RE: Politics of Transhumanism, Singularitarianism and Nazis

From: estropico > (estropico@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Jan 08 2002 - 04:10:31 MST


Transhumanism is, in my view, an easily abusable philosophy, because it can
be adapted to most political views with relatively little effort.

What I mean is that, despite the encomiable efforts of many transhumanists
authors and philosophers, it can be boiled down to the drive to overcome the
human condition by becoming post-human, discarding virtually everything else
(including the humanist part). This could allow a person of virtually any
political conviction (Nazis included, but, I guess, luddists excluded) to
adopt-and-adapt it to his or her own views and goals.

The same can not be said of Extropy, because Extropy is what you get when
libertarians adopt-and-adapt transhumanism (the fact that they, rather than,
say, the socialdemocrats or the nazis were the first to do so speaks
volumes, but that's another story...)

This early start still gives extropians (i.e. spontaneous
order/libertartarian transhumanists) a clear advantage on any other
organised political transhumanist movement (there aren't any!), *but that
will inevitably change as transhumanist memes go mainstream*.

A few years from now, transhumanism could be taken for granted (apart for a
few extreme fringe groups) in the same way that today everybody takes
liberal democracy for granted (apart for a few extreme fringe groups).

Cheers,
Fabio

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