[-empyre-] Ontological equality

The problem with the grand courage of Nietzschean speculations on the ontological equality of possible variations in the human race, is that the inequality on our highly diverse planet is already dangerously great, shows no sign of lessening, and looks indeed ready to be pushed to new levels of violence as the planet heats up and all kinds of new resource wars are added to the ones being fought out right now in the Middle East and Central Asia. The hope that further instrumentalization of life through cloning is going to give the highly privileged people who do it some magical chance to bring their ontology of equality up to date sounds pretty far fetched, on the face of it.

But maybe I don't understand, in which case, I would be happy to be set straight. Steve, your message is short and somewhat cryptic, more explaining always makes a discussion more interesting.

Btw, the ethics of citizenship in the US has led precisely to a professionalization of violence, it's called a mercenary army. It's considered unethical to command a citizen to go to war, perfectly ethical to pay them for it, and no questions asked about pushing their backs against the economic wall so they'll accept the job and the payment. If they're so-called Third Country Nationals, even better, they can be paid 50 cents an hour to get bombed at the wheel of a Haliburton truck. A clone or a robot would be an obvious choice for such jobs in the future, the robots for it are being built right now. All of this really existing ontological inequality is very clear in the best film I have seen about the invasion of Iraq, called The War Tapes. I dunno if Ryan had that whole situation in mind, he may have been thinking of some other mess out there.

best, Brian

sdv@krokodile.co.uk wrote: 
Ryan

There are a number of issues related to the way in which you
assume that my original paragraph is about ethics. Whereas it's intended to argue that the concept of equality is better understood ontologically. And that further it is deeply conservative to consider that 'equality and emancipation' are necessarily related to human beings.

"Ethics is the professionalization of violence." What can this possibly mean ? Are you arguing that Ventnor and other scientists were working within an ethical schema that contain such a meaning, that the critique of their ethic requires such a statement ? Well that's wrong. Ventnor certainly appears to function within an ethical system, and arguably it's one founded on some notion of compassion and scientific knowledge and that it can be critiqued. But if you do not do so from a ground founded on equality then rather obviously it will be a useless critique. However I agree with you that it is 'disturbing' to witness and participate in such discussions but it's primarily disturbing because because of the need people have to maintain a feintly ludicrous notion of human importance and supremacy.

If you wish to think further on ethics then better to think more in terms of Neitzsche: "...as the expression of a conservative will to breed the same species, with the imperative: 'All variation is to be prevented; only the enjoyment of the species must remain'".

Better by far to consider what rights and constraints must be developed and imposed on the human, under the current level of responsibility and accountability the species now has.

steve






Equality is an ontological notion
Ryan Griffis wrote:

On Oct 7, 2007, at 9:00 PM, empyre-request@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au wrote:

There is no problem with the below as long as the new forms of life have
the same rights as earlier and subsequent versions. Just as recent
govenment thinktank studies have accepted that intelligent machines will
require the same citizenship rights as human beings, similarly
'artificial life' will require the same rights as normally evolved life,
starting with notions of equality and emancipation.


Sure, but think about this for more than a second... which human beings? Whose rights are to be comparatively used here?
The model that Venter represents has been party to the denial of rights to already existing beings across the world. That's why capital wants novel beings... to give them the rights it has denied those already alive? Just tell the nanobots to get in line... behind the poor, domesticated animals and anything living over a source of fuel.
It's totally disturbing to witness the speculative discussions of "ethics" regarding these developments, personally. Ethics is the professionalization of violence. The development of synthetic genomics is a political reality that doesn't care about theological and philosophical "concerns" regarding what "humanity" is, anymore than capital cares about that same "humanity" it regularly considers expendable.
In all honesty, these developments may offer a hope for dealing with the energy/climate crisis... but i don't, for a second, imagine it to be liberatory to the oppressed. At best (without the kinds of regulatory work called for by the ETC Group), it might allow for the struggle against oppression to continue under ever more brutal conditions.
The iDC list recently had a discussion about the suicides by Indian farmers and copyright law being shaped in Iraq that is creating similar conditions as it has in India - good for Monsanto, bad for farmers (to simplify). If we want to look to the "rights" that speculative capitalists/technofuturists like Venter assign to "humans", there's a worrying example.
On another, less ranting note, in terms of this discussion, i'd recommend Jackie Steven's "Symbolic Matter: DNA and Other Linguistic Stuff"
http://www.jacquelinestevens.org/articlesessays.html
Lots of stuff by Richard Lewontin
http://www.gene-watch.org/genewatch/articles/16-4lewontin.html
(also have enjoyed Judith's perspectives here! - and assuming that everyone took note of Eugene's excellent 2 books on genomics/ bioinformatics)
best,
ryan
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre







_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre




This archive was generated by a fusion of Pipermail 0.09 (Mailman edition) and MHonArc 2.6.8.