[extropy-chat] Bone for the Extropian Wolves

Samantha Atkins sjatkins at gmail.com
Mon Oct 4 18:14:32 UTC 2004


----- Original Message -----
From: Hara Ra <harara at sbcglobal.net>
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 09:19:20 -0700
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bone for the Extropian Wolves
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org

 A friend wrote:

 In my not always so humble opinion though, "hope" is not the greatest
of bio-engineering strategies.

 And I replied:

 Both 'hope' and 'faith' carry strong subtexts of 'death' and
'failure'. Prior to the scientific age, the associated social and
religious mechanisms did promote slightly better chances of survival
by these means. Religious conversion and mystical insight (which I
have experienced) both operate by making the real world irrelevant and
an imaginary 'higher' world the ultimate reality.

me:
That does not match my own experiences.  The notion that the every day
world is irrelevant seems more like a post-experience conclusion
perhaps shaped by local doctrines.   The experience itself was one of
great insight of how everything interconnects and experience of the
entirety from within it.  While these were utterly mind-blowing and
led to much re-evaluation of what is and is not important the
experiences themselves in no way made the "real world" irrelevant.  
They did however show that much I and others consider of high
relevance is largely due to a mistaken and  far too myopic point of
view.
 

hara ra:
It has to be ultimate to be effective, and the main effect is to
delete the fear response, freeing one for a wider field of action,
often contrary to one's social programming. "God said so" is a panacea
for ignoring social constraints. Evolution only conserves
survivability, so we are saddled with these Stone Age mechanisms,
which do work in their limited way.
 
me:
Getting beyond the fear response can indeed be a very good thing. 
Seeing oneself as Bucky put it, as a "verb" or process of being and
doing or part of a larger purpose can also free up the individual to
act according to ideals instead of being all involuted around self.   
God, per se, seems to me to have little to do with it on the positive
or negative sides.

- s
 
================================== 
=   Hara Ra (aka Gregory Yob)    = 
=     harara at sbcglobal.net       = 
=   Alcor North Cryomanagement   = 
=   Alcor Advisor to Board       = 
=       831 429 8637             = 
================================== 

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