Re: Why I think extropianism is hardly a new philosophy

From: Natasha Vita-More (natasha@natasha.cc)
Date: Sun Aug 03 2003 - 19:05:44 MDT

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    At 04:53 PM 8/3/03 -0400, P at hotmail wrote:

    >This post will sound harsh but fair; I think it's the best way to show you
    >all my appreciation.
    >
    >I think this community can be percieved negatively because of that "having
    >visions that are shocking to the social consensus" thing; these visions
    >being at the fringe of conjectures and actual trends, it can be frustrating
    >for people who don't want to miss on the evolutionary advantages this tribe
    >might have yet don't want to bet on duds.

    Tribe is not a term that transhumanists use. The only group of futurists I
    know who believe they are a "tribe" is a group who are into the singularity
    (not Eli).

    So, please don't use "tribe" because the connotations are inappropriate here.

    >This situation saddens me because I find myself "shot by both sides" :
    >extropianism and the majority of people are either at best lacking the
    >historical culture to know these ideas are old hat or at worst voluntarly
    >omitting this knowledge by sheer vanity.

    Another false assumption on your part. First, drop the "ism" from extropy
    and we can much better communicate.

    >The visions and methodology of Extropianism hardly makes it a new
    >philosophy.
    >
    >Charles Fourier, great historian of the future, philosopher of glorious
    >musical tomorrows of harmonious bodies, way after civilizations, when the
    >flesh will be invested of ideal qualities , who was appreciated by Marx and
    >Engels, was proposing an harmonian revolution.
    >Here's some traduction of passages from Oeuvre complètes tome VIII and
    >Bulletin de Lyon, 1804:
    >"humanity will wake itself to the materialist ameliorations it's body is
    >suceptible to."
    >He was forecasting living on other planets since at this point the earth
    >would be too small.
    >"New and useful properties gained by earthlings living in these new celestal
    >countries: amphiby, night vision, perpetual growth of hairs and teeths,
    >indolorism , whitening to the sun etc"
    >Forecasting genetic manipulations:
    >"from their torso a new appendice would grow: used either as a powerful
    >weapon, to prevent falls, a superb ornament with infinite force and
    >dexterity. Habitants of suns, lactées and ringed planets like saturn are
    >amphibious, by the effect of an ouverture in the casing of their heart, and
    >have a fifth member common to both sex: the archiarm who can kill an animal
    >in one shot, be used as a whirling parachute, a motor for fake wings, a rope
    >ladder, a swim-aid that gives man the velocity of a fish and thousand ohter
    >possibilities either on earth or in the seas. The archiarm triples
    >productivity of the industry and bring the body at it's ultimate degree of
    >biological perfection."
    >
    >(He too, as I said in another post, could be a promoter of impossible
    >bodies, but that's another story...)
    >
    >That ought to be enough for the vision part. A bit frivolous and funny but
    >not much more than saying that in the future our children will be few and
    >immensely valued, huanity will have to deal with hypermaturity etc.
    >
    >On the methodological front, I present you Condorcet who concludes his
    >_Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain_ by
    >predicting the end of stupidity, hypocrisy and the emergence of a new body
    >made possible by technological, scientific and medical progress.
    >Sounds cutting edge? It was written in 1795.
    > Death is percieved as a hypothesis to be reserved to exceptional cases like
    >accidents or rare probabilities. The lenght of life, considerably augmented
    >"get close to for ever (...) an unlimited lenght".
    >So it is : a body who escaped the laws of nature and entropy ...
    >
    >Genuine ignorance or vanity, it doesn't matter to me: as a group,
    >extropians/transhumanists are a bit too eager to misread their predecesor in
    >order to make room for themselves...
    >Also, using the structure of an "institute" / "school of philosophy" is a
    >massive philosophical regression, sad, a system of terror, with the
    >pretention of making something new but is a king-sized povrety.
    > I think we have great dreams but extropians don't go at it the right way.
    >Don't even think of calling Fourier and Condorcet proto extropians, please,
    >that would be disingenious for the other way around woud be more logical
    >since they are already accepted in the academic network, humanity's common
    >cultural heritage and they had more historical influence than their current
    >poor unsuccessful incarnation: extropianism is just a materialism and
    >realizing it by droping the usless brand name would be the mature thing to
    >do for it would help in getting credibility and real life traction to our
    >common dreams.
    >Rejoice! You are not an extropian, you are a materialist ! :-)
    >You are part of a tradition and your ideas are accepted more easily.
    >Do I think this post will change anything to the established order? I know
    >people who are branded extropians or transhumanists won't budge, I wrote
    >this for people who will get interested in these problems of our time, so
    >they won't needlessly cripple their game.
    >May our dreams be reality!

    No, because you use a hotmail account rather than communicate in a more
    open fashion and you try to pad your comments with flowers and lace and
    all sorts of exclamations?

    Natasha



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