Spreading ideas

Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Sun, 24 May 1998 07:51:18 -0400 (EDT)


I make no claims to originality here. Forgive me if you've heard this
before.

The Extropian and posthumanist movements exist partly to spread their
views and change society. How best to do this? There are many
paths to the top of a mountain. Aside from the many, successful means
quite a few of you are practicising -- publishing articles, letters-to-the-
editor, holding fora on various topics, etc. -- I'd like to suggest another.

It's already in use by the Ayn Rand Institute. This is to run essay
contests with secondary school and college students as the target
audience. ARI concentrates on Ayn Rand's _Anthem_ and _The
Fountainhead_, and Leonard Peikoff's _Objectivism: The Philosophy
of Ayn Rand_. The number of contestants is in the thousands. (I
believe last year they got 7K!) The Extropy Institute or other
organizations can get together a reading list and target high school
students. This might leak into classroom discussion making the
influence of our ideas even more widespread -- aside from the bonus
of having them more seriously debate outside our circles.

Let me know what you think about this.

Cheers!

Daniel Ust