[extropy-chat] ENOUGH already

[Charlie Stross]

On 25 Dec 2003, at 10:19, Samantha Atkins wrote:

> If this current idiocy is the best that can be had to give us purpose, 
> resolve, and a cause - if it is the closest we get to "noble" - then 
> please pass the koolaid.
>
> I do not see how anyone can suppose this never-ending, perpetually 
> over-spending, freedom destroying, cynical, bullying crap-shoot 
> disguised as "war" brings any meaning at all to life.  It makes life 
> infinitely ugly and sad if taken seriously.  As ugly as war is this 
> current fiasco sullies even the name of "war".

I'd like to add to that: war seems to me to be about as anti-extropic 
as you can get. The triumph of brute force over enlightenment, 
destruction, death and despair on a massive scale. An excuse for the 
enemies of freedom on every side to chip away at civil rights. The 
ascendency of dehumanization is the *opposite* of transhumanism.

About the only possible exception to this bleak picture is the way that 
in the industrial age war permits the mobilization of vast 
technological and scientific resources and their direction towards 
achieving specific goals, in a manner that is difficult to coordinate 
in peacetime. But those goals are seldom positive, frequently 
destructive, and wouldn't it be better to achieve such mobilization for 
creative and constructive ends instead?


-- Charlie