[extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?

Natasha Vita-More natasha at natasha.cc
Tue Jul 4 21:56:09 UTC 2006


At 04:39 PM 7/4/2006, Samantha wrote:

> > What motivates the desire to overcoming limitations, if not a need to
> > survive the limitations?
>
>To have life more abundantly.
>
> > Are religious practices and rituals a means to help people survive
> > current
> > conditions, both mental and physical?
>
>This is only part of what they are though.  There is a strong
>"impulse" to imagining a radically better world.  There is an
>"impulse" to self/world transformation in the direction that is
>perceived as better.  It does not appear to me that all of this is
>subsumed under mere survival.

I have stretched the definition of survival.

After stating that survival was the impulse, days later (05/25/06) I wrote 
to the person and stated that survival was not the impulse:

"I was incorrect when I stated that the impulse behind transhumanism is 
'survival.'  Survival is necessary in achieving extended life spans; 
however, it is only one of many desired outcomes of this transnational 
cultural movement.

"More accurately, the impulse behind transhumanism is the desire to 
"improve" the human condition through the beneficial use of 
technology.  This aspiration includes, on an individual scope, increased 
cognitive capacity, amplified sensory ability, heightened awareness, and 
enhanced physical attributes.  On the larger span of humanity, developing 
an 'improved' human condition would be the designing and implementing of 
systematic methods to explore/investigate the socio-political-economic 
domains which affect and are affected by the 
scientific-technological-arts-environmental domains."

Then, after reading Spencer, I resumed my original thought that survival is 
the key impulse.  The other impulses are secondary.


> > Is art a means to overcome (survive)
> > mundacity or a repetitious-constant-state of life by creating
> > alterative
> > ways of seeing the world?  Is that ancient drive you refer to
> > motivated by
> > a need to survive?  Was the first technology (tool) built to
> > protect or
> > kill in order to survive?
> >
> > What is the impulse behind survival?
>
>This does not seem to me to be the question or part of the question
>you originally asked.

Questions lead to more questions and different literary tracks.  It's the 
only way to discover.

Natasha

<http://www.natasha.cc/>Natasha <http://www.natasha.cc/>Vita-More
Cultural Strategist - Designer
President, <http://www.extropy.org/>Extropy Institute
Member, <http://www.profuturists.com/>Association of Professional Futurists
Founder, <http://www.transhumanist.biz/>Transhumanist Arts & Culture

If you draw a circle in the sand and study only what's inside the circle, 
then that is a closed-system perspective. If you study what is inside the 
circle and everything outside the circle, then that is an open system 
perspective. - Buckminster Fuller


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