Sunday, April 28, 2013

DEAR TRANSHUMANISTS: Respecting Seattle's animal uprising


BTC - This is a letter sent to columnist Monica Guzman on The future of credentials: Will degrees and resumes make room for the badge

Monica,  
I occasionally read your column in The Seattle Times. 
I’ve picked up a few things about your publisher’s tolerance in giving you a community marketplace microphone. One is the Times isn’t essentially opposed to Transhumanism but accepts there is a segment of the local population who hold this value or belief system.  You’re not as much anti-privacy as much as you are an information brokerage proponent, representative of a segment of their local readership. 
Transhumanists can be misunderstood but they aren’t exactly innocents either.  Their cultural attache is one of ideological condescension and policy charlatanism.  What can you do if you believe the biotech everyone was born with becomes some sort of an inferior insult to an engineered ideal?  
My brand of values of privacy, patriotism and earthy faith are not translated here. I’m not interested in rescuing the soul of Seattle from their corruptions, their compromises and their insecurities. Constitutional freedoms and human rights are not something I believe they would really miss very much because most of them are okay with being mistaken as Canadian or racists or racist Canadians who "know what's best for everyone".
So when you promote the Cub Scout leaders notion of trinkety digital badge props to reinforce advantage in an employer’s market, I’m going to let you fall into that waterless pool. When you upsell new entertainment consoles that micromonitor every whit of action in your body, every single thing you say and who you interact with in order to sell it to governments, I’m not going to stand in the way of the coming backlash. 
If one survives the transformation of an animal uprising, they will be a new being.  They will have a new knowledge base to use and operate technology without subverting their integrity.  
Transhumanists don’t have all the answers, because they haven’t integrated or accepted the inferior as part of human greatness. That is why I will watch them self mutilate, hand over all their information power to someone else with a bigger database and demure ways to treat non-tech integrated as a lower lifeforms. 
If you’re close to an evolution its not ever going to be the one you can control.  That is how revolution works.  
If you’re friends ask, you have heard from me.   

Sheila Dean
Thanks GameRant.  Just, thanks.

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