[extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Social Equality and Politics

[Robert J. Bradbury]

Natasha,

I do not believe that it would be wise (or even possible)
to attempt to merge transhumanism with politics.

You are correct in pointing out that politics is in large
part about power (IMO).  We can see that with the political
(aka religious) factions in Iraq currently.  It extends
to the Jews and Palestinians (I'm using the word Jew
intentionally to imply someone who believes that Israel
belongs to the Jews rather than someone who might live
in Israel).  And then one has the right wing and/or
born again Christians in the U.S.

The first problem is that these people function on the
basis of faith rather than reason.  If transhumanism
and Max's principles are to have any throw weight at all
it has to be that we should be operating on the basis
of "reason".  It ranges from difficult to impossible
to "reason" with someone whose life is based on faith.

The second problem is that the people that I mention above
are well integrated into the political structures.  This
does not apply only to the conservative right -- one could
argue that the activist left may have problems as well for
attempting to create a social order that could be in conflict
with the time tested principle of natural selection.

I do not believe it is possible to have a reasonable
discussion with many, if not most, of the people involved
in politics (unfortunately).  There might be ways --
the Ghandi path and Zen/Buddhism come to mind -- but they
are foreign to the systems you seek to influence.

You are dealing with very large amounts of inertia
(dozens to hundreds to thousands of years worth).
Because much of transhumanism happens in the future
it is difficult to present sufficient force now to
balance this (one lacks things like experience,
evidence, credibility, etc.).

It is not impossible -- but I would suggest that the
most effective approaches are not likely to involve
taking on entrenched political systems.  The way
to tackle this problem is not by attemptiong to
convince al-Sistani or Arafat (or others).  They
have vested interests -- they are not going to alter
their mindset.  They are like Smalley's perspective
in dealing with Drexler (in nanotech) [my mind is
made up, I'm not going to bother to read the literature
and nothing you can say can make me change my mind].
No -- the way to deal with this is to work with the 13-25
year olds -- those who grew up on "7 of 9" or the X-men
and view that as cool, who discuss nanotech over lunch,
who want to seize control of their own destiny and view
self-evolution as something with possibilities rather
than something to be resisted.

Robert