From: Bryan Moss (bryan.moss@dsl.pipex.com)
Date: Sat Jul 19 2003 - 21:17:53 MDT
In my previous (long) email entitled "Re: How Extropians Live Their Lives
was: Optimism" I mention some issues of humility, scope, and terminology.
To add to my comments on the acceptance of genetic engineering, I think
we'll find, by adopting a certain scope and humility, that there are
different ways in which we can pursue our goals. If, for example, we
consider genetic engineering as something personal, rather than something
that will alter all living beings, we can counter attacks against it by
appealing to their *lack* of scope and humility. In this sense, bioethics
commissions are attempting no less than to regulate peoples bodies. While
we can probably allow a degree of regulation over specific treatments that
are considered harmful and regulation of standards of treatment, any kind of
general regulation based on the nature of the treatment, its supposed
naturalness, is clearly wrong. It's eugenics.
The issue here, then, is in making people realise, as I said in my earlier
email, that genetics is not something occult, we're not "tampering" with
something static and fundamental. If we can convince people of this, it
immediately follows that, because human beings are dynamic systems,
multiplicities, subject to constant change, intervention isn't something
abrupt, and, further more, non-intervention isn't so removed from
intervention. Non-intervention becomes more obviously a choice, rather than
the natural scheme of things. (A great truth we have on our side is that
problems of genetics are genuine accidents. They probably have more claim
to the status of accident than many of the diseases we already treat.)
There's a huge body of work on the negative aspects of government and social
regulation of our bodies and what is considered "natural," in feminist
theory for example, and we can draw on that. Also, by moving the issue to a
more personal level, you can begin to talk about people who are in desperate
need of intervention without it seeming facile. If your biggest concern
appears to be the Glorious Future, wheeling out little Timmy, desperately in
the need of gene therapy, looks pretty shallow.
So this is another pratical application of what I'm talking about; an
extropianism concerned with fidelity to those particular truths science has
revealed about ourselves and our world and how they interact with our
current situation, our current culture, rather than an extropianism
preoccupied with a future or telos.
BM
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