>Brian Atkins wrote:
>Don't sweat it, you can post a modified version of the principles to your website and identify yourself from now on as a Queenetropian :-).
>(end)
>
>Am I a Griggtropian then? lol :)
>
Whoohooo!!! I'm A CALVINIST. oh wait, that's taken, darn.
>he continued:
>Or you can put an asterisk next the word Extropian every time you use it and put a little disclaimer in your sig explaining your specific version of it.
>(end)
>
>That might be a good idea for EVERYONE on the list!
>
That actually sounds like a good Idea, and probably good fodder for some great discussion. The issue I take with this particular thread of who can and cannot properly call themselves "Extropian" is that frequently this kind of behaviour can lead to a crystallization, and dogmatization of beliefs. It would seem to me that the crystalizing of the Principles would in itself be against the principles.
Labels can be useful, I feel fairly certain for instance that a person calling themselves "Extropian" is more likely to hold x set of beliefs than someone who calls themselves a "luddite". Brian does have a valid point in that if we use a label to refer to too wide a group of people then it becomes meaningless. An example being the label "Christian" which so many divergent people use to refer to themselves that it is difficult to determine exactly what any particular individual believes. However when you call for ever stricter definitions of a term you nescessarily restrict the number of people which you can use that term to identify. Eventually you might run into the situation where a label becomes so narrowly defined that it is only able to refer to a set of one, in which case you might as well use their name as a label. Such would be the case if we not only required that an "Extropian" must to subscribe to all of the principles, but a particular definition of each principle as well.
Personally, when I see people use the word "Extropian" to describe themselves I think that I can expect that they may roughly hold a set of beliefs. I take it as my responsibility to discover how the label actually applies and which set of beliefs are really held by that individual.
John Calvin
calvinotropian (details @ 11:00)
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:13:02 MDT