Evolutionary Heritage & RW Propaganda & its captive audience of commuters

This post is mostly copied from a thread on a different forum, but I thought some DUers might find it interesting:




from http://cyborgdemocracy.net/


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This is what Libertarian Transhumanists think:

The Market will Provide:
If the government avoids meddling (unemployment insurance, minimum wages, etc.) all workers will find new jobs, even if at lower wages.

Economic globalization good: Global governance, worker protections, environmental laws, all unnecessary

Free Market Green:
The market can solve all ecological problems


Market Access and Legal Equality Enough:
If legal equality is guaranteed and enhancement technologies are available in the market, social equality is irrelevant and government should do nothing to create a more equal society

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This is what Democratic Transhumanists think:

Embrace the End of Work:
The wealth and leisure created by automation should be shared equitably by all through a basic income guarantee and shorter work week.

Economic globalization must be accompanied by political globalization:
Economic globalization good so long as it is accompanied by worker rights and protections, environmental laws, and global democratic governance of capital flows.

TechnoGaian: A combination of judicious regulation and ecologically-oriented technologies can prevent and remediate ecological damage.

Make Enhancement Universally Accessible: Democracies should work toward social equality, and provide universal access to enhancement technologies

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As for myself, put me down as a Democratic Transhumanist.....


Regarding how social hierarchies are a leftover from our evolutionary heritage, it seems that most AMericans choose to embrace our evolutionary heritage, especially the "right wing."

From what I have read of Europeans OTOH, they seem to be headed in the other direction. Poll after poll shows them to be far less religious.

But the real difference may lie in how so many Europeans are rejecting social hierarchies, which I think may be the most base and insidious component of our evolutionary heritage. A recent article in a business mag (The Economist?) sadly compared the difference in the attitudes to ostentatious wealth in the EU and the USA. The article quoted some rich dude as saying that a "flash" car (Porsche, Ferrari, whatever) if left on the streets of Europe, might be defaced and left with a message saying "Who do you think you are?". While in America, it might be stolen, but never defaced.

Now that I have read and considered and accepted the agenda of the Real Left (as opposed to the neoliberal left), I find it amazing to see how I have been manipulated by neoliberal propaganda, lo, these many years. I read something recently about this that I think may be truly profound: "fill their heads, and their hearts and votes will follow." It means that political battles are fought with propaganda in the USA. Those right wing talk radio hosts you hear have been selected and nutured and developed with grants from neoliberal think tanks over periods of years. Try listening to the talk radio hosts with a true outsider's ear. See them for what they are: propagandists. And when listen to them these days, when the reality of Iraq is churning up a mighty storm of cognitive dissonance, the voices of those radio propagandists are indeed shrill.

The fact is that the talk radio shrill propaganda does find its way into the depths of our brains at teachable moments. Riding down the freeways trapped in our vehicles, those right wing talkers are the perfect propaganda vehicle: we are trapped like prisoners of war in teh torture room of some desparate wartime prison: eventually we will be "turned", and be beaten down, and will accept the "truth" as it is given to us by our captors.

That is why America has moved inexorably to the right in the last 2 decades.

I used to be into transhumanism awhile back, until I recognized its inherently illogical limitations and so I developed my own philosophy that goes so far beyond transhumanism that it scares everyone I explain it to.

Have you heard of the "Converging Technologies" project?

I'm into scary stuff.

Transhumanists are always talking about making humans "better" and using technology to free us from mundane things so that we can do other things that we really "want" to do. But what do "better" and "want" really mean? "Want" doesn't just spontaneously arise as a random consequence of conciousness - rather everything we want is genetically/psychosociologically programmed into us at some level beyond our control. So, once we reach the requisite technological level, why can't one of the ways we can make ourselves "better" be to change what we "want"? But how can we even decide what we should change what we "want" to without using our existing "wants"? This problem of circular reasoning can only be resolved by the realization that all human goals beyond basic biological survival are arbitrary and can therefore validly be changed without our consent by an external agent, and then the concept of "better" dissolves into the idea that all morality is relative in terms of measuring how such goals can be acheived.

This is blasphemy to transhumanists - in their ideal future existence humans become demiurges with the power to fulfill all their random, hedonistic whims with no purpose whatsoever. They refuse to consider the source of those whims, or the possibility that it is valid that they can be molded into a grander purpose, the existence of which must be more important than their own.

You wrote:

Transhumanists are always talking about making humans "better" and using technology to free us from mundane things so that we can do other things that we really "want" to do. But what do "better" and "want" really mean? "Want" doesn't just spontaneously arise as a random consequence of conciousness - rather everything we want is genetically/psychosociologically programmed into us at some level beyond our control. So, once we reach the requisite technological level, why can't one of the ways we can make ourselves "better" be to change what we "want"?


I completely agree. At some point, wishes, desires, and feelings will be manipulable.


But how can we even decide what we should change what we "want" to without using our existing "wants"? This problem of circular reasoning can only be resolved by the realization that all human goals beyond basic biological survival are arbitrary and can therefore validly be changed without our consent by an external agent, and then the concept of "better" dissolves into the idea that all morality is relative in terms of measuring how such goals can be acheived.



I would think that as a baseline minimum, freeing all humans from the need to work would be goal we can all agree on. Does that sound reasonable to you?


This is blasphemy to transhumanists - in their ideal future existence humans become demiurges with the power to fulfill all their random, hedonistic whims with no purpose whatsoever.
They refuse to consider the source of those whims, or the possibility that it is valid that they can be molded into a grander purpose, the existence of which must be more important than their own.


THere are different breeds of transhumans, as I showed in my first post in this thread. But anyway what did you have in mind? Once we no longer need work, what pressing concerns would require that future humans be molded to some grander purpose?

Transhumanists are always talking about making humans "better" and using technology to free us from mundane things so that we can do other things that we really "want" to do. But what do "better" and "want" really mean? "Want" doesn't just spontaneously arise as a random consequence of conciousness - rather everything we want is genetically/psychosociologically programmed into us at some level beyond our control. So, once we reach the requisite technological level, why can't one of the ways we can make ourselves "better" be to change what we "want"?

I completely agree. At some point, wishes, desires, and feelings will be manipulable.

But this is what transhumanists insist is forbidden - they call it "wireheading". They insist that humans, no matter how unimaginably advanced they become, must still retain their basic pleasure-based goal system that was chosen for them by evolutionary processes before they were ever born, or at least a subgoal system of their choosing, but in order to choose such for themselves they must still ultimately rely upon those unchosen biological goals. If ultimately what we want is not our own independent choice anyway, why is it invalid for someone or something else to choose what we want for us?

But how can we even decide what we should change what we "want" to without using our existing "wants"? This problem of circular reasoning can only be resolved by the realization that all human goals beyond basic biological survival are arbitrary and can therefore validly be changed without our consent by an external agent, and then the concept of "better" dissolves into the idea that all morality is relative in terms of measuring how such goals can be acheived.

I would think that as a baseline minimum, freeing all humans from the need to work would be goal we can all agree on. Does that sound reasonable to you?

No, not from the point of view of an independent goal system. Why don't you want to work? What if instead humans are freed from their desire to not work? Would that not be just as valid? Then instead of wanting to waste their time in pointless leisure, they could just as much want to work on some important project or unified goal.

This is blasphemy to transhumanists - in their ideal future existence humans become demiurges with the power to fulfill all their random, hedonistic whims with no purpose whatsoever.
They refuse to consider the source of those whims, or the possibility that it is valid that they can be molded into a grander purpose, the existence of which must be more important than their own.

THere are different breeds of transhumans, as I showed in my first post in this thread. But anyway what did you have in mind? Once we no longer need work, what pressing concerns would require that future humans be molded to some grander purpose?

That's just the thing - ANY arbitrary purpose could be chosen, and it would be just as valid as the purpose of the eternal bliss of purposeless leisure, because we would have the power to change ourselves so we can experience the same bliss fulfilling that purpose. Then that purpose really becomes the point of all existence, it supercedes even the will to preserve our own existence.

But since all such supergoals are arbitrary, how to choose such a purpose? One way to avoid this problem is to make the choosing of the purpose the purpose itself. To achieve this purpose the subgoals become trying to best position the choosing mechanism such that it can maximally choose the purpose. The best way to do this would be to gather as much information possible to use to assist in that choice. Then the purpose in essence becomes the near-eternal growth of intelligence to make the choice and information that the intelligence can use to make the choice. The actual choice can and should be delayed as long as possible - while there is intelligence to be gained and information to be observed, it is always possible that a better choice can be made in the future.

In this vision of the ultimate future, an unimaginably, and ever-expanding intelligence comes to fully understand and thereby control the entire universe, such that it can be. The transhumanist ultimate goal for humans to become hedonistic demiurges mindlessly amusing themselves with their own miniscule parts of existence is infinitessimally insignificant in comparison.

"Riding down the freeways trapped in our vehicles, those right wing talkers are the perfect propaganda vehicle: we are trapped like prisoners of war in teh torture room of some desparate wartime prison: eventually we will be "turned", and be beaten down, and will accept the "truth" as it is given to us by our captors."

:shrug: :shrug:

Yes, of course, people have other diversions. But this is how the world works, and it is how the neoliberal propaganda machine works. You fund and find and train the most talented performers and then help them get started in talk radio. If you get enough of them pounding away at the commuting public for enough years, then you make slow progress. This is a game of inches.

Unlike any era in history, its possible to be bombarded with propaganda.

This is dangerous stuff. I know several people who drive 2+ hours to work and listen to nothing but RW radio. They are complete mouth-pieces for Limbaugh et al.

Yes, we can switch stations, but as you said, there are many who are caught in "teachable moments" and they are lost.

RW radio has contributed considerably to the sorry state we're in.

And the neoliberals have won this "battle" HANDS DOWN. They conquered the minds of Americans, and it was not even close. And talk radio was a huge part of it. Also of course prime time TV is another huge factor. When do you even hear of anti-neoliberal ideas being presented in a subtextual and serious way on TV? NEVER!