
>thought well of the philosophy. He was a philosopher himself, and created
>the Upwingers philosophy and contributed these ideas to form a
>transhumanist ideology.
> > >By the way, I imagine that "a-political" could easily be used to
describe
> > >libertarianism. :)
> >
> > Sure. I guess so. Frankly, I think political parties are old world.
>
>We agree on this, at least.
ABSOLUTELY! As you know I am forging the posthuman alliance to fight
against the legacy political parties in all parts of the world. Of course
there
will be less centralised policy formation than in previous politics, with
local
candidates fleshing out policies to make them relevent in their own areas.
Fraternal Greetings and Happy 2002!
www.steve-nichols.com
Posthuman Organisation
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