MEMIUS

By Max O'Connor  [Editor: This article is reprinted from Extropy  #4 - Summer Issue, 1989  . Extropy was published by The Extropy Institute]   A central extropian value is the love of life and opposition to death. Death is seen as an enemy that destroys personality, value, information (in the brain), and all possibility of further growth in personal knowledge, wisdom, power, and experience. This is very clear to me and fellow immortalists, yet most people go to great lengths to find arguments that show death to be good, or at least unobjectionable. I have come across a variety of these arguments, and the purpose of this article is to refute them. Though the discussion should really include reasons to find the prospect of immortality thrilling, that will have to wait for another time. Death and the relief of pain Death is one of the worst possible things that could happen to you. Perhaps we can imagine fantasy situations that we might consider worse than death. For in...

  by Tom W. Bell[Editor: This article is reprinted from Extropy #7, WINTER/SPRING 1991. Extropy was published by The Extropy Institute] The recent revolutions that have swept through Central and Eastern Europe have delivered a decisive blow to socialist ideology. State ownership has been tested and discarded. Calls for privatization ring loudly, heralding the advent of a freer and more prosperous era. However, the dawn of this new age reveals a pressing question: 'Privatize what?'   Almost everyone in these newly liberated countries agrees that farms, steel mills, shipyards, and other manufacturing industries should be privatized. Some advocate for further privatization, even extending it to industries that are commonly state-owned in the West, such as railways, television, and radio. A courageous few, influenced by long-outlawed libertarian authors, suggest an unprecedented shift towards privatizing schools, postal services, and social security.   We should pos...