Robert,
I'm not going to reply to specific statements because I have only one major point to make:
You have significantly contributed to my education.
While my questions, implicit and explicit, were in no sense "rhetorical" the post was deliberately composed as a "Socratic" inquiry, which does include a bit of irony. But your responses, defending as they do the work and gestalten of Extropians in such a responsible manner, are of the greatest value to me. They have been archived in my "Extropian" Directory. Thank you, as well as the others, who are serving as my mentors.
Robert J Bradbury wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Oct 1999, Robert Owen wrote:
> > What your statement suggests to me is [1] a feeling of impatience with
> > the groups actual progress;
>
> yep, we be impatient here.
> > [2] a rather telling admission that so far the group has not discovered
> > any practical way of implementing its program.
>
> Not really true, I think many of us (Extropians by name or deed)
> practice what we can as individuals to move things forward.
> > As I understand it, Extropianism is a progressive social movement whose
> > primary intention is to produce a qualitatively different "mode" or "type"
> > of intelligent existence.
>
> No, you have completely misunderstood things! Extropianism is about
> being masochistic enough that you enjoy head banging with luddite
> tree huggers because you expect it to feel really good when you stop it.
> Its that relaxed contemplative white noise zen state that we think
> we will get when the pain goes away that we are all aspiring towards.
> :-)
Bob