[ExI] Hugo Danner the Transhuman

[The Avantguardian]

--- John Grigg <possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9/6/08, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
> > Stuart our Avantguardian writes
> >
> >> I thought [the SF story] "Gladiator" [by Wylie] was
> >> pretty well written for pulp fiction. Up to the end that is. What a
> >> disappointing ending for such a good story. It strikes me that Wylie sold
> >> out
> >> to bioconservatives and the Christian right in the last few pages of his
> >> novel.
> 
> I am going to have to read this book.  I had come across it while
> "book surfing" on Amazon and had put it in my wish-list que.

Wylie's publisher neglected to copyright the book that he lifted for pennies a
page from Wylie. The publisher's loss is now society's gain. It's in the public
domain so why buy?

http://www.archive.org/details/Gladiator_261

> Ahh, but creating a new lifeform and introducing it into an ecosystem
> (especially when we are discussing "homo superior") could possibly
> cause great havoc.  And do you want to be among the lifeforms that are
> on the losing side in a Darwinian struggle? lol

Which Darwinian struggle is that? The economic one or the biological one? The
rich are winning the economic one obviously, but the poor are winning the
biological one. So which side is truly winning? And what may I ask is
"superior" biologically speaking? Alexander the Great was killed by a mosquito.
Is the mosquito "superior" to Alexander? I assure you that *she* left more
descendants than he did.

You see in the Red Queen's Race there is no finish line, sometimes you're
ahead, sometimes you are behind, and it takes your whole bag of tricks just to
stay in the race.

> But even a "well meaning and loving" parent can go wrong or at least
> have bad offspring. lol  I do find it ironic that genetic engineering
> is often viewed in a bad light and yet I see parenthood as a form of
> playing God.

It most certainly is, and the goal of it is to prepare your offspring to play
God someday. Sheesh, John, you got me talking like a Mormon. ;-)

Lee writes:
> > My own fear is that they know what sells, what might make it as
> > a movie and so on.

That's a valid point. On the other hand, Madison Avenue would not exist if
"what sells" wasn't incredibly malleable.

> The story of Adam and Eve being thrown out of Eden for disobedience
> and partaking of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
> seems a paradigm for this discussion.  But on the other hand Genesis
> talks about God giving dominion of the planet to humanity and telling
> us to rule over all living things.  We are told to "subdue" our world.

Yet all we have accomplished is so far is to subdue one another whilst killing
our world. So we haven't gotten very far in our mission statement have we? Or
do you think condors or grizzlies would vote for us in free elections? And what
pray tell is good or evil? I don't see good or evil in the world. I only see
love, ignorance, and fear giving rise to birth, life, and death. For a world
filled with so many original sinners tainted by the forbidden fruit of
knowledge, I sure do see an aweful lot of ignorance.  

> >> Death apparently holds no fear for Christians,
> >> it's only life they have seem to have a problem with.
> 
> LOL, no believe me, Christians also are generally afraid of death.  It
> is part of the human condition.  In Mormon circles there is the belief
> that the separation/barrier between this world and the next is the
> "veil."  And the joke is, "most people talk about how much they look
> forward to the next world, but they treat approaching the veil like
> they would touching an electric fence!"

There is no veil. There is only Des Carte's Prison. The prison walls separate
you from the world and from one another. Death simply breaks down those walls.
So does enlightenment but in a far less painful fashion. I cannot die but to
become whatever I leave behind. The proud descendant of the worms that will eat
my corpse I am. Hear me roar! 

> I have been to very joyful funerals where the focus is on how the
> deceased old person lived a good life and has now graduated to a
> wonderful afterlife reward.  But the funeral of a child or young adult
> is very depressing, due to all the lost years and the grieving family
> that had hoped to see them live to their full potential.  Please don't
> mock a hurting Christian parent or sibling for feeling like this.

The whole point of funerals is to remind us that nothing ever really ends.


Stuart LaForge

"See them clamber, these nimble apes!  They clamber over one another, and thus scuffle into the mud and the abyss."- Friedrich Nietzsche