From: Natasha Vita-More (natasha@natasha.cc)
Date: Mon Jun 02 2003 - 18:10:06 MDT
At 10:57 PM 6/2/03 +0200, Anders wrote:
>Hence we should guard the politeness and intellectual rigor of this
>salon, make sure the best in us all feels welcome and always seek to
>contribute great thoughts - or go out and do great deeds based on the
>thoughts we have overheard.
>
>[ ... adjusts his wig and turns to Lady Natasha de Vita-More with a
>witticism he just overheard from Count von Spike... ]
In reply, I wave my fan delicately to brush the cool summer air from my
warm cheek. Without a beat, the sonata echoes its tempo from the veranda
issuing sounds of reflection and intrigue, ... "Intelligence, my dear, is
really a kind of taste: taste in ideas."*
Natasha
* Susan Sontag
>I would say this list is a bit like the intellectual salons of the 18th
>century. A place where people with shared interests meet, discuss, drink
>virtual coffee and come up with ideas - most of which never lead
>anywhere. People attending the same salon would tend to share some basic
>views or assumptions due to self-selection and the normal social
>pressures limiting too great disagreements, but the remaining spread of
>knowledge, specialisations and views are rich enough to produce a
>creative environment. The salons never did anything, really. But the
>people attending them did, inspired by ideas they got there. Some
>projects didn't pan out at all. Others succeeded or at least became big
>- we live in some of them today.
>
>I think the extropians list is much in the same vein. The best it can
>aspire to is to be a great salon. There is a elitistic vision ghosting
>around in transhumanism that somehow we, we who get it, will be cruicial
>and lead the great transcension. According to this thought we are
>essential, so we must all act as one with high quality at the great
>project, whatever it is (a human pyramid to orbit? ExtroCorp? The
>million transhuman march?) - it is all about the movement and all its
>members. But I think this is a mistake; if transhumanism ever leads
>anywhere it will do it by acting as a source of important ideas and a
>meeting place of people that later will act together. No need to turn it
>into the Fifth International.
Natasha Vita-More
http://www.natasha.cc
----------
President, Extropy Institute
http://www.extropy.org
Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture
http://www.transhuman.org
http://www.extropic-art.com
http://www.transhumanist.biz
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