From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Mon Jan 21 2002 - 08:08:42 MST
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote,
> I can't imagine anything better than immortality surrounded by the
> marvelous, challenging, infuriating, arrogant jerks I've met through
> ExI. If the alternative is spending eternity with the pathetic mindless
> sheep that make up "polite" society, I'd rather be dead.
Funny you should mention that.... I've been thinking about the "long view"
of my life. It very well could happen that immortality never becomes
mainstream. Even if it does, it could take a very long time. Or even if it
comes quickly, we will be the founders or the originators with everyone else
being some sort of late-comers. A small group of us will be all that
remains of the original transhuman generation. We will be the only
survivors after an entire generation is wiped out or saved. In any case, we
will be an odd minority with a different history and background than anyone
else.
It is almost as if we are aliens here, just passing through. Or we are
immortals for whom a brief flash of a single generation seems less
important. While the rest of the generations come and go, we may be the
only long-term relationships we have in the future. Or if a whole
generation becomes immortal, we will be the oldest or the first of that
generation. We may be more advanced than the rest of the world, or left
behind as a future evolves off in an unexpected direction.
In any case, I see this group of people as family. We are all far-flung
cousins that cannot simply be ignored. Even if we disagree on some points,
we will have to learn to get along. It's a small universe and we're going
to keep running into each other. It is almost as if we are stranded in a
small subculture that forever ties us together as different from anything
that preceded us or that might follow. We will be a small band of travelers
into the future. Even if the future is full of transhumans, our particular
group will be comparatively small.
Any thoughts? Or am I not getting enough caffeine again?
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant, Newstaff Inc. <www.Newstaff.com> Board of Directors, Extropy Institute <www.Extropy.org> Cofounder, Pro-Act <www.ProgressAction.org>
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