U.S. Transhumanist Party General Discussion Thread for August 2017
The purpose of this post is to facilitate member comments pertaining to transhumanism and the U.S. Transhumanist Party, which might not specifically fit the subjects of any other post or article on the U.S. Transhumanist Party website. This is the place for members to offer suggestions or converse about any areas of emerging technologies and their political, moral, societal, cultural, and esthetic implications. The general discussion thread is also an ideal location to suggest or propose platform planks that may be considered for future platform voting.
The U.S. Transhumanist Party will endeavor to open one of these general comment threads per month. This comment thread pertains to the month of August 2017.
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6 thoughts on “U.S. Transhumanist Party General Discussion Thread for August 2017”
I would like to bring up my concern for the language and assumptions about the American people used in Article III Section XXVII calling for the end of the electoral college.
This section seems to make a very broad judgement about voters outside of metropolitan areas. The use of the phrase “poorly informed masses” doesn’t sit right with me, seeing as the same argument can be easily made about people who do not live in these so-called “culturally ossified” areas.
How can we be a political party based in the United States of America and completely ignore places that this writer deems generally intolerant. I sense a strong pang of big party partisanship in this plank and other planks (I’ll bring up later) that I do not believe belong in our platform.
The Judicial Watch has found that the big cities in California have more registered voters than citizens, cities which I believe the writer and supporters of this plank consider the bastion of modern thought and freedom compared to states that turned out to be red in this past election cycle–which were completely ignored by Mrs. Clinton.
Let’s talk about this.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-warns-california-clean-voter-registration-lists-face-federal-lawsuit/
Very eye-opening! While I agree that the partisan language of the platform plank is alienating to some readers, the Electoral College is a flawed system for a number of reasons.
Firstly, since it is the Electoral College that elects the president and not the people, and since the electors within said college may pledge to vote for the candidate that most congressional districts support but sometimes become “faithless electors” and vote for whomever they please for a four-digit fee, America’s presidential election may technically be considered undemocratic. Senator Bernie Sanders has described this phenomenon with the dramatic term “oligarchy,” but I would simply call this illiberal, if not aristocratic.
Secondly, given the fact that the Electoral College represents America’s voters by arbitrarily assigned districts rather than population, it is vulnerable to gerrymandering, the practice of re-drawing congressional districts to exclude specific populations and inhibit their power as voters.
As an example, imagine a state containing two congressional districts, one Democratic and one Republican. Every ten years, Congress redraws such districts, with the next redrawing set to occur in 2020. If the Republican district in this scenario is re-drawn as two separate districts with Republican-majority populations in both of them, these districts will have greater influence on the presidential election than the single Democratic district.
To this end, a number of plans exist to reform the Electoral College. These include the district plan, which would award extra electoral votes to the popular vote winners of each state, the proportional plan, which would disregard congressional districts entirely, the National Bonus Plan, which would give the national popular vote winner an extra 102 electoral votes, and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would simply replace the Electoral College with a popular vote.
I supported the platform plank you mentioned not because of its partisan language, which I find as tasteless as you do, but because the Electoral College is an undemocratic system that requires modification, if not outright removal, as expediently as possible. In a future voting period, it would be possible to vote on new verbiage for this platform plank, which I would eagerly support.
I understand the concern and point of view you both hold regarding ‘poorly informed masses’. I think there is indeed improvement to be made in the wording. However, as I interpret the text it goes more towards the historical reasoning, in a time when far less people were actually educated than now, rather than being a stab at a particular geographical demographic.
We welcome your suggestions regarding edits of planks which do not inherently change the meaning of the original plank.
Also, thank you both for your scrutiny, it is very important that people keep tabs on such things, and ensure that the U.S. Transhumanist Party maintains, and improves the standard of integrity, and fairness.
Martin van der Kroon
Director of Recruitment for the U.S. Transhumanist Party
I have some thoughts concerning the support for legalization of recreational drug use. Specifically the age restriction of use.
Article III, section XIV states that “The United States Transhumanist Party supports an end to the costly drug war, which is often an infringement upon the lives and liberties of innocent citizens (…) The United States Transhumanist Party supports legalization of mild recreational drugs such as marijuana.”
Furthermore Based on Section XLIX “The United States Transhumanist Party supports efforts to increase autonomy of individuals to decide over their own bodies and holds that individuals should have the legal right to undertake procedures including gender reassignment, hysterectomies, vasectomies, technological augmentation, cosmetic alterations, genetic enhancements, and physical supplementation at or after the age of 18 years, as long as this does not create health hazards or threats to other individuals.”
We want people to have the right to choose what to do with their own body. But at the same time we don’t want to put ourself in serious risk if only recreation and not enhancement is involved. We have currently set a legal age restriction at 18 years old. I haven’t found any other statement of this in the constitution so I would guess the legalization of recreational drugs stated above could be argued falls under the same age restriction.
Restricting youth from taking drugs makes sense. We don’t want their braindevelopment to be disrupted or hindered by the use of narcotics or nootropics while the brain is still in development. Including recreational drugs. A restriction of youth druguse would also mean we restrict the access to drugs while youths rewardcenters are hyper active and self control center is still under developed. This would also limit the risk for developing addiction.
I would argue for the age to be set to 25 instead of 18. The cutoff point to adulthood and our our 18 year old age restriction is mostly culturally constructed as stated by Jennifer Lynn Tanner and Jeffary Jensen Arnett in their book.
http://www.jeffreyarnett.com/arnett2009theemergenceofmergingadulthood.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3621648/
Neuropsyciatric study from 2013 arguing against 18 beeing the adult cut of point in brain development.
Study concluding “The development and maturation of the prefrontal cortex occurs primarily during adolescence and is fully accomplished at the age of 25 years. The development of the prefrontal cortex is very important for complex behavioral performance, as this region of the brain helps accomplish executive brain functions.”
“For instance, adolescents are more vulnerable to nicotine, alcohol, and other drug addictions because the limbic brain regions that govern impulse and motivation are not yet fully developed”
Mental health daily article questioning when we are fully developed. And stating that the scientific consensus for the adult cut off point is between 25 year old.
http://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/02/18/at-what-age-is-the-brain-fully-developed/
In Article III Section II, why is Anti-fa or Black Lives Matter not included? Both of these groups have proven “to segregate individuals on the basis of national origin, race, or ethnicity”.
I do not believe the U.S. Transhumanist Party should ignore these groups on the alt-left, who commit violence against those who practice their free speech. Black Lives Matter–all the way down to its name is a racist group and is a part of identity politics, the same as the groups listed in this section. We must not allow ourselves to fall into the trap of the lies of the dying legacy media and forge forward to more open-source media that does not rely on monetary assistance from existing PACs of the Democratic and Republican parties. It is these media outlets that are striving to divide this country through false pretenses in order to break down any true liberating movement.
If we are truly going to be a political party that focuses on future tech and all the societal implications of the coming singularity, we must recognize that we must make our own minds about what is going on in our country culturally, and not mimic what John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, CNN or Fox News about what they deem as the truth.
Hello Scott,
Thank you for your suggestion. You make a valid point that we could include other groups, or perhaps remove the current, and instead replace it with more general terminology, such as; groups discriminating based on race, ethnicity, and making claims of superiority or advocate for segregation or division based on race or ethnicity.
I agree in part with your last paragraph. I think we should strive for a diverse palette of media sources including mainstream media sources. The mainstream media might have certain agendas, but that doesn’t mean it is necessarily untrue, more likely only highlighting a particular point, which is still valuable to be informed about. Does that make sense? What are your thoughts?