RE: Future Relationships (was: ethical problem? Some kind of problem, anyway...)

Billy Brown (bbrown@conemsco.com)
Wed, 21 Apr 1999 08:37:21 -0500

Scott Badger wrote:
> But here's a question for you (at the risk of being kookified). Men are
> from Earth and women are from Earth but we clearly differ when it comes to
> what we want out of a relationship and these differences are often at the
> heart of our inability to maintain loving relationships. Should we be
> viewing these differences as a human limitation to be transcended?
Should
> we try to redesign our psyches in order to enhance our mutual capacities
for
> successful marital relationships? Shall we make men more like women,
women
> more like men, or try to identify the most adaptive and resilient
attributes
> of both and head everyone in that direction. Then there'd be two sexes
but
> only one gender. Would that be a bad thing? Or is there even a place for
> sex in our post-human future. Other than the discussion on robots as
sexual
> partners and sex in cyberspace, I don't recall seeing any postings on
sexual
> transhumanism.

Making the genders more like each other doesn't necessarily help anything (imagine two partners with the teenage male 'constant lust without commitment' syndrome). What you would need to do is identify a specific model for how relationships should work, and then modify one or both genders to better fit that model.

Now, if that sounds morally iffy, it should. I expect a lot of the world's more conservative regimes would want to pick a 'one best way' for everyone (usually on religious grounds), and force-fit everyone into it. Hopefully they won't get the chance.

However, in a free society this is something individuals could do for themselves. You decide what you think the perfect relationship would be like, and then you change yourself to fit this vision. Then you find a partner (or partners - lets not be narrow-minded here) who share the same vision.

Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com