The Transhuman Comedy

Though all tyrannies are ethically odious, there are gradations within the scale of ethical odiousness based on how far the tyrant and/or his apparatchiks reach into human relations. Any garden variety tyrant will interfere with the political sphere of human relations, in order to safeguard his position, his palace, his mistresses, and his Swiss bank account. But in some, the urge to be an alpha male, a silverback, gives way to the urge to treat his subjects, not as competitors in a status hierarchy, but as pawns to be maneuvered in instantiation of the tyrant's delusions. The suppression of truck and barter, of freedom of conscience, and of scientific inquiry represent a greater tyranny than ballot-box stuffing or indefinite detention of political opponents.

But most odious of all, at least until neuromic engineering will let the tyrant unlock the individual's mind, are those tyrants who interfere with the relationship between parent and child. From Pavlik Morozov to Luke 14:26, the greatest tyrants and aspiring tyrants have understood the most stubborn, mule-headed, anti-Year-Zero human institution is the family. The human tendency to privilege one's genetic relatives over all of the tyrant's other subjects is the stratum of granite underlying the sandstone of society; people will never sacrifice for non-kin at the rate and to the degree that they will sacrifice for the kin (at least until neuromic engineering, of course). Yet the worst kind of tyrant refuses to admit this; refuses to admit people are not blank slates on whom he can write his algorithm.

And for this reason, I condemn as the most vile and odious tyrant the official of the Swedish National Tax Board who issued an edict forbidding Michael and Karolina Tomaro from naming their daughter Metallica.

Labels: One Week Rule