[ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going?

[Will Steinberg]

0. Mailing-list Metanarratives
     It is very interesting to look at the memetic progression of the
ExI email list.  Especially important is the reactions of the list to
foreign or rarely-discussed topics.  Whether a topic gains a foothold
in the list is based on some relative equilibration rate; if the meme
does not disturb the current equilibrium in a strong enough manner,
the list returns to its most recent equilibrium.  Looking at the ExI
emails recently we can see an absolutely significant increase in
political and economic discussion; threads pertaining to this thrive.
(i.e. Damien's thread on psi died swiftly, though there was certainly
a point months ago where it would not have.)  The most potent germ of
these recent discussions seems to have Darren Greer's (who has since
vanished!) "Call to Libertarians" posting.  Since then we have seen a
fairly constant thread of political discussion.  In analyzing this, I
have decided that now is a good time to make this post; I just hope my
above precedence doth not preclude my prescient sentiments. (Prosaic,
right?)

I. A Capitol Idea
     Since you are all politicos *de nos jours* we might try and
evaluate political epimemetics in the past few centuries--or to what
direction they tend.  Being predominantly a Western group, we can talk
about politics that are more familiar to all of us, which manifest
most strongly in that great white hippo Liberal Democracy and its
opponent, libertarianism.

     Both are concerned with freedom, but which is most 'free'?  On
the face of things, libertarianism seems to be freedom at its purest.
But it is also true that pure freedom, a la state of nature, carries
with it the constant stress of death and despair.  So then we have
carried ourselves more and more towards governance, the governance of
LD, which supposes we may pool our ideological moxie into a
centralized power source that guarantees us what actually seems to be
MORE freedom--with MORE rules, but a liberation from death-stress.
This second liberation should obviously be what we are tuned in to
pursue.  Transhumanism is exactly a negation of death-stress, and
supposes numerous controls placed on the "free" human body and mind in
order to protect it (because natural freedom is the freedom to kill
and be killed.)

     Now we can see that H+, at least in the upcoming transitory
phases, is a philosophy of control, of nuclear ideas; it is a
philosophy of the entire world undergoing the same paradigm shift at
roughly similar times.  We can also look more primitive forms of H+,
which people tend to call "technology."  For years we have been
cephalizing the cures to our ailments; a smartphone has a Great-Eye
(camera,) a Great-Mouth (phone,) a Great-Mind (Internet.)  A hospital
contains what would have been distributed among shamen and midwives,
the supermarket brings disparate products to one location.
Cephalization greatly reduces the effort cost of DOING THINGS, and it
greatly increases the security one needs to place on the head--you can
cut a starfish anywhere but humans best protect their head--which is
exactly why 9/11 had such a large impact, because we got shot in the
economosociopolitical head.

     All the preceding would lead to an apparent problem that 1) H+
should pursue a doctrine of political unity and governmental
centralization for the beginning stages of the transition but 2) any
centralized doctrine has the caveat of being very attackable.  It is
easy to make H+ the evil scientist, especially for those who are
anti-science, or who have been compromised by science, technology, or
liberal democratics.  Which of course leads us to:

II.  "...need it like I need a prole in the head."
    In the realm of the few versus the many, we are certainly the
former.  The state of the proletariat should be very obvious to
everyone here, especially the alarming state of the anti-intellectual
movement.  It helps to ask questions and try and find answers: how do
we move from today's world into one where a large majority or all of
the global community has found peace with science and H+?  I have
begun to think that it is untenable to believe there will one day be a
society where all humans are one with the machine.  Even today there
are resistors to modern technology--think how much worse the
opposition will be.  There is the point that to do this is to
fundamentally force a worldview on people.  But we also can see that
this should be the 'best' worldview for humanity.  We must find a way
to first let the proletariat find peaceful existence with the
intellectuals, but not necessarily to adopt their way of life.

   There are pockets of the world today where life of very old ways
still reigns.  Perhaps the Earth would be this next refuge, relative
to the solar system or galaxy, where those who chose not to spacelive
could reside, and the silly, carefree games of Earth could still be
played.  It would even be nice to go back and explore our world of
origin, especially for those minds who were born on it.  It could even
assuage the problem of jobless-robo-fears: a no-bot work zone or such.
 The main thread here is one of coexistence.  How should we separate
or integrate the spheres *here and now* so we might work towards this
'Earth reservation' scenario?  One idea is physical separation--a
world of Spacelings, and a world of Earthlings--on Earth.  This might
be too extreme, though.  There should not be the idea that one class
rules the other but that they are complementary.  ATP should not hate
the brain or vice versa, or even come into opposition.  The puzzle is
to arrange the gears of today's society without excess modification so
that they will turn together.  In the first stages of this project,
contact and cooperation will have to be made (so I suggest that those
of you unaccustomed to the atmosphere don your ivory biohazard suits.)

III. What it is

     The conclusion to come to is that the H+ movement is not nearly
as centralized as it should like to be--or, there is no aspect or
group within H+ with a strong enough collective identity, or at least
none with one that is publicly recognizable.  This is a problem.  The
solution, of course, is to begin building strong H+ cells that can
interact with regular people on a local level, showing them how H+ and
science can be friendly and help lives.  We can also take advantage of
countries which are currently below the standards of living, whose
inhabitants have no posh lives to let go; in places like rural Africa,
H+ is ten times as relatively helpful as in America.
     If anything in here alters your mindset, I hope it will be in
convincing you that transhuman passivism will never work, that we need
*active*, *presence-maintaining* communities who are constantly
interacting with the real world to solve its problems.  Not only will
you feel good, you will be rooting transhumanists as the good guys.
And it's good to have the strength of the masses on your side with the
always-looming possibility that everything goes to shit.
    To keep with metanarratives, I suppose I'll end this something
like: Potentially dangerous meme, pulled the trigger, unknown
consequences, yadda yadda.  I'm sure you are all used to it.

Keep it liminal.

-Will