From: alexboko@umich.edu
Date: Tue Jan 21 2003 - 13:44:30 MST
From: "Alex Future Bokov" <alexboko@umich.edu>
X-Mailer: YaBB
Perhaps the war is an liability for the major meme-clusters.
1) Liberals: bending over for the Republicans on just about every important
issue in front of the whole world. If they're going to agree with Bush on
everything, not much point in their existing as a separate ideology, is there?
2) Leftists: as usual conflating inept government and dogmatic foreign policy
with American individualist values, the free market, and American culture
being inherently evil. What's their proposed solution? Why, more government
control over the economic and social spheres of course.
3) Conservatives: sitting pretty now, but probably not a good idea to be on
record supporting them a few years from now once they start getting blamed in
earnest for the continuing state of the economy, corporate favoritism, and of
course dead people (both "ours" and "foreign").
The only ones coming out of this smelling like roses are the theocrats, whose
respective constituencies seem to be more fanatically loyal to them than
ever. There is probably a lesson about spin to be learned here, but it may not
be a lesson that a rational meme-cluster will find useful.
So, how can the best be made of a bad situation for the purpose of promoting
transhumanist values? Pointing out that the whole issue would be rendered
moot if individuals were given more freedom and power and governments
given less? Pointing out that technology, science, and reason can offer
better answers than the ones we have in our repertoire right now? How can
transhumanism (or some sort of toned-down, soft-sell public face thereof) be
presented as an alternative to the three bankrupt memes I mentioned, and done
so in a sufficiently public manner?
---- This message was posted by Alex Future Bokov to the Extropians 2003 board on ExI BBS. <http://www.extropy.org/bbs/index.php?board=67;action=display;threadid=54473>
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