ziq_TNG

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.

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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

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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ziq_TNG wrote (edited )

Cannabis is illegal as far as the federal government is concerned.

California, Nevada, Oregon, Alaska, Washington and Colorado voted to legalize it, which means the local and state police won't arrest growers.

However, the federal police agencies (FBI, ATF, etc) can arrest anyone involved with cannabis if they want to. It all depends on the person currently giving them their orders - in this case attorney general Jeff Sessions. He insists that cannabis is illegal everywhere in America. “Good people don’t smoke marijuana,” he said in 2016. Sessions has been on a lifelong crusade against weed, and considers it the root of society’s ills.

Sessions just introduced new guidance on marijuana that makes it easier for prosecutors to arrest people using federal laws in states where cannabis was legalized. He wants prosecutors to ignore state law.

“It is the mission of the Department of Justice to enforce the laws of the United States, and the previous issuance of guidance undermines the rule of law,” he said in a statement. In his memo to United States attorneys, he called the earlier policy “unnecessary” and pointed to federal laws that “reflect Congress’s determination that marijuana is a dangerous drug and that marijuana activity is a serious crime.”

Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado threatened to retaliate against Sessions by holding up Justice Department appointments that require Senate approval. Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor of California, vowed to encourage cooperation among states that have legalized marijuana. “This brings states together around issues of freedom, individual liberty, states’ rights,” he said in an interview, “all of the principles that transcend red and blue.”

Banks say they will not offer any new loans to landowners whose properties have a pre-existing lease with a marijuana business. They've told commercial loan clients they’ll have to either evict the marijuana business or refinance their loan elsewhere because cannabis is illegal under federal law.

The banks won't take the risk because the property is theoretically subject to federal drug-seizure laws. Meaning they could lose their whole property if the government decides to crack down.

Without access to banking services, weed businesses are forced to do everything with cash, including driving hundreds of thousands of dollars (in 20 dollar bills) to the IRS to pay their tax bills. Which is an extremely dangerous thing to do because they could get robbed or worse.

However there is good news:

https://www.thecannabist.co/2018/01/31/california-marijuana-bank-taxpayer-backed/97917/

California is interested in starting its own bank to bypass national banks that fear the federal government. It'll take a year for them to complete the study to decide if it will go forward.

Growers say they live constantly with shifting legal terrain, losing their bank accounts and lines of credit and never knowing how vulnerable they may be to losing their business or being federally prosecuted. All of this adds up to making the weed business very high risk.

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ziq_TNG wrote (edited )

Yeah, sounds like those people just assume anprims are collectivists because ancoms are. Anprims don't expect any kind of anti-tech revolution. They believe the planet is dying because of industry, but they don't have any plans to destroy industrialism. They're realists. They know they have no way to change things. They just live in the woods (or dream of doing so) and wait for industrialism to inevitably destroy civilization (and the planet).

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ziq_TNG wrote (edited )

Since you specifically mentioned 'post-civilization', that's a lot different than anarcho-primitivism. Postciv anarchists don't reject all technology, instead we weigh the benefits the technology provides us against the harm it does to the world and keep the things that make the world a better place.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PostCiv/comments/56qwlj/transhumanism_has_nothing_to_do_with_postciv/ is worth a read if you want to know more about postciv anarchism and how it approaches different technologies.

Die-hard anarcho primitivists would likely reject surgery and HRT if they actually lived a primitive lifestyle (which few do). I've seen trans primitivists that will only use herbal alternatives to HRT (which don't work nearly as well). But if you need surgery and drugs, anarcho-primitivism isn't for you. There are plenty of other anticiv persuasions that aren't so dogmatic and rigid when it comes to industrial tech.

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