[extropy-chat] Re: Nam

The Avantguardian avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com
Mon Jul 11 06:12:09 UTC 2005



--- Dirk Bruere <dirk at neopax.com> wrote:

>> Diversity can be maintained so
> long
> >as freedom reigns and human rights are preserved.
> >  
> >
> The Ideal American Culture.
> What about postHuman cultures that are hive minds,
> or super-hierarchies? 
> Or how about the engineering of postHumans with
> strong territorial and 
> xenophobic tendencies? Are they to be banned from
> day one?
> What about people who don't recognise your versions
> of freedoms and 
> rights as being correct?

Why do you call it the Ideal American Culture? Do you
believe that liberty and civil rights are an entirely
American construct? Why? Are not the English or the
French just as free? Don't you have rights too? I am
speaking on a plane of abstraction here where my
country of residence is inconsequential. We Americans
did not invent these concepts nor is the American
culture necessarily the best possible implementation
thereof. 

> There are more visions of the future of Humanity
> than just the ones 
> mentioned here, and I see many of them as being in
> fundamental conflict 
> from the start.

Then let them come and vy for hearts and minds of men.
Somehow I just don't see the tranhumanist government
of the future evolving from the Sultany of Brunai or
some theocracy. Empires and republics fade with time.
Freedom and rights should not.

> I beg to differ.
> Most people, let alone Moslems, are not 'free and
> tolerant'.

But they COULD be and what is so wrong with that?

> So in your future there is really only One Culture -
> The American Way.

Not necessarily. Acknowledging that I am a patriotic
American, you seem more obsessed with America than I
am. Why can't it be the Athenian way? Or the Japanese
way? Or the way of a republic of nation-states that
does not yet exist? All I am saying is that any
culture a people want to have, whether it has yet to
be invented or even if it is that of long lost
Atlantis should be allowed to prosper so long as they
respect fundamental human rights.

> In the end we all need to control the bit of turf we
> stand upon, whether 
> metaphorical or literal. Territoriality is not going
> to disappear in the 
> future.

I agree that territoriality is not going to go away.
This troubles me because philosophically I am not
altogether certain that there is a right to property
beyond the molecules of ones body and the turf upon
one stands. Scientifically, I know that we evolved to
compete with one another for territory. Spiritually I
feel everything I have including the very atoms of my
body, I merely borrow from the universe. Is there
anything more enlightened to the aquisition of
property and wealth than the mere legal sanctioning of
primate territoriality and dominance? Are we doomed to
be literate monkeys? 




The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't attempted to contact us." 
-Bill Watterson


		
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