I’m not a humanist per se, but I do think that we as homo sapiens are alike enough that we can communicate with one another & intermingle. If we encountered a different species of intelligent beings, that might not be the case. I think you are mapping present-day pluralism onto future speciation events. And that’s part of the whole problem of posthumanism – it presupposes that something like us is going to be around in the future to enjoy or affirm whatever strange, technologically produced creatures come after us. More likely, all of our value systems – regardless of what culture you’re in – are going to be overcome or obliterated. I think Peter Watts is closer than anyone else to describing the future than any other science fiction author – it seems more probable to me that the beings that travel the stars will have no consciousness or sense of self. Seeing those beings as our children or our legacy is just anthropomorphism. I’d much rather work to preserve our little fishbowl of earthly humanity. As far as the point about wasting resources – I don’t mean that as a value judgment. I just mean that if you spend 100% of your time desperately trying to maintain a colony or a generation ship because no resources can be spent on things like sleep or leisure, then you can have no culture. As Bataille suggested, everything that is beautiful or sublime comes from joyfully squandering free energy from the sun.
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