[lbo-talk] Race to Nowhere... && Obama got Osama

Somebody Somebody philos_case at yahoo.com
Fri May 6 00:55:54 PDT 2011


Ravi: It seems that your quest is immortality and your belief is that the Western life-style (in stark terms: 5% of world population consuming 30% of the world’s resources, where 50% of all food produced is thrown into the trash) is what is going to bring about this immortality. Let us ignore: (a) that not everybody might share your Groundhog Day fancy (I for one am feeling pretty done by this point in my life), (b) there is some confusion on how much shorter was hunter-gatherer life especially when you filter out death due to violence (as we should for the purpose of this discussion, since technology, in the context of conflict, only increases violent death). Ignoring these, the very fact that at least some dirt poor third world residents make it to the age of 80 (“counterfactual”) should make it clear that the “God awful Western life-style” is not a *necessary* ingredient of a long life.

Somebody: Good heavens, of course *some* dirt poor third world residents make it to 80. The whole point is that they achieve this age at a much lower rate than people living in more industrialized nations. Come on Ravi, you know this. You just don't like the idea of more people living like Japanese and Americans for aesthetic reasons.

I'm not impressed by your making fun of the idea of extending the duration of healthy lifespan. In that, you're in good company. Many good religious people consider it unspeakable that mankind should play God and seek to improve its genetic destiny. It makes me sad that the few people who are forward thinking enough to reject this point of view are disproportionately of the libertarian inclination. The left should be stalwartly on the side of improving the human condition. It used to be.

Listen, you may want to suffer and die in your seventies, but the whole point is that with improved technology this will be a *choice* rather than a necessity foisted upon us. The ultimate freedom from necessity will be the extension of healthy human life span. Now if socialists want to oppose this, great. They're already in the dustbin of history, anyway. It's a shame, since they did so much to improve the health, education, and living standards of hundreds of millions of people in Eurasia in the 20th century. Unfortunately, their ideological descendents have become anti-industrial eco-fanatics who devalue human life. I guess that's because they've lost faith in the idea that communism can expand the means of production and have made a virtue out of this necessity.



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