Submitted by watermelon in Anarchism (edited )
Genetically engineering supposedly 'superior' humans, that's just eugenics with a new delivery system, right? I don't see how that won't create more hierarchy. Am I missing something here?
Comments
watermelon OP wrote (edited )
No, I don't think I'm doing that. Publishing the data doesn't stop it from being a hierarchy, the hierarchy is created by people with access to the resources to build the technologies gaining advantages over those without access to the resources for whatever reason.
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watermelon OP wrote
Oppose it all you want, it won't change the fact that the resources are scarce and extracting them exploits the environment and the people living there.
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ziq_TNG wrote
The point (for green anarchists) is to reject lifestyles that increase hierarchy and exploitation. Resuse and repurpose rather than extracting more resources to attain a disnonnected and fleeting luxury at the expense of life.
Building an ideology around perpetual technological advancement is ground that's been well travelled under capitalism. Maintaining any kind of anarchy under a system based on industrial advancenent would be an uphill battle to say the least.
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ziq_TNG wrote (edited )
I would sincerely hope that any anarchist would be attentive to how their conceptualization of anarchism interacts with the world beyond society.
However much anarcho-transhumanists want these things to be non exploitative, words are meaningless when you realize industrialism was, is, and will be oppressing, starving and killing billions of people worldwide.
What does anarcho-transhumanism offer in way of action? How will your small group; that for all intents and purposes only exists on obscure internet forums, stand up to capitalist industrialism as it continues to lead the way to apocalypse?
What use is it advocating for egalitarian reform when all the science shows us we've gone far past the point of no return and no amount of reform is going to save us now? If we don't abolish industrialism, our children won't have a planet left. Reforming industrialism at this point is like trying to reform capitalism. It's too late. Mass-scale industry is a brutal dead end. Most of the technologies anarcho-transhumanists envision require mass-scale industry.
Not necessarily essential to transhumanism, nor is any 'perpetual' ground well-travelled. The rhetoric of capitalism may try to conflate perpetual increases in returns on investment with technoprogressivism, but that doesn't quite make it so.
I honestly don't understand this. I've read a lot of antranshumanist lit and it's very apparent that the goal is to evolve humanity through technology. That means the technology needs to keep advacing. I don't like when people use such vague definitions of their ideologies so that discussion about goals becomes impossible. Praxis is all that matters. Words are cheap.
Pop wrote
I think that's a bit outside the scope of conversation.
For (green) anarchists, this is the conversation (among other things), so to assume that it isn't is to ignore the critique being made in the first place
Epicalyx wrote
ableism:
That's crazy.
BlackFlagged wrote
I think most of them would support altering their children's genes to give them desirable traits, yeah. But they'd argue there's nothing wrong with this form of eugenics as long as it's voluntary.
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ziq_TNG wrote
I'd be more worried about the non-GMO children than those who are modified to be enhanced. They're the ones who would likely suffer... And at some point everyone would feel pressured into adjusting their kids traits and abilities to keep up with the rest of society.
..So I don't think it can truly be 'voluntary' any more than capitalism is voluntary.
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________deleted wrote
Yes. So let's not impede progress by clinging to impossible political purity.
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________deleted wrote
Everyone saying that anarcho-transhumanism is bad because it's not 100% voluntary when nothing is 100%.
________deleted wrote
How would they suffer?
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________deleted wrote
Why would we need to compete with each other under communism?
And they can always have their DNA recoded after the fact. No reason it needs to be restricted to the unborn.
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________deleted wrote
As far as I understand, anarcho-transhumanism would only exist if communism existed. So within this scenario being presented, yes.
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________deleted wrote
You could say the same about all communists.
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________deleted wrote (edited )
But those wouldn't be anarcho-transhumanists, they'd be capitalist-imperialists. A big reason to support anarcho-transhumanism is to provide a non-oppressive alternative to capitalist-imperialist-transhumanism.
[deleted] wrote (edited )
________deleted wrote
If a political theory doesn't evolve with the times, it will be left behind.
watermelon OP wrote (edited )
Honestly, that sounds a lot like what would happen to people too poor to afford gene alteration.
________deleted wrote
Then you should support communist / anarchist transhumanism so that everyone gets access to the technology.
watermelon OP wrote
everyone gets access to the technology
That would only be possible in a world with unlimited resources.
________deleted wrote
Communism and post-scarcity go hand in hand, so that's not really an issue. There's more than enough for everyone, but capitalists keep it restricted to only the wealthy.
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________deleted wrote
I mean, I didn't decide what 'anarcho-transhumanism' is, it's been pre-defined as a communist, hierarchy-less ideology.
Pop wrote
I think part of what's being questioned is whether the definition is even coherent in the first place
like how 'anarcho'-capitalism is also incoherent
since it's not clear that technology of this kind is compatible with anarchy
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________deleted wrote (edited )
You just disproved your own point. If us communists can own iphones under capitalism and still be communists, then anarcho-transhumanists can modify themselves under capitalist-transhumanism and still be anarcho-transhumanists. As long as you support the equal distribution of technology, then you still qualify as an anarcho-transhumanist. Capitalism giving you more than others because you were born middle class in the West doesn't change that.
[deleted] wrote (edited )
________deleted wrote
You're an anarchist in a non-anarchist society. So I guess you're not really an anarchist...
ziq_TNG wrote
They'd be rendered an inferior species and face the repercussions of that all their lives.
________deleted wrote
What repurcussions? Getting picked last for baseball? If that's really a big deal then just outlaw discrimination. But there are plenty of kids getting picked last for baseball already, this would mean less of us would suffer that shame. It brings more of us into equal footing and paves the road to true equality. Think about it.
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BlackFlagged wrote
Genetically modified supercops... ohboy.
ziq_TNG wrote
Widening the gap between the weak and the powerful even further isn't going to create equality. And 'outlawing' discrimination is easier said than done. Social dynamics are a lot more complicated than that.
christobal wrote
implying children can even consent to being born in the first place.
BlackFlagged wrote
I meant voluntary as in no one forces the parents to alter the genes before/during/after impregnation.
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________deleted wrote (edited )
You could say the same thing about us giving birth at all. The kids didn't choose to be born, so what right do we have to create any new life..?
See, if you get this pedantic, you can label anything 'involuntary', even down to the formation of the universe way back when.
[deleted] wrote (edited )
________deleted wrote (edited )
So literally:
progress is bad, we should stay the same forever and never evolve or strive to reach new heights
MrPotatoeHead wrote
I think the most viable way to alter genes is at the zygote stage, where it's not excessively complex and fewer errors can be made. That means consent is given solely by the parent(s).
alqm wrote (edited )
I think you're not picturing transhumanism outside of the capitalist spectrum. If I build something to make my body stronger, my only obligation would be to publish everything I learned, so anyone interested could try and improve. I'm not going to stop studying the subject I have curiosity for because someone wants to put limits on how much we can know. That's crazy.
In the world most of us envision, you wouldn't see ads telling people they should have this immediately 'because it's cool and we ship it ready to use'. No one is selling products. All I did was to make the 'raw' data public, and I wrote a wiki to get them started. No companies would exist, perhaps only independent media organized by volunteers in many areas of the world to broadcast information. They wouldn't promote anything. There's no money to buy them. There's no leader to persuade them. No products to have desire for.