Dave, cc list
1. Thanks for this link.
I think you might have had your fingers crossed re today’s
message below. That is, despite your first sentence, I suspect you might
really see a connection between geoengineering and transhumanism (TH).
2. Believing that to be the case, and this being the first time I
recall ever seeing the TH term (and also knowing too little about NRDC and TH),
I have spent the last several hours learning about it. I started with the
Steve Fuller chapter you provided, surprised most by its recommendation to
consider tying TH to the military.
3. Obviously we now have the question for this list whether there
might be a favorable link between geoengineering and the military. I’m not
willing to commit on that idea yet, but I can see some benefits for both the
military and biochar with a global array of militaries favoring and working on
biochar - presumably for TH reasons.
4. I got my best understanding on TH by investing $.99 in the book for
which this Fuller chapter is the last. See
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010ODV0QK?ref_=kcp_mac_dp
So far I have only read the Fuller chapter, and the first two chapters (can
read these for free) - but so far believe the $.99 was worth it. I have
already learned there is a US TH political party with a candidate. Later
googling also showed quite a few connections (so far all positive) between
biochar and TH.
5. For the benefit of the whole list, I hope you will expand on your
own views on TH and geoengineering (and NRDC concepts, if you wish), perhaps
with biochar as a “geo” example.
Ron
On Jul 28, 2015, at 1:12 PM, Hawkins, Dave <[email protected]> wrote:
> Not about geoengineering but relevant.
>
> IEET Link: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/fuller20150723
>
> Can transhumanism avoid becoming the Marxism of the 21st century?
> Steve Fuller
>
> Transpolitica
>
> http://transpolitica.org/2015/07/08/prolegomena-to-any-future-transhumanist-politics/
>
> July 23, 2015
>
> Is there any politically tractable strategy for transhumanism to avoid the
> Bismarckian move, which ultimately curtails the capacity of basic research to
> explore and challenge the fundamental limits of our being? My answer is as
> follows: Transhumanists need to take a more positive attitude towards the
> military.
>
> Revisiting Marx and Bismarck
>
> In ancient Greek tragedy, the term hamartia referred to a distinctive feature
> of the protagonist’s character that is the source of both his success and his
> failure, typically because the protagonist lacks sufficient judgement to keep
> this feature of his character in check. (Original Sin is the comparable
> Biblical conception, if Adam is seen as having overreached his divine
> entitlement.) The propensity for projecting the future, often with specific
> dates attached (as in the arrival of the Kurzweillian ‘singularity’), is
> transhumanism’s hamartia. But transhumanism is only the latest self-avowed
> ‘progressive’ movement to suffer from this potentially fatal flaw.
>
> Karl Marx notoriously predicted that the proletarian revolution would occur
> in Germany because its rapid industrialisation made it the most dynamic
> economy in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, housing the
> continent’s largest and most organized labour movement. However, the
> widespread publicity of this quite plausible prediction — starting with The
> Communist Manifesto — led Bismarck less than two generations later to
> establish the first welfare state, which exploited Marx’s assumption that the
> state would always support capital over labour, thereby increasing wealth
> disparities until society reached the breakpoint. Bismarck effectively
> refuted Marx by treating his prediction as a vaccine that enabled the
> political establishment to regroup itself – effectively developing immunity —
> through a tolerable tax-based redistribution of income from rich to poor that
> provided a modest but palpable sense of social security from cradle to grave.
> On the side of the poor, Bismarck capitalized on the tendency for people to
> discount risky future prospects (i.e. a Communist utopia) when given a sure
> thing upfront (i.e. social security provision).
>
> ----snip----
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
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