[ExI] Avatar: misanthropy in three dimensions

Stefano Vaj stefano.vaj at gmail.com
Mon Jan 11 13:00:07 UTC 2010


2010/1/11 Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com>:
> Look, the solution to the problem is simple, and we need
> only wait patiently a few more years. Soon one will be
> able to control the amount of color that children will
> be born with, and not long after that people will
> themselves be able to undergo whitening processes a lot
> cheaper, more effective, and easier than Michael Jackson's.
> Then everybody can be as white as they please, and films
> will become truly equal opportunity.

... and we will be facing a dramatic loss of biodiversity. :-)

It is true that "fairness" is often cross-culturally a sought-after
beauty feature, but I think this may have to do, more than with some
truly "universal" canon, with:
- the status symbol arising from the indication that the individual
concerned need not to work in the fields (interestingly, UVA salons
started operations when the rich become those who spent more time
outdoor than those enslaved in cavernous offices...);
- the fact that everybody is somewhat fairer in its young age;
- the "prestige" derived from the historical success of Europoids, not
to mention the presence of their genes in the ruling classes of many
areas in the world.

In fact, it is customary in transhumanist circles to discuss
(critically) the misdeeds of State eugenism. In truth, as pointed out
by Habermas, the police need not really be around enforcing eugenic
policies, since its intervention would be on the contrary required if
the State ever decided to forbid parents to make use of technology to
conform with social norms!

This is why I think it is important, for those who are not keen on
such an entropic process taking place at a global scale, to protect
and foster cultural differences and a plurality of models and
"optimality" views throughout different communities. Up to and beyond
speciation, as far as I am concerned... ;-)

-- 
Stefano Vaj



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