>From: Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net>
>Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org
>To: extropians@extropy.org
>Subject: Re: Bugs in Anarchy was: Bugs in Free-Markets.
>Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2000 23:19:46 -0700
>
> > Waldemar Ingdahl wrote:
> >
> > > Excuse me? Is this "The Muppet Show"?
>
>If so, I want to be one of those two old geezers in balcony that
>make wisecrack and go: uuuuuuhhh huh huh huuuuuhhh.
>
>Those guys crack me up. {8^D spike
Be my guest Spike. I feel like Kermit the frog. I always felt sorry for him,
he really tried to put on a professional show, but everything around him
went down in anarchy, since the other muppets didn't get his point.
Unfortunately, the misadventures of Kermit seems to have similarities with
my own experience in transhumanism.
We are still a movement that hides in the basement, we' re not getting out
in the public forums, after so much time. Actually the trend does seem to me
to go backwards. Rereading old issues of Extropy magazine was interesting,
but frightening, the discourse was on a higher, more informed, level.
In my last days in the Swedish Transhumanist Association I often found
myself writing e-mail about 30 or 40K long explaining basically "Economics
101" to others, constantly trying to re- invent the wheel to keep the
discourse on at least a serious level. You know, Spike,
transhumanism/extropianism is a very, very difficult ideology. It has to
keep such a high, and complex level of reasoning, and cannot function if it
degrades itself into just buying into popular assumptions (that are often
very far from the cutting edge of their respective fields or basically
wrong). But explaining that, for instance, the feodal system of Europe in
the Middle Ages was a very complex system of obligations and counter-
obligations, and not really the type of "serfdom" that has found popular
acceptance (which is instead slavery) would take one of those 30K mails-
bringing the debate up to date with present research findings. You might
ask, wouldn´t that be good? Well, the problem is that a discourse, to
develop (particularly such a new and radical discourse as
transhumanism/extropianism) has to move beyond the basic level, relying on
the participants to inform themselves.
My experience says that one of the problems are that the transhumanist
movement established itself, from the beginning, as an activist movement.
Activism is important, but it is a later stage in the development of a
political movement. Looking on how other movements established themselves
one can see that they didn't establish themselves as activist movements. The
activist stage came when a potent intellectual movement had been
established, when it had developed it own "Great Narrative" of history,
enabling the members of the activist movement to undergo a metamorphosis to
becoming a member of a distinct transhumanist culture, not relying on other
cultures.
The problem with establishing an activist movement first is of course that
even if some (or even quite a lot) of the basic philosophical ideas of the
ideology has been constructed they will have problems to be established even
among the members. The members of the activist movement aren't experts in
every field or even intellectuals (used in the sense that they lead the
public discourse, can communicate on a wide area of subjects and keep ahead
on these at least in regards to their audience). So they have to rely on
what they often absorb eclectically from their culture. And that's a
problem, since the culture they absorb these ideas from isn´t a
transhumanist one (at times I seriously question if the present Western
culture is even humanist, read for instance popular thinkers as Georg Henrik
von Wright and Zygmunt Bauman). The practically and morality of
transhumanism are always questioned, and this introduces dangerous elements
in the thoughts of the members of the activist movement.
I call these elements by their marxist terms: right- wing opportunism, left-
wing sectarianism, and salon- transhumanism (compared to the leninist term).
Briefly: right- wing opportunism constantly challenges transhumanisms
practicality by analysing it through the intellectual tools of other
ideological movements, not understanding the fact that analytical tools (and
even language) are heavily tainted by ideology, this since no specific
transhumanist tools of analysis or "Great Narrative" has been developed.
This leads to compromising one's ideals specifically with regards to the
opponent's.
Left- wing sectarianism calls for "singularity today", everything else is
treason- not really understanding the way of how social change is done or
how ideological hegemony is achieved- in the end compromising the
practicality of the ideology. Salon- transhumanism might buy into the idea
of the practicality of transhumanism, but uses other sets of morals to value
that practicality, and since these do not condone transhumanism the
"practical" is always in conflict with the "moral" since they have not
adopted a transhumanist morality.
In the end these elements will break a movement from the inside (as they did
with marxism, eventhough they identified these elements). The antidote
against this, Spike, is ideological consciousness- an integration of
transhumanist analysis tools (to form the practical foundations) with a
transhumanist morality (to form the moral foundation). This cannot be done
in an isolated activist movement. It breeds a "bring your own"- attitude
which brings it in constant conflict with the basic assumptions of the
movement (not being able to see what they lead to) and no intellectual
support from the attacks of a very non- sympathetic cultural climate. And
the member does not complete the metamorphosis into becoming a
transhumanist.
Mind you, our opponents have the things we lack, and that is why THEIR
activism has success. It has the intellectual support, it goes down deep
into the ideological climate that presently has achieved an intellectual
hegemony in Western culture, and the metamorphosis of the member is very
easy.
I have compared sometimes how corporations and "mass movements" obtain their
members. Corporations choose their members (as you probably have seen if you
ever have attended to a job interview), in "mass movements" everyone is
accepted. This makes the corporation able to construct a tribe (the K.A.
Nordström term), a common cultural identity, much easier.
The "mass movement" then? Well, the type of "mass movement" we see in the
West today was pioneered mainly by the German social- democratic party in
the 19th century, but by the time it established itself it had already
achieved ideological supremacy. It spoke to the gatekeepers of information,
the intellectuals, while the conservative and liberal (in a European sense,
thus a classical liberalism then) tried to speak with individuals,
neglecting the enormous power of the intellectual, especially in a mass
society (which is unfortunately still present today) thus getting in members
that leaned more and more towards socialist views, which had gained
intellectual hegemony, thus even more crippling them in the public arena.
They said the same things as their opponents becoming only "non- socialists"
(much is to learn form the success of socialism in the 20th century,
eventhough the public view of that success is fundamentally flawed- thinking
it a result of mass movements). Thus it was very easy to build a tribe then
for the SDP, transmitting an identity is easy when that identity is the
default.
Of course, living in a mass society, also means that the individuals have
distinct problems with the very complex task of building a movement (or
association) instead relying on corporativism (again I am using the European
term here, I don't know what term is accepted in the US). The transhumanist
activist isn't present in today's society. No transhumanists will walk in
from the streets. The transhumanist activist must be constructed. This is an
ardous task for the intellectuals of the movement (but as history, and our
opponents show, it can be done)- but then transhumanism must be a vibrant
challenge to the intellectuals, daring to be utopian but also presenting
them with a "Great Narrative" to achieve that Utopia. Today I,
unfortunately, don't see that- the internal intellectual production is weak
(I STILL think that Anders Sandberg' s website is one of the greatest
intellectual achievments of transhumanism, but it is soooooooooooooooo damn
old). But being locked down in "Economics 101", makes the intellectuals
unable to rejuvenate the discourse or to take on new frontiers. This, and
the fact that the opponent's intellectuals can do this isolates the
transhumanist intellectual to "preaching to their own" (as noted by Greg
Burch in his recent mail) and thus instilling doubts in the intellectuals.
A change of strategy is at hand, I think.
Like our opponents say, this is World War IV. And if we don't understand
this and form ourselves into a better fighting force they will win,
unopposed.
Sincerely,
Waldemar Ingdahl
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