[extropy-chat] Reccommendations for a mailing list

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

Reading Mike's desctiption of the good old days I almost wish I could
go back in time, but not quite. It is the same kind of feeling that I
have whan I remember cozy childhood moments. I was about ten when I
watched the first Moon landing all night with family and friends, and
I fondly remember the pure happiness of discussing our future in space
with my friends. We all assumed that by 2005 we would be living on
Mars. Well...
Well it is a harsh cold complex and difficult world. The good old days
of transhumanism were important, as childhood dreams always are, to
create a raw sense of feeling of where we wanted to go. But then, well
we have to go out in the cold world and build the thing. Now
transhumanism is like a teen making the first clumsy steps in the
adult world. We realize that we have to take transhumanism mainstream,
building think tanks and businesses and political action groups, and
of course we also realize that we are going to meet some resistence.
But did we really expect it to be easy?
And of course this also creates internal tensions between
transhumanists of different political persuasions. But listen to me
guys, this is GOOD. Discussing politics means that we are actually
starting to discuss how to get there. And new ideas never emerge from
groups where everyone is saying the same thing.
Politics is central to transhumanism in the engineering sense of
actually making it happen. Please lets not stop discussing politics on
the list, I am quite willing to tolerate being called asshole a few
times for the pleasure to contribute to developing something new and
beautiful.
I agree with Joseph's thoughts quoted below (perhaps with the
exception of "I don't care how").
G.

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 22:24:27 -0500, Joseph Bloch
<jbloch at humanenhancement.com> wrote:
> Mike Lorrey wrote:
> 
> >Nobody realized how easily Congress could outlaw whole future
> >timelines.
> >
> 
> And now, having seen it, a substantial percentage of Extropians seem to
> want to plug their fingers firmly in their ears, cry "LA LA LA" at the
> top of their lungs, and pretend that politics deserves to be shunted
> aside to some ghetto of an email list because it is "boring" or
> somesuch. Yeah, THAT'S effective.
> 
> Then again, over in the WTA, we see the majority hostile to the party in
> power in the U.S. to the point where they won't even work with
> Republicans on issues where they share common ground, simply on the
> basis that they're Republicans and must therefore be the embodiment of
> evil by virtue of having voted for George Bush. Yeah, THAT'S practical.
> 
> The libertarians are going comatose, the liberals are going into denial.
> Where's a poor realist-- I want the Posthuman Future to HAPPEN, DAMNIT,
> and I don't care how it does!-- supposed to go?
> 
> Joseph