In looking back over my posting history here on Existence is Wonderful, it is very interesting to see how my own attitudes have shifted over time. There are still some fundamental principles I adhere to: e.g., "Life is a good thing", and "All different kinds of people are valuable", but lately I've been coming to terms with some of the "affiliation uneasiness" that has been bothering me in the background throughout my public writing endeavors so far.
As of now, I'm still OK with using the term "transhumanism" to describe some of my take on technosocial development (EDIT: Not anymore, not as of 2008. Transhumanism is not a term I identify with these days). I do believe that radical longevity is a great goal (and one that I will continue to advocate fiercely for). I find talking about robots and cyborgs, etc., to be fascinating and a lot of fun. I'm all for continuing the human process of shaping our environment (with sustainability in mind) to suit our needs and creative energies, and for enabling consensual "augmentation" and modification without regard for unexamined, parochial notions of what is "natural".
But here's the thing: I am massively social-libertarian when it comes to the issue of morphological freedom -- one of the things that strikes me as tremendously important in any movement that wants to "push" for positive outcomes in society involving the individual's rights to control his/her own form and function is the notion that we have to be radically tolerant of people who choose forms and functions that we ourselves would not. Which includes forms and functions that we (as in, any one of us) might even find bizarre or aesthetically displeasing.
I'm finding myself increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of being associated with people who can't understand how power relationships work, and who think that disability activism is "extremism" despite the wealth of good, cogent disability literature out there (which has much in common with transhumanist-themed morphological freedom literature).
Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean I'm getting annoyed at "transhumanists", per se -- I in fact think that many emerging mainstream attitudes are quite akin to early eugenic attitudes (e.g., the drive toward prenatal testing causing a shift away from trying to help keep all kinds of children alive once they are born), and that in the mainstream, these attitudes are probably more pernicious and powerful due to being examined less frequently and less consciously than in culturally critical and speculative movements.
I guess I'm just getting annoyed with how so much has been written on the nature of power dynamics, on the real reasons behind the need for disability activism (e.g., so that vulnerable populations are not continually depersonalized, and so that more people understand the nature of interdependence in society), and on similar stuff, but how some people still don't seem to be able to get past the status quo. I want to help shape a future that is truly "better" than the present, as opposed to just an extreme, exaggerated version of current fashion.
I don't know if this is even possible, given the complexity of the tasks at hand, but I do get the sense that a better future (one in which people enjoy increased liberty, tolerance, and safety from environmental and other risks) isn't going to happen through assuming too much about what forms and functionalities are "acceptable" for the future to contain.
13 comments:
An enormous amount of transhumanist opinion is essentially reaction.
People are proposing their view as a response to what they view as mistakes in prior positions.
As such, many people's opinions and philosophy take stances for no better reason than simply not having considered a subject. Not having any pre-existing opinion to react to.
The prominence of such ideas as pre-natal testing against genetic 'disorders' or even gender and physical characteristics, is often because these opinions are formed in a near vacuum. The person thinks about the subject, considers what factors occur to them, and either gravitates to the most appropriate cliche/analogy, or forms a new opinion.
In more developed arenas, where there are previous opinions to/against, one is compelled to react in some way to each.
I think (perhaps hope is a better word), that many of the more stunning opinions I know people hold about government, or mental healthcare, and other areas where it's easy to unknowingly have an opinion that would condemn us to monoculture moving forward, and slavery to all preexisting persons, hold that opinion because they've formed that opinion without sufficient other positions to react to.
To move to political opinions, where I've spent more time, I often encounter people who have opinions that simply do not include the possibility of a situation without governmental control. There is no need to have arguments against such a possibility because they've never encountered a position of that kind. No reaction is needed. So their opinions often seem to me to contain glaring autocratic leanings, through no malice of their own.
Transhumanists are particularly prone to this, given the projective nature of their opinions in the first place. They're used to putting their opinions in new contexts in the abstract, and so do so with less fear, without realizing that their opinions lack context, or uncaring that they do, having seen the success of their opinions 'in reaction to' previous opinions elsewhere.
outlawpoet said:
An enormous amount of transhumanist opinion is essentially reaction.
People are proposing their view as a response to what they view as mistakes in prior positions.
Thank you. That actually explains a lot of what I've been seeing, I think -- people will have a sense of what the "traditional" or "reactionary" argument is, and then decide that the "progressive" perspective must therefore represent a deviation from that. But again, I don't think this is a "transhumanist" thing so much as a "people who tend to frequent 'intellectual' discussions" thing.
I admit I'm not all that familiar with disability-activism, but it seems it could conflict with your radical social-libertarianism. Part of the lifestyle I want to lead may include things that discriminate against the powerless.
Are you opposed to voluntary eugenics? I'm in the odd position of being mildly pro-life in that I don't deny it's murder, yet I can't bring myself to give a damn about it, even in comparison to my not being allowed to eat trans-fats if I were to visit New York. Chip Smith of the Hoover Hog is in a somewhat similar position.
outlawpoet, I am interested in ideas regarding functional anarchism, but I find myself in agreement with Randall Holcombe's argument that government is inevitable. Unfortunately, I also find Mencius Moldbug's point about limited government being impossible also persuasive. The one feasible glimmer of hope is Patri Friedman's ideas regarding dynamic geography, which will make societies of all sorts more feasible.
TGGP said:
I admit I'm not all that familiar with disability-activism, but it seems it could conflict with your radical social-libertarianism.
I'm not really sure how, at least not when it comes to my preferred "flavor" of disability activism.
Mainly I'm concerned with promoting maximum morphological freedom, respect, and bodily autonomy for individuals -- in this sense, I see transhumanism and disability activism as part of the same spectrum, since both tend to question the notion of a purely "natural" form that all must adhere to in order to be truly "human", or truly "persons".
The way I see it, if someone who wants to have green skin and an implant that allows them to see infrared can't understand (for instance) why someone on the autistic spectrum wouldn't want to be "cured", then they're really missing the logic boat.
There are some people who call themselves "disability activists" who base their arguments on bizarre concepts like "human exceptionalism"), and who might not care a lick about morphological liberty, but I'm under no obligation to base my arguments on the same principles that those folks do.
Knowing what someone advocates doesn't necessarily tell you why they advocate it, and one persistent bugbear for me since I started writing publicly has been that of making sure to attach enough qualifiers and explanations to my writings on disability, etc., so that it's positively obvious I am not coming from a simplistic or reactionary mindset.
Part of the lifestyle I want to lead may include things that discriminate against the powerless.
In what sense? I'm curious.
Are you opposed to voluntary eugenics?
I'm assuming you mean something like "liberal eugenics" here (in which people are allowed to choose the attributes of their future children, etc.) as opposed to government-mandated eugenics programs.
If that's the case, then I would say that I am suspicious of the idea that we could have a large-scale Designer Baby program at this point in time without it being heavily influenced by social pressures and prejudices. In short, it would be "voluntary" in name only, but coercive in practice. And I am definitely opposed to coercion.
An example of the kind of coercion I'm particularly concerned about is something like this: imagine if prospective parents were told, "We're going to stop making left-handed scissors because we've determined that the additional cost of accommodating lefties that way could better be used to enhance the lives of righties. If you fail to test for left-handedness and end up with a left-handed child, that child is going to be your liability. Society shouldn't be expected to bend over backwards to accommodate left-handed people, after all."
So while I probably wouldn't try to enact laws banning people from using medical technologies that would allow them to select the characteristics of their offspring, I will oppose any and all attempts to either:
(a) Make certain tests or selection criteria "mandatory" (which would effectively make the existence of certain kinds of persons illegal, or at least very fraught, since such persons and their families would likely be maligned as "irresponsible" and treated accordingly in the social environment),
or
(b) Prevent those perceived as "genetically suboptimal" from having children in the first place.
I'm in the odd position of being mildly pro-life in that I don't deny it's murder, yet I can't bring myself to give a damn about it, even in comparison to my not being allowed to eat trans-fats if I were to visit New York.
I'm pro-choice and I believe that killing a fetus is killing a fetus. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Basically, my pro-choice position comes down to the fact that I don't believe anyone should be forced by an outside agent (whether that be the government, or their family, etc.) to bring a pregnancy to term.
I might not like, or agree with, some of the reasons that people have abortions, but I don't think people who want abortions should have to clear their reasoning with me (or anyone else) in order to get one.
If abortion is legal for any reason, it needs to be legal for all reasons, however unsavory or unpalatable those reasons might be. Because the moment you start introducing "conditions" on whether or not a person can abort, you run the risk of creating bureaucracies and opportunities for "stalling" that can be exploited by those who might put their own fundamentalist politics above the life or health of the woman.
We're going to stop making left-handed scissors because we've determined that the additional cost of accommodating lefties that way could better be used to enhance the lives of righties.
Who's "we"? Left-handed scissors don't exist because the Central Planning Board decided to make lefties' lives easier, they exist because people will buy them. What would you propose doing if the Leftorium shuts down because it can no longer make a profit?
(re-posted due to confusing wording in my first attempt)
nickptar said:
Who's "we"? Left-handed scissors don't exist because the Central Planning Board decided to make lefties' lives easier, they exist because people will buy them. What would you propose doing if the Leftorium shuts down because it can no longer make a profit?
Good point. I was trying to employ a somewhat "neutral" example of a human variation that wouldn't prompt an off-topic rantwar over whether that variation ought to be "acceptable" or not. But it looks like I didn't quite succeed in my execution, and I'm also guilty as charged of using the "generic, undefined 'we'" out of sheer laziness. :P
Here's a shot at explaining further.
I'm not so much talking about who would physically supply left-handed scissors as I am talking about the factors that tend to result in something being viewed as a difference versus a tragedy.
Part of the reason left-handedness is generally considered a neutral variation rather than a pathology is because some people decided to start making devices to accommodate lefties.
If those devices did not exist now, we might very well have people insisting that left-handedness was a terrible tragedy, simply because those folks would have difficulty imagining how effective a relatively simple set of accommodations might be.
Obviously there isn't going to be much of a push now to eliminate left-handedness -- lefties are almost transparently accommodated nowadays. And I doubt people are going to get too worked up over things like nearsightedness -- most people who want a child would probably prefer to deal with glasses, contacts, and/or LASIK than with the trauma of abortion (being pro-choice doesn't mean you think abortion is fun).
But right now, there are other groups of people in society (such as autistics) that are often simply assumed to be "suffering" as a result of their intrinsic configuration rather than as a result of discrimination and inflexibility.
So basically, I'm trying to perpetuate the idea that the social elements of "suffering" should be drawing far more scrutiny than they are.
And I don't think I'll be satisfied that this scrutiny is actually happening until I start seeing more emphasis on stopping and preventing bullying than on preventing the existence of people that are "likely to be bullied".
Hopefully that made more sense, and wasn't too rambly.
Oh, and one more clarification: when I said, ...rather than as a result of discrimination and inflexibility., I meant "inflexibility" in the social/employment/educational sense. Just figured I'd make that clear so I didn't give the impression that I was talking about some kind of physical stiffness unique to autistics! :P
And I don't think I'll be satisfied that this scrutiny is actually happening until I start seeing more emphasis on stopping and preventing bullying than on preventing the existence of people that are "likely to be bullied".
Made sense to me. While stopping people who would be bullied from coming into existence would reduce bullying, it's an incredibly lazy and costly (in terms of diversity, flexibility, and other not-immediately-tangibles) solution compared to teaching people not to be assholes. I suppose it's hard for some people to imagine a social order different from what currently exists, so they can't imagine that autism or left-handedness could ever not be a terrible thing. Pfft.
In what sense? I'm curious.
Maybe I want to build a treehouse with a "No cripples allowed" sign on it, and laugh at the people who can't climb up. Once we start declaring certain ways of exercising our freedom are abuses of it than freedom becomes meaningless. You see this today with the people who say "Hate speech is not free speech". To be free means that you judge your actions yourself rather than some official arbiter of acceptability.
heavily influenced by social pressures and prejudices. In short, it would be "voluntary" in name only, but coercive in practice.
It seems to me that social pressures and prejudices will ALWAYS exist (unless people come around to your views which you may define as correct and without prejudice, but that doesn't seem likely). In that case what you are advocating sounds like "freedom tomorrow but never freedom today".
Now a personal question: are you really full-blown autistic or do you have Aspergers? I've been in schools for autistic children, and I wouldn't expect any of them ever to write as you do here. Autism also tends to have other physical disorders along with it. I am skeptical of the usefulness of the concept of "Asperger's" though (not surprisingly, I have a Szaszian view of psychiatry), and find it an unfalsifiable substitute for the previously used terms "nerdy" or "weird". It was once suggested to me that I might have it, but I never bothered to meet with the professional who might declare me as such, so I suppose I am still among the dreaded neurotypicals.
Walter Block is perhaps best known for writing a book called "Defending the Undefendable", and he has a paper on abortion and futurism you might find interesting called "Compromising the Uncompromisable".
TGGP: I'll address your comments on freedom and accountability later on, but I will answer this part now:
Now a personal question: are you really full-blown autistic or do you have Aspergers?
I'm not sure what you mean by "full-blown autistic". Are you asking what specific skills I do/don't have at this point in my life, or are you asking about what diagnostic category I've been put into by professionals?
I recommend reading this discussion of the original population of children identified by Leo Kanner in 1943 as "autistic" (in other words, the group of kids who basically set the "benchmark" for what it meant for a person to be autistic). A lot of people nowadays seem to have the misconception that in order to be "really autistic", you have to be (as the quote in the article I linked to phrases it), a "very non-verbal non-functional individual sitting in the corner banging their head". While some people identified as autistic nowadays may fit that description to some extent (or at some point in their life), it does not stand to suggest that the original definition of autism was determined on the basis of people fitting that description.
Certainly, words and their uses change over time, but neither the early autism studies, nor the present-day DSM-IV criteria, necessitate that a person be completely unable to communicate in any way, shape, or form, or that a person must have self-injurious behaviors, etc., in order to be autistic. The "official" criteria for Autistic Disorder doesn't even require a person to have a speech delay in order to be diagnosed -- "idiosyncratic" language is enough, or even just "lack of varied, spontaneous make-believe play or social imitative play appropriate to developmental level".
A lot of people don't know any of this -- they don't know the history of autism research, or even the criteria used to officially identify people -- they tend to just go by snippets of secondhand or third-hand information, or by media stereotypes (e.g., assuming all autistic people are just like "Rainman").
As far as categories go, my diagnosis has been recorded as PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified, which is sometimes called "atypical autism") and as Asperger's, though I don't know if one or the other takes precedence, or how the two can even officially coexist in someone's records. I got the PDD-NOS first, and the Asperger's second, so maybe the AS determination was an attempt to "specify" what had previously been "not otherwise specified". If I lived outside the USA, I'd probably have been identified with "Autistic Spectrum Disorder" or something like that, since different countries sometimes use slightly different terminology to refer to the same set of phenomena.
Still, I wrestled a long time with the question of whether it was "appropriate" to refer to myself as "autistic" under any circumstances, and eventually I decided that there was no reason not to -- plenty of other folks with an Asperger's DX (and parents of children so diagnosed) use the term "autistic" or "autistic spectrum", and I don't consider the term to imply anything bad or shameful that I'd somehow want to "distance" myself from being associated with.
I also don't buy the argument (made by some) that anyone who can communicate or advocate for themselves shouldn't call themselves "autistic" on the grounds that this somehow "dilutes" the word to the detriment of people with real problems. This argument is actually very dangerous and damaging to the numerous folks who, despite being able to talk or work, etc., do not have brains that work like neurotypical brains, and who would benefit tremendously from learning to understand how they are different and how to best develop their strengths and work around/address their weaknesses.
The story of the "Ugly Duckling" comes to mind here -- the protagonist (a swan) was miserable trying to live as a duck, and was basically considered a "defective duck", but once he learned he was a swan instead, his life made a lot more sense. Having information that can help someone (a) discover and use her strengths, and (b) identify others she can more readily relate to (who might have experience she can learn from as a result of dealing with issues similar to hers) can make a drastic positive difference in a person's life.
Additionally, despite superficially obvious differences between, say, a non-verbal autistic child, and a fairly communicative autistic adult (who might fit most people's idea of "high functioning", though I personally have some issues with "functioning" labels, since they are often based on single factors but used to describe an entire person), there are still some very strong commonalities between such persons.
For instance, if a nonverbal autistic child insists on hiding under a huge pile of blankets, a neurotypical caregiver might see this behaviour as random and bizarre, but another autistic person (regardless of their communicative prowess) would be more likely to understand that hiding under piles of blankets feels good.
And to invoke a real-life example, someone I know described to me a while back how her friend's minimally-verbal autistic daughter was refusing to get out of the car one morning at school. But when her mother handed her her backpack, the daughter got right out. This made perfect sense to me, because I have plenty of personal experience with the phenomenon of needing a particular environmental "trigger" to initiate a particular task. But not everyone would be able to relate to such a thing, and might just assume that the daughter was being stubborn or wanting to miss school.
This sort of thing is by no means a universal rule, but hopefully you get the idea. While I would never presume to speak for anyone else, regardless of their communicative or apparent "functional" ability, I do think there's some utility to acknowledging that autistics are, on average, better at understanding where other autistics are coming from than nonautistics are.
And, for the record, though I've invoked "diagnostic criteria" here and other medicalized language, I don't ultimately believe that autistics ought to be viewed through a medical lens (except, of course, when genuine health and medical problems exist -- "being autistic" is not a medical problem, but autistic people can be sick or injured or have allergies, just like anyone else). And autistics can experience anxiety, depression, and other issues that humans in general are prone to -- it's just that right now if you're autistic and dealing with one of these issues, it's often assumed that you have the issue because you're autistic, as opposed to because you're reacting appropriately to something going on in your life.
I've been in schools for autistic children, and I wouldn't expect any of them ever to write as you do here.
I think the key phrase there is that you wouldn't expect the autistic children you saw to write as I do. It's quite possible some of them have learned to write or communicate through some other means in the time since you knew them.
One thing to remember is that children aren't adults -- autism can result in developmental "unevenness" and delay, but it's not a developmental stasis. Just as you can't look at a neurotypical five-year-old and expect to be able to tell exactly how s/he will present as an adult, you can't look at an autistic five-year-old and expect to be able to tell exactly what skills s/he will or will not develop. Sometimes autistic kids don't learn to talk until they're in grade school or even later, and sometimes early speech will be lost, but writing ability will improve greatly over time (such as what happened to my friend Amanda).
There are plenty of autistics (who are, I might add, very different from one another in various ways) who can write quite fluently: Joel Smith, Amanda Baggs, Donna Williams, and Tito Mukhopadhyay are some examples that come to mind.
Of course, the existence of some literate autistics doesn't mean that all autistic people can or will learn to write fluently. But certainly some will. And some nonautistic people won't. Being autistic (or not) doesn't guarantee anything about an individual's potential for literacy. Statistics notwithstanding.
And as far as other skills (as in, things other than communication) go, most of us vary pretty widely in presentation as adults. Beware outgroup homogeneity bias.
Autism also tends to have other physical disorders along with it.
I know there are some genetic conditions and/or morphological variations that can make a person statistically more likely to be autistic, but this is by no means a hard and fast rule. Not really sure why this would be a relevant point here, though, since plenty of people who aren't autistic have physical issues as well.
TGGP said:
Maybe I want to build a treehouse with a "No cripples allowed" sign on it, and laugh at the people who can't climb up.
I can't tell if you're saying you actually want to do this (e.g., that you'd find it fun), or whether you're just coming up with the most egregious example of dickitude as you can. Doesn't really matter, I suppose.
I'm not interested in debating whether people should be "allowed" to say/do things such as you're describing -- very little of what I write here is about what laws ought or ought not to exist, but about the kinds of attitudes I see as constructive vs. those I see as destructive.
TGGP said:
Once we start declaring certain ways of exercising our freedom are abuses of it than freedom becomes meaningless. You see this today with the people who say "Hate speech is not free speech". To be free means that you judge your actions yourself rather than some official arbiter of acceptability.
I'm having trouble understanding what you mean here. I don't think that harmful or cruel actions are bad because they are "abuses of freedom", but rather, because of the effects they can have on people.
If something has what I perceive as being a negative effect, I am going to critique it, regardless of who else tolerates or doesn't tolerate it. That's part of free speech, too.
I know that no law against hate speech is going to somehow magically eliminate hate, so rather than going on about how this or that kind of speech needs to be "allowed", I'm more interested in helping to discourage attitudes and states of mind (fear, ignorance, cruelty, etc.) that lead people into hate.
Oh, and just for the record: I do not approve of hate speech, I think hate speech (while not being the root cause of hate) can perpetuate more hate, and my statement that outlawing hate speech would not eliminate hate is not intended to imply that I think hate speech is harmless. I most certainly don't think that. And I am not obligated to tolerate it, allow it on my own blog, or refrain from condemning people who choose to engage in it.
Just FYI.
TGGP said:
It seems to me that social pressures and prejudices will ALWAYS exist (unless people come around to your views which you may define as correct and without prejudice, but that doesn't seem likely). In that case what you are advocating sounds like "freedom tomorrow but never freedom today".
I'm sure that some social pressure will likely always exist. And that's not always a bad thing, either -- I mean, right now there's a ton of social pressure against the idea of slavery (at least in the USA) to the point where even if slavery were suddenly made legal, it wouldn't be very likely to come back into favor.
But I do hold hope that particular social pressures and prejudices will eventually go away, and I am going to try and do what I can to help this process along. That's what anyone who publicly advocates for anything is doing, really.
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