From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Wed Jan 22 2003 - 10:29:32 MST
Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Michael M. Butler wrote:
>
>
>>"Remember the Maine!"
>
>
> For those who are non-U.S. citizens or people such as
> myself who have a very foggy recollection of 8th grade
> U.S. history, see:
>
> "The Spanish-American War"
> http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/remember.html
>
Yep, the dogs of war unleashed for a pretext that was arguably
not what it appeared to be and/or inadequate for justification.
>
> I'm not going to try to justify the current U.S.
> policy with respect to Iraq (or North Korea).
> Because I'm not sure they can be presented in
> a rational manner. But Spike's recent note on
> nuclear weapons propagation and use raises the
> red flag.
>
There are other ways to address nuclear proliferation than
blowing hell out of various nations. Too aggressive and
destructive actions lead to more impetus *for* proliferation and
even use, not less. When Britain and the US say they will
consider preemptive strikes and also say they will not rule out
using nukes do you think most of the countries of the world
would be more or less interesting in having nukes to deter such
madness? This red flag by itself does not say what we should
most reasonably do about it.
> Precisely how bad do things have to get before
> one says "you may not cross this line"? And
> then are you willing to suffer the consequences
> of allowing things to have gotten to that point?
>
I am unwilling to dole out and suffer "unending war" with its
likely disasterous effect on extropic values.
> As much as I may not (currently) be fond of utilitarian
> arguments I think I am being forced into the position of
> rationalizing and justifying them.
>
> To remove the debate from it current "political" climate,
> how on earth could we have allowed the genocide of over
> a million people in Rwanda?
> [http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/rwandadeaths.htm]
>
We weren't interested in that patch of real estate is how. To
be blunt. Do you believe that we should be the police of the
world? That itself is a position of questionable extropic value.
> The non-U.S. members of the extropian list don't get
> to beg off on this because the U.N. provides, if anything,
> a forum for third parties to raise voices of concern and
> outrage. [Where were you?]
>
Where were you?
> So, I would urge all people who consider themselves
> "extropic" to consider long and hard the question of
> when their arguments and efforts really are likely
> to save or produce the greatest amount of information
> (i.e. are most anti-entropic).
>
Wars are generally un-extropic unless they directly protected
what is very valuable. Killing people, especially large numbers
of people is generally un-extropic.
> This isn't about being "right", it isn't about advancing
> ones own political perspective (the entire libertarian
> vs. some other political framework fades and exits stage
> left in this forum), it isn't about whether having or
> not having guns is a way to move forward a perspective.
> It is about whether or not the information content that we,
> as a species and civilization, have accumulated, is maintained
> and hopefully evolved.
>
Politics cannot be exclude and indeed must be involved in
questions of mass social action. It is after all its domain.
But I agree it is not about lesser issues. However, I don't
believe you can evaluate the killing of this or that group based
on which one has denser "information" that might maybe have a
better chance of being preserved if the other group was killed
or seriously decimated.
> That is what "EXTROPY" is about.
>
No, it isn't.
- samantha
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Feb 02 2003 - 21:26:02 MST