[ExI] Sound of Silence

[Natasha Vita-More]

Hi Stefano,

I am sorry to hear about your illness. I'm glad you are better. 

I wish you the best of health. 

Warmly,
Natasha


Natasha Vita-More

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 6:09 AM
To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List; ExI chat list;
technoprogressive at yahoogroups.com; transhumanistes at yahoogroupes.fr;
transumanisti; cosmic-engineers at googlegroups.com
Subject: [ExI] Sound of Silence

I have been away from the H+ scene for a while owing to the problems related
to a very extensive, and sofar entirely asymptomatic, cholesteatoma (a
"benign" ear tumor), discovered during a more-or-less occasional checkup,
which required some radical, semi-urgent surgery.
In fact, while death remained a rather remote prospective, I would have had
otherwise to be ready to welcome increasing bone and neural damage,
permanent deafness, meningitis, hydrocephalus, and ultimately the loss of
pieces of brain through my ear and nose... :-)

Such surgery, which I had to undertake while feeling in perfect shape,
involved in turn hospitalisation, and a number of consequences such as the
section of my chorda tympany nerve (leading to the loss of my sense of taste
for the side concerned and to the realisation of how much the related
gratifications were important in my life...), vertigo, persistent dizzyness,
dramatic albeit unilateral loss of hearing, sleep disorders, not to mention
lots of simple, old-fashioned pain which, believe me, is irritating enough
even for a Zen transhumanist warrior. :-)

On the bright side, in ten months or so I should be able to recover some of
my hearing (and stereophony) through some additional, reconstructive
surgery; and I should anyway be operational enough by the time when
Transvision 2010 takes place in Milan not to miss the opportunity to welcome
participants and speakers in the name of the Associazione Italiana
Transumanisti together with Giulio Prisco and Riccardo Campa.

This experience, which affected a basically "wet" transhumanist who is very
much in love with, and proud of, his personal body and its current
performances, besides giving me ample opportunities to reconsider the charms
of mind uploading ;-) has made me if anything more acutely aware of how
primitive and crude even the best treatments money can buy still are, and
how most great breakthroughs in medicine actually have taken place roughly
in the period 1850-1970, till their lamentable slowing down to a crawl
during current years in spite of all the media hype still surrounding them.

We may be spending - and perhaps wasting - a lot in health care in most
western society, but the legal, cultural, educational, ethical, financial
framework is hardly what it should for fundamental research and innovation
if we really wanted to invert this trend.

--
Stefano Vaj
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