[ExI] "meat"

[Damien Broderick]

At 02:00 PM 5/23/2009 -0700, Lee wrote:

>>Most of the people posting here seem
> > to have no notion how depraved it
>>is to speak of human bodies as "meat".
>
>I plead guilty. Indeed, we should aspire
>to good taste whenever such an alternative
>is pointed out to us.

My vehemence derives from my perception that this *isn't* just a 
matter of "good taste" or politeness, but a derangement of values far 
deeper and more corrosive. It's the same dehumanizing process that 
ends up vilifying Jews as "vermin."

And it's no accident that my objection is also often raised by many 
of the intelligent critics of transhumanism; they can sometimes see, 
from the outside, the pathologies that can creep into our discourse 
and analysis.

As several people have commented to me offlist, "meat" is a common 
way for $cientologists to refer to human bodies. That's no accident 
either. In general it's the horrid body-hatred of Xianity recast in a 
reductionist scientistic framework.

And obviously Max and Natasha and some others here don't fit this 
category of body-loathing. It's not a design feature of 
transhumanism, it's a malign bug that deserves to be squashed.

Damien Broderick