[extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Social Equality and Politics

[Acy James Stapp]

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Sent: Friday, March 26, 2004 9:56 AM
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Social Equality and Politics


Question:

/For years, I have considered Transhumanism to favor all of society and to
/work toward improving the human condition equally for who so desire it.  By
/this I mean that each human being is given the freedom to choose a
/transhumanist life.  This choice includes all the elements of the
/innovative ideas and intellection of transhumanism, as Max More defined the
/term and fathered the movement.

/Also FM-2030, who wrote the original philosophy of the "transhuman"
/(different than transhumanism), was a humanist who became a transhumanist. 
/His ideology was neatly written in his book, _Are You A Transhuman?_ which
/o outlined his philosophy about personal growth in becoming a transhuman. 
/Herein, he was adamant about human rights and wrote about talked about
/human rights since his early years as a diplomat.

/In my estimation, and what I believe in my own philosophical views about
/transhumanism, and as I wrote and lectured on the topic from the 1980s
/forward, transhumanism is more of an intellectual enlightenment that
/proposes to work toward improving the human condition for all who want to
/improve themselves and to implement the sciences and technologies that will
/assist us in this quest while extending our lives.

An intellectual enlightenment is nothing without power. To achieve
transhuman ideals in the face of powerful opposition demands a
concerted, knowledgeable, and powerful push.

/Transhumanists have been told there were "elitists" (not in the culturally
/positive sense as being culturally polished, but in the negative sense as
/being intellectual/technological superior than the average person.)  This
/is something that we did not ask for or attempt to represent, but was
/donned on us because of our ideas being ahead of their time and speaking in
/a language that was not understood by the mainstream.

/What do you think about pushing transhumanism into political camps? 
/Because politics is based not so much on human values and transhumanist
/goals, but on competing interest groups or individuals for vie for power
/and leadership.  Is this politics over philosophy/social understanding, the
/former being displayed with underhand tactics, and the latter being
/influenced by reasonable efforts?

Politics is all about power, and power is needed to achieve any
grand goal. If you want to achieve anything, you have to play 
the political game. Politics is not all about underhanded
tactics and unreasonable action. Politics is about compromising
what is least important to achieve your cause within the legal
framework for action. We need a political entity to fight for
us in the same political arena as those who oppose us.

/So, you tell me - those of you who are not pushing any one political
/agenda, what do you think?  Do we need to segregate transhumanism into
/political camps that are subsets of political party lines?  Or do we need
/to let the camps be driving forces aspects of transhumanism forward?

/Remember, Extropy Institute does not sponsor or claim any one political
/affiliation or belief, as its core is based in "transhumanism," not
/politics.  Our members share varied political views and I believe that we
/can solve world problems by employ the most workable solution to the
/problem, regardless of which specific positive political course.

I said earlier that we need to make a concerted, knowledgeable, 
and powerful push. Here are my ideas:

To achieve power, we need to get as many people as possible united
in action. We need to determine what the core issues of
transhumanism are. We need to create legal political entities
to represent us. Those entities need to be aggressively centrist
(for the political arena they are competing in) except in the 
areas of utmost importance to transhumanism, so as to get the
most unified support. We need to be willing to sacrifice some
of our values for the greater good. In my experience, we are a
group of idealists. We need pragmatism. We need political experience.
We need to get our core ideals out there. We could learn a lot
from the efforst of Dean, Kucinich, et. al. in the recent US
presidential primaries.

We need to be able to succintly and pointedly present our core
ideals to non-extropians. It's important that they agree with and 
accept the core ideals before they discover that they conflict 
with some of their present values. We need to not conflate the
secondary issues with our core ideas. It's crazy to try and
disentangle extropianism with politics. We need to work within
the system to change it.

Most importantly, we need to convert people to our core ideals,
and we need to not shoot ourselves in the feet. We can't tread
on the sacred values of others unless they are critically and
terminally opposed to the extropian cause.

Peace out,
Acy Stapp