[extropy-chat] Spain has become the third country in Europe to legalise gay marriage

The Avantguardian avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com
Sat Apr 23 06:34:00 UTC 2005


--- Natasha Vita-More <natasha at natasha.cc> wrote:
> Thanks for updating us on this newly arrived
> world-wide 
> issue.  Congratulations to Spain!
> 
> Disclaimer:  The institute of marriage is not
> necessarily a futuristic 
> plan.  I wonder how transhumanists in the coming
> generations will develop 
> relationship contracts that are not so historically
> binding by "death do us 
> part"  sentiment.

Well one possible future is that having uploaded
yourself into some supercomputer somewhere and backed
your personality (software) up on some giant
hard-drive , you have several clones (wetware) of
yourself in cryogenic storage. When the current clone
of you dies, you thaw out one of your back ups,
download yourself into the clone. At that point I
would say you have fufilled the til death do you part
thing. Then you should be free to dive back into a
different part of the gene pool. 


> And about that "sex" word ...
> 
> Gender restriction is another human
> biological/psychological 
> characteristic.  How will we view marriage when we
> are able to interchange 
> our gender?

Probably the same way that current transexuals view
them. We have actually pretty much gotten to this
point technologically. If you want to know how a
post-operation trans-sexual feels about marriage . . .
ask one. You would probably be better off looking in
Dallas than Austin however. ;)
 
> I do think being in a committed loving relationship
> adds to the long, 
> healthy, happy lives; but it is a human institute. 
> In the future, when we 
> no longer reside only in one reality or one gender,
> it will be interesting 
> to see if marriage is entirely discarded, or if the
> rules of marriage are 
> revised to include multiple relationships for
> multiple environments.

I would not call "til death do us part" a human
institution. Wolves do it, hawks do it, even prairie
voles do it. It is a natural trait that evolved in
many creatures because it confers an evolutionary
advantage to ones offspring. How technology will
change this is too far-off and dependent on how much
our instincts are hardware and and how much software.

> Even 
> if a type of contractual institute such as marriage
> will be necessary for 
> long, healthy, happy lives. If not, what would
> replace it?

Shacking up? 

> An evolved 
> psychology?  Perhaps a transhumanist psychology in
> which we provide a 
> transhuman-posthuman wide-spread environment of
> inclusively, support, 
> nurturing, friendship, and connectivity.

Whatever it is, I hope it involves a lot of the "sex"
word . . . and some just plain sex too . . . and some
kinky sex from time to time. ;)
 


The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't attempted to contact us." 
-Bill Watterson

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