X-Message-Number: 8718
Date: Wed, 05 Nov 1997 07:20:18 -0800
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: Collectivism and Transhumanity

Will Ware writes,

>What the hell is this??
>
>  Is any individual so important to society that we should 
>  tolerate attempts to lengthen their existence...
>
>When Richard Nicholson says "we", it sounds like he wants to assemble
>an angry mob, complete with torches and pitchforks. Why should
>Nicholson or his mob have any say about anybody's access to medical
>care? Mob rule has had a consistently bad record throughout the
>twentieth century, and now Nicholson wants to use it as the forum
>for deciding complex questions of medical policy.

I agree with Will's comment, of course, but being a commonwealth ex-patriot
I can explain that collectivist reporting is actually the norm rather than
the exception there. Nicholson's comments are cast in a form intended to 
appeal to a beast known in commonwealth circles as the source of 
all political will and probity, "The Mums and Dads". Commonwealth
broadcast journalists are the loyal agents of this beast, and, whether or
not Nicholson is actually as foolish as he appears to us, he would certainly 
invite pillory by expressing a rational view. It is also likely that whichever
interviewees expressed a rational view on the research left their comments
in the editor's dustbin.

What do "the mums and dads" want? The closest american concept is "family
values", but that's not a literal translation. "The mums and dads" are active,
vocal agents of mediocrity in every form, regarding as frankensteinian any
significant new technology or convenience. Their memory is short but 
their reach, in the commonwealth, is long. It is not absolute, however, 
and happily does not seem to much hamper the biological research at which 
many commonwealth labs seem to excel. 

Comments such as Nicholson's should be expected with every advance that
improves "our" chances of transhumanity. 

Peter Merel.

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