From: mlorrey@yahoo.com
Date: Sun Mar 23 2003 - 13:50:35 MST
*anybody* read ...)
From: "Michael S. Lorrey" <mlorrey@yahoo.com>
X-Mailer: YaBB
[quote from: Samantha on 2003-03-23 at 12:27:17]
I thought it was our goal to create a world or pockets therein of maximum
extropy. I don't see how those pockets can be created without maximizing
freedom and individual rights.
Neither can I, but I didn't expect Samantha to say this. The primary problem I
see is that so many make such an assumption but then abdicate by claiming that
such can only be created by peaceful means. Freedom has just about never been
achieved by peaceful means, the only two instances I can think of for such
occured exclusively within the anglosphere (South Africa and India).
Extropy may be for spontaneous order, but order in and of itself is
not necessarily extropic, it is frequently stasist in nature, and the
calcification endemic to extended order frequently requires a little creative
destruction to enable a renewal of extropic forces.
Given that there really is no place in the world of 'savage wilderness' in the
Lockean sense to create a new extropic/libertarian utopia, such a society can
only be created by supplanting/destroying/transforming an existing order in
an existing society. A large degree of this has already occured in the last
decade with the transformative influence of the internet.
In this respect, extropy has largely succeeded in its most easily obtainable
objectives. At the present time, however, we are restrained from building
an even freer society by the security threats posed by terrorist groups and
states that retain power, wealth, and influence and have declared themselves
to be enemies of the sort of world that extropians have stated they want to
build.
We are for civilian cryptography, but it is used to hide terrorist
communications. We are for data havens, nanotech, and freely available
biotech research. We are for civilian space exploration, as well as many
other things. All of these are under threat of restriction because of
the threat of terrorism and insurgencies by rogue states holding the
world hostage. Libertarian societies do not deal well with terrorist
insurgencies. They require a commonality of belief in libertarian principles
by all members of such societies. In order to build such a society, we must
first make the world safe enough that most people can feel secure in the free
exercise of such liberties.
Groups like al Qaeda and governments like Iraq and North Korea, as extreme
examples, stand foursquare against extropy and liberty. While there are many
other oppositionist groups and governments in the world that will stand in the
way of extropy and libertarian principles, these are the most eggregious.
Claiming to be high minded in taking a passive stance is simply facetious
hypocrisy. Inaction in pursuit of extropy is no virtue, to paraphrase
Cato. Simply sitting idly by and waiting for such states to collapse is simply
pollyannish.
---- This message was posted by Michael S. Lorrey to the Extropians 2003 board on ExI BBS. <http://www.extropy.org/bbs/index.php?board=67;action=display;threadid=55266>
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