[ExI] ben franklin was an early extropian

[spike]

I saw this on a cryonics list and decided to post it here.  I know Kennita
(delightful young lady) and I am confident she would be OK with my quoting
her quoting Franklin.  Truly, Ben Franklin was born waaaay too soon, but we
needed him back there too.

 

Benjamin Franklin writing to the Unitarian scientist Joseph Priestley in
1780:

"The rapid progress true science now makes occasions my regretting sometimes
that I was born too soon. It is impossible to imagine the height to which
may be carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter. We may,
perhaps, deprive large masses of their gravity, and give them absolute
levity, for the sake of easy transport. Agriculture may diminish its labor
and double its produce: all diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured
(not excepting even that of old age,) and our lives lengthened at pleasure,
even beyond the antediluvian standard. Oh that moral science were in as fair
a way of improvement, that men would cease to be wolves to one another, and
that human beings would at length learn what they now improperly call
humanity."

-- 
Live long and prosper,
Kennita

 

 

 

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