[extropy-chat] Politics and possessing the right ISM

[Brett Paatsch]

Spike wrote (in the thread "prayers and healing") 

> ....I am a former member of a cult that refuses to 
> acknowledge the righteousness of anyone outside the 
> enlightened minority (with the curious exception of Albert
> Schweitzer).  The more extreme members of  that sect 
> would argue that having the right ism matters. 

One can hardly live intelligently in the world without at some
time or other experiencing the embarrassment and the 
inconvenience of being judged by association as sharing the 
views (including the erroneous views - not to mention the
behaviours) of one's friends. 

The world can be divided into two types of people. Those that
divide the world into two types of people and those that don't
(and those that don't do - they just don't realise that they do).

One that is alive necessarily perceives oneself as a work in 
progress. Because life is movement and change whereas stasis
is death. 

One seldom wants others to fully label one as being contained 
in an ism but one necessarily reduces others to isms or 
stereotypes of varying levels of granularity because one can 
only experience the other from outside and can only know the 
other as a type of more or less detail and vividness. 

Even a loved other is an informal ism (an apprehended set of
1 although one does not formally bother to turn that other into
an ism with language because the others *name* is enough to
map them for one).

To Adam (metaphorical), Eve was Eve, there was no other 
Eve so there was no need for Eve-ism. But as Adam was not
Eve and as Adam had other things on his mind besides Eve,
including Adam, Adam did not perceive Eve as richly as Eve
perceived Eve.

As soon as Adam had to deal with others other than Eve,
others (the concept of otherS) had meaning. OtherS are
isms to one, they are isms separately but they are also isms
collectively - they are the ism (the set) of all others. The 
set of non-selves that one cannot have full access too and
which therefore present to one as types.

Now no-one likes to be *just* a type to others (even though
they are necessarily just types of less or more detail to one) 
so one does not like to be thought of as encased in an ism of 
someone else's construction because one knows that that 
other's construction of one, and not the full vivid reality of one
will be the one with which that other will attempt to interact.

I understand this now. I understand why I do not want to be
an ism to others. And I understand why others do not want to
be an ism to me. Too bad. 

Interestingly though I can look back on my life and on my
progress through certain stages and see even myself as having
moved through time and space and in that movement to have
been usefully classifiable to the present me as having been in 
an ism of some form or another.

Born into a catholic family I was almost enthralled to 
catholicism, but I escaped as it wasn't big enough for me. Later
I had states of mind that for an instant or longer might have been
considered to be agnosticism as I questioned theism and found
it wanting of any form of validation and then atheism as I realized
that non-belief in God was the pragmatic position with which to 
proceed. I might have stayed an agnostic were it not for my need
to be pragmatic and to live in the world. Because I was surrounded
by theists I became by necessity to create living and mental working
space for myself an atheist (and only learned later to my surprise
that others like me existed). Yet atheism is not a philosophy of life 
it is a minority standpoint on one issue alone and it is not even an
important issue. I needed more of a philosophy for life than atheism
and I found in the writing of others such as Voltaire the notion of 
humans being the highest and indeed only source of rich interaction
and assistance for each other and I became a humanist and practiced
humanism in my thinking. I wanted to cooperate with other humans 
to recapture what I had lost when I had had to abandoned theism. 
I wanted as Voltaire did to both 'cultivate the garden' with confederates
and to 'crush the infamous things'. The pettinesses. The meanness of
spirit and of mind both in myself and in others.  I do not want to 
crush others. 

I learnt (or perhaps rather refined) philosophy and embraced
scepticism as the means of practicing discovery and employing the 
scientific method and rationalism as my charter for working with
others and understanding the world. Rationalism was also my
means of dealing with the world, not because everything had to
be rational but because nothing was allowed to be irrational. 
Irrationality was a mind crime against myself. Emotions are 
a-rational. I do not *believe* in compassionate love - I know it.

I became a humanist (not because humanism encapsulated all that
I was but because I found I wanted to be around others and those
others I wanted to be around had in common the humanist 
outlook). 

Then later I found I did not want to be around all those who 
seemed to be classified by others as practicing humanism because
I was embarrassed at the stupidity and baseness of some humanists.
I had no illusion that I was beyond stupidity or baseness myself 
I knew I was not, but whilst I could work on my own errors and 
correct them, I could do little it seemed about the errors of other
humanists and I could do nothing about the human tendency to 
group others into two types of people. Nothing except make it 
harder for them to miss-classify me. Nothing except work
against the other's notion that I was stuck completely in their formal
ism they had constructed for me.

I found I did not want to be a humanist if so many humanists or
practisers of humanism talked nonsense and behaved badly as I 
did not want to assist still others who were not humanists to classify
me as a humanist or classify me as an ism. I wanted to proclaim no
ism. I was willing to be Brett Paatsch and to know that for others
that would be an informal ism just as every other is to me an informal
ism, a set of 1. 

Humanism was something I messed about with for a while. But had
to put behind me because that boat contained too many fools. Nicer
fools - a better class of fools in some dimensions than those I had 
found in other isms but fools nonetheless. That boat still had 
*believers* in it. There was also other problems too - human is too
broad a term. A cancer cell in a human is a *human* cancer cell. I
cannot endorse all forms of human life that being the facts. And
humanists tend to talk of humans as the key thing. It ain't. Personhood
may be the key thing for persons. But person-ism isn't going to cut it 
for me either. 

What joy to find on the internet groups of transhumans and extropians
like armies-of-one rationalist angels. The transhumans -with the sense 
to see and make the case that human-ness was not a static thing. That
it was a staging post along the way to something else.

Extropy the opposite of entropy also seemed good. And it seemed
prudent that the stalwarts of extropy especially Max who wrote 
about Pan-critical rationalism were smart enough to be on-guard
against extropy becoming an ism. Of course ism-hood is not 
something one wisely puts voluntarily on oneself ever it is a label 
that others put on one or one's affiliate groups so as to better handle
(intellectually and *politically*) one or one's affiliate group. 

So there was wisdom in *trying* to not be an ism. But the attempt 
is not working. 

But dammit now I find that the damned "believing" meme is invading
here too.  If it persists I may have to start wearing a tee-shirt saying
I am not a transhumanist and am not an extropian (despite greatly 
enjoying their company) and the reason why I am not is because some
who are likely to be percieved as such are still propagating the 
believing anti-reasoning meme and I don't want to be classified by 
association with their practices. Nor do I want to found a new group
called the "a-believers" because that would be as narrow a
philosophy of life as a-theism.  

Not everyone practices believing within these groups but the ones
that do bring the damn meme in the door with them and pass it 
around without being aware of it. 

One may be tolerant of brain-farts like believing when the rest of
the world stops believing themselves and one with them to death.

This does not look imminent to me. All the big problems are still 
going under the radar cloaked in belief. 

There is no escaping the tyranny of the believing meme in
democracies where believers and non-believers both vote. One 
might make a fortune not-believing but the damned believers (the
meme they are enthralled to more than them) would just take it 
as one would have nowhere on the planet to live free from them 
believing they were entitled to take it from one. Ergo, the belief
meme must be met head on.

Regards,
Brett 

[pan-critical non-believer - who noted the last word in Matrix
Revolutions - a modern myth - with disgust]