A Home For Our Hopes

by Tom W. Bell

Abstract

Hope for the future plays an important role in Extropian thought. In order to protect our hopes from apathy and doubt, we ought to begin working now to create a community where we can pursue Extropianism freely. We can best imagine this community—call it Extropia—as the social realization of Extropian principles. Extropia’s primary feature is the requirement that all who join it explicitly agree to do so. Founding a series of social organizations, each one of which offers us greater opportunities to practice Extropianism than the one before, will help us to bring Extropia into being.

I. Introduction

We Extropians share an especially intimate communion with our hopes. To a large extent, they define our characters. Extropians dare to seek for more than most people even dream of: freedom from statist meddling, new and better bodies, vastly greater intelligences, life without end… As a consequence, our hopes risk seeming too far from realization to merit any current action. More dangerous yet, they may seem too grand to fit in any plausible future version of current society.

The apathy and cynicism threatening our hopes threaten us, too. We must protect them in order to protect ourselves. Self-defense calls on us to imagine a new world - one real enough to touch now, yet fantastic enough to hold our boundless ambitions. Let us therefore set forth to find a safe home for our hopes - an extropian utopia we shall call Extropia.

II. Where are we headed?

Put in the most basic of terms, Extropia is the social realization of Extropian principles. This means that Extropia should both provide an environment in which its individual members can freely pursue Extropian ideals and, insofar as it is possible for a social organization to do so, instantiate those ideals itself.$^{1}$

Max More has offered a convincing account of the principles that frame the Extropian worldview.$^{2}$ To get a clearer picture of the ideal home we’re seeking, let’s examine the specific features that will best allow Extropia to embody each of these four Extropian Principles.$^{3}$

1) Boundless Expansion: Clearly, any society that promotes boundless expansion must seek out new frontiers. The plan for developing Extropia that I will outline below thus has us experimenting with new forms of social organization, expanding into uninhabited areas of Earth, and eventually escaping this planet altogether. Extropia must also allow and encourage its individual members to explore personal frontiers such as those of lifespan, intelligence, and interconnectivity.

2) Self-Transformation: Valuing the principle of self-transformation leads to Extropia’s most important structural feature: Extropia must be a free community. All who join it must explicitly agree to do so. By eschewing growth through conquest, we guarantee that each member is free to choose his or her own path of development (so long as that path does not unjustly hinder another’s development). Guaranteeing members’ rights to self-transformation also ensures that Extropia will undergo self-transformation itself. Because it will thrive and grow only by obtaining the consent of its members,

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Extropia will constantly face critical reappraisal and undergo rational change.

This means that Extropia will not be a State. At most, statists can claim only to have the implied or hypothetical consent of those who fall prey to their institutionalized coercion. Extropia, on the other hand, will be a society based on real consent. This requirement will have a huge impact on the path of Extropia’s development, for to fully protect members’ rights to self-transformation will eventually require that we escape statist interference entirely.

3. Intelligent Technology: Extropia’s need to expand along frontiers of space and society will call for us to develop and apply new technologies. We cannot, of course, demand that all members use science in an intelligent manner. But we can and should provide an environment where they will have the freedom to better their lives through technological advances and have every incentive to do so.4

4. Dynamic Optimism: Extropianism encourages us to view the future with a positive, empowering attitude. Although Extropia itself cannot possess such a cognitive state, it can provide we Extropians with a powerful means of expressing and developing our own dynamic optimism. Planning for and creating Extropia will encourage us to develop new strengths and seek out new opportunities. And with each step we take towards our ideal home we will grow more optimistic about the likelihood of fulfilling our Extropian hopes.

Although applying the Extropian Principles in this manner allows us to paint our subject in broad strokes, the very nature of Extropia prevents us from portraying it in great detail. Many of Extropia’s specific features will appear only in the consensual agreements that will develop between those who will become its residents. Hence my saying that we must find a home for our hopes: because a great deal of Extropia will arise out of the free actions of individual agents, its exact form cannot be predicted. Much of Extropia is a spontaneous order awaiting our discovery.

Nonetheless, we can still speak of creating Extropia. To foster the growth of the spontaneous orders that will give Extropia its content, we must set up several sorts of planned orders: a program of development, designs for the artificial islands on Earth and in space, and a social organization compatible with the Extropian Principles. Discussing plans for creating Extropia will give us a still clearer picture of our home-to-be, thereby also helping us to find Extropia.

In what follows, I outline a three-step program for developing Extropia. I begin with the Extropy Institute, a private non-profit organization that will serve as a research center and launching pad for later Extropian projects. I’ll then argue on behalf of establishing Free Oceana, a free and sovereign community on Earth’s high seas. Finally, I’ll conclude with Extropolis, a space-based community that will liberate us from Earth’s grip and prepare us to expand boundlessly into the waiting universe.

III. HOW DO WE GET THERE?

A. The Extropy Institute (EXI)

Every good home needs a sound foundation. Extropia will have a private non-profit one: the Extropy Institute (EXI).5 Plans for taking this first step towards Extropia are already in motion. Because EXI will serve many purposes besides establishing Extropia, its full description deserves a separate article. Here I will only sketch its basic features and relate them to the project at hand.6

EXI will advance Extropianism on three broad fronts: educating the public, supporting research, and offering charitable support to Extropian causes. In order to educate the public about Extropianism, EXI will continue to publish Extropy while simultaneously advancing into other media.7 EXI may also spread our ideas by establishing an Extropian library, supporting computer bulletin boards and databases, offering classes and seminars, and sponsoring conferences and celebratory gatherings.

EXI could support many types of research,

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given the broad range of fields that attract Extropians’ attention. Here I’ll merely note that EXI would take particular interest in experiments that test the application of Extropian Principles to social organizations. These experiments will begin as ‘dry runs’ in models and at Extropian conventions. Later they will graduate into full-scale field experiments such as Free Oceana and Extropolis.

As a charitable organization, EXI would help to satisfy the special needs of Extropian individuals and groups. It might, for example, offer scholarships for students of subjects such as nanotechnology, neurological augmentation and memetics. EXI could also sponsor competitions and offer awards for works of art that espouse Extropian views. EXI might even offer personal identity storage as a service to its members. More to the point, EXI could help to support pioneers laboring towards the creation of Extropia.

B. Free Oceana

Once we have firmly established EXI and developed a sophisticated model of an Extropian community we will be ready to test our ideas in the real world. The freedom to engage in such research requires that we escape the grasp of meddling statists. But where can we go? Statists now claim jurisdiction over every continent and island on Earth. Unjust though that may be, we are in no position to convince them to forsake such claims. Ideally, we would escape to outer space. Although that should remain our eventual goal, it is likely to remain beyond our reach for quite some time. The technology and the capital for building a space habitat probably won’t fall into our hands before the year 2020.

But we need not wait decades to act on our hopes for a better world. We can start building Extropia right here on Earth, right now. With careful planning and good luck, we will win for ourselves a sovereign community, a source of vast amounts of revenue, and an ideal launch site for our eventual migration into space.

How? By exploiting a loophole in the international law of the sea. Whether due to practical

limitations on their powers or to their mutual interests in keeping shipping lanes open, statists forego claims to jurisdiction over the high seas. We might think of the high seas as res nullius—no one’s property.$^{8}$ This legal vacuum may leave room for us to establish a free community on the high seas by declaring the sovereignty of a ship, floating island, or sea platform.$^{9}$

But let’s not kid ourselves. Experience has shown that it is extremely difficult to escape the clutches of statism.$^{10}$ Others trying to do so have generally tried basic four approaches: 1) armed force; 2) financial power; 3) legal battles; and 4) going underground.

None of these four routes to sovereignty fits our capabilities and goals, however. Although we will certainly want to have enough firepower to defend Free Oceana from pirates and the like, we cannot reasonably hope to fend off determined statists. Nor should we expect to buy our freedom — even if we could afford the price we couldn’t trust statists to abide by the deal. Statist courts offer us no shortcut to justice; the sovereignty of Free Oceana will not receive their de jure recognition until well after we have established our de facto independence. And going underground would defeat our educational aims.

But we should not despair if these traditional routes to sovereignty do not work well for Free Oceana — they haven’t worked well for anyone else, either. I suggest that we instead try another strategy for establishing Free Oceana: widespread popular support.$^{11}$

If we can cast Free Oceana in a light that renders it attractive to an influential segment of the populace, we can use public opinion as a means to defend ourselves from statist intervention. The recent revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe demonstrate the power of communication and popular support to overthrow statist oppression. We, too, have an attractive and just cause. And our skills in information technology and memetic engineering give us a powerful advantage. This is a battle we can fight on our own turf—and win. But to do so we must remain sensitive to how non-Extropians perceive our mission.$^{12}$

We should first of all portray Free Oceana

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as a benign research project, a ‘Sociosphere II’ free of statist intervention where we can test the limits of real consent. Because settling in previously uninhabited areas will undoubted raise the hackles of environmentalists, we must also emphasize the ecological benefits of our venture. We should portray ourselves as the ocean’s guardians, protecting our domain from those who would pollute it or exploit its resources. We should take care to ensure that Free Oceana encourages the profusion of life often found near the shelter of ocean structures. And we should develop aquaculture—not just for food and trade, but also to demonstrate how our project can reduce pressure on land habitats.

---We should first of all portray Free Oceana as a benign research project, a ‘sociosphere II’ free of statist intervention where we can test the limits of real consent.---

How can we build Free Oceana? We might use a large ship to start out - a used oil tanker, cleaned and refitted, should serve nicely.$^{13}$ As our settlement grows, we can attach several oil tankers together to make a huge floating island. We may eventually want to graduate to huge platforms supported by the ocean floor. A free-floating home has special advantages, however: we could migrate towards opportunities and away from threats as if we were sea-faring Gypsies. Personally, I would like to see our bio-engineers design a species of marine coelenterates that leaves behind a low-density, floating coral reef. Imagine an archipelago of our home-grown isles sprinkled across the South Pacific!

How will Free Oceana support itself? Starting out, we will have to depend on charitable

donations and research grants. With time, though, we should develop aquaculture and energy extraction techniques sufficient to allow us to at least break even.$^{14}$ Those of us among Free Oceana’s first pioneers will face harsh conditions and live in strictly utilitarian quarters. But we will eventually create a more comfortable life-style, thereby allowing us to develop a tourist industry and to attract permanent settlers. As confidence in our permanence strengthens, we might establish free trade zones and an offshore banking industry.$^{15}$ And, most importantly to our long term goals, we can take advantage of our isolation and access to equatorial launch sites to prepare ourselves for expansion into space.

What sort of legal system will Free Oceana have? As the foregoing discussion makes clear, one basic principle will provide the framework of Free Oceana’s social structure: all who join it must do so only by their explicit consent. More specific features depend on what potential members of Free Oceana agree to accept. Observation of what members of other private communities find attractive, however, suggests that Free Oceana will come to offer a constitutional government where voting rights correlate to ownership of property.$^{16}$ Free Oceana will resemble a private corporation in this regard, although voting rights may turn on ownership of ‘real estate’$^{17}$ rather than on shares of stock.$^{18}$

We who build Free Oceana will own it. We will thus have every right to establish its laws and exclude those who refuse to abide by them. But this power need not — and should not — lead us to try and create a micro-managed paradise shut off from the outside world. Rather, we should establish only the barest of legal frameworks. We need only agree on matters that affect all of Free Oceana, e.g., where to set sail and anchor, maintenance of our home’s foundation, and a set of basic principles to frame more elaborate social organizations.$^{19}$ These basic principles should at a minimum protect the right of each person in Free Oceana to defend him or herself from physical coercion, theft, and fraud.

We should avoid the temptation to universally enforce a set of principles having much greater

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complexity than this. Yes, we will need an ‘Oceanic Code’ setting forth more precise statutes, together with mechanisms for amending, interpreting, and enforcing them.$^{20}$ And to ensure that no one lives outside of the law, we should set up the Oceanic Code as a default option covering parties who have not made alternative provisions for legal protection. But if we want to ensure that statism does not creep into Free Oceana by way of a legal monopoly we must not demand that all in Free Oceana live under the Oceanic Code.

Each person in Free Oceana should have the right to live under the legal system of his or her own choosing — so long as that system respects the set of basic principles protecting others’ essential rights.$^{21}$ Although allowing this much freedom may seem to invite chaos, history and theory indicate that a polycentric legal order serves as the best guarantee against statism, the best protector of individual rights, and the best framework for growth, change, and social progress.$^{22}$

The flexibility provided by a polycentric legal system will pay off as Free Oceana grows too large for one single structure and develops satellite communities. If those who establish satellite communities have half of the spunk of we who establish Free Oceana, they will soon be clamoring for their own sovereignty. We cannot hope to rule them. Nor should we want to. Instead, we should welcome them into a loosely-organized alliance of independent and sovereign free communities who join in defense of their common interests—an ‘Oceanic League.’ Dealing with this alliance of stubbornly independent communities will prepare us to maintain civil ties with the Oceanic League when we leave to settle a frontier even more distant and wild: Space.

C. Extropolis

Most Extropians won’t really feel at home until we reach Extropolis:$^{23}$ an artificial city floating far above Earth’s surface. As the trail-head for exploration of the solar system and beyond, Extropolis will place us on the verge of an infinity worthy of our expansive ambitions. I won’t waste time arguing for the desirability and feasibility of

establishing such a space habitat — I trust that Extropians are already sold on the idea. Instead, I’ll say a few words about the role Extropolis plays in the broader task at hand.

Note how well our experiences with Free Oceana will have prepared us for founding Extropolis. Having already fought for and won the sovereign status of Free Oceana, we will have established precedents and procedures for developing other such communities in space. Life on the high seas will have taught us how to cope with isolation, how to deal with an unforgiving environment, and how to design and build artificial communities. We will have built up a culture emphasizing the virtues of liberty, self-sufficiency, and mutual respect. And we will carry with us social organizations that have evolved into forms that maximize the benefits of communal life while simultaneously winning our explicit consent.

As with Free Oceana on Earth, we should expect Extropolis to eventually spawn a host of sovereign free communities in space. And as with the Oceanic Alliance, we should expect to witness the development of a loosely organized Extropian Alliance protecting the mutual interests of its constituent bodies. Such an alliance may come to include members of the Oceanic Alliance, too, as well as frontier settlements far away in deep space. We may even someday welcome extraterrestrial communities into the Extropian Alliance. After all, the free communities of transhumans that will come to make up the Extropian Alliance will develop along lines so diverse that many will seem like alien cultures to parochial Terrans.

IV. Extropia

Our quest for Extropia has carried us from here and now on Earth to years and light-years far, far away. We have traced the development of Extropian social organizations from the journal you now hold in your hands to EXI, and onward to Free Oceana, the Oceanic Alliance, Extropolis, and finally the Extropian Alliance. After all this careful buildup you are probably wondering, ‘Will this last step prepare us to build Extropia? Will we finally

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stand at the threshold of our destination?’

Yes and no.

Yes, we will be ready to build Extropia—but we are ready to start building now and have already started to do so. Yes, we will stand at the threshold of our destination; but depending on your point of view we either we can never cross that threshold or we already stand within it.

I’m not playing a coy game of words here. Recall that we initially defined Extropia as the social realization of Extropian principles. Because those principles look always forward, upward, and outward, we will never exhaust their limits. Extropia is not a place. It is a process.

The etymology of ‘Extropia’ makes this distinction clear. Although ‘Extropia’ draws meaning from ‘utopia’ the two words vary in an important respect. ‘Utopia’ comes from ou, or not, and topos, or place. A utopia is a non-place because it is too perfect to ever exist. Changing the prefix from ou to ex leads to ‘Extropia’: a place out of or from where we are now.

Although we can reach yesterday’s Extropia, we can never rest in today’s. With each step we take towards realizing the principles of Extropianism we attain a condition just beyond our starting point. Yet all of Extropia lies before us, waiting for our future growth. Rather than a place where we would languish in stagnant perfection, Extropia is the path we take in fulfilling our transhuman destiny.

We have now begun to follow that path. Through this journal, the Extropians e-mail discussion list,$^{24}$ and bi-coastal celebratory gatherings, we have already started to create an Extropian free community. Bit by bit we will make it more real in the years to come. Our next big step: Sovereignty. We call our community free because all who join it explicitly agree to do so. But while that is a necessary component of our growth, it’s not enough. We must also make our community sovereign, so we can ensure no outsiders coercively interfere with the social arrangements we have chosen. Once we have established a free and sovereign Extropian community, one that protects us from both internal and external threats, we will stand ready to fully devote ourselves to pursuing our transhuman destinies.

I began by suggesting that we seek a home for our hopes in order to protect them (and hence ourselves) from apathy and pessimism. Extropia satisfies that request in a surprising manner - not by trapping and taming our hopes, but by leaving them room to run free. Hopes as wild as ours would never survive domestication. They, and we, thrive on the pursuit of perfection rather than its attainment. That’s the virtue of Extropia: it offers us the means to constantly improve ourselves and our communities. In attempting to build Extropia and house our hopes we will thus create not walls of confinement, but doors to the future.

Notes:

$^{1}$For comments on the ontology of social organizations see Max More, ‘Deep Anarchy,’ Extropy #5 (Winter 1990): 20-29; and ‘Forum,’ Extropy #6 (Summer 1990): 33.

$^{2}$Max More, ‘The Extropian Principles,’ Extropy #6 (Summer 1990): 17-18.

$^{3}$More originally presented these four principles in an order allowing him to create the neat mnemonic ‘BEST DO IT!’ I have here switched around the last two principles for rhetorical purposes.

$^{4}$Max More is currently re-thinking the Extropian Principles and may delete this one, which is implied by its three counterparts, for a Principle conveying the social aspects of Extropianism. Given that my application of the Extropian Principles brings forth the same concepts that Max proposes to recognize, however, his proposed changes would probably have little effect on the picture of Extropia developed here.

$^{5}$The idea for an Extropian non-profit organization, and its proposed name, arose out of conversations with Max More. More thought up the clever acronym and its appropriate pronunciation: ‘ex-I’ as in ‘out of myself.’

$^{6}$The Zetetic Institute described in Marc Stiegler’s David’s Sling (New York: Baen Publishing, 1988) offers a suggestive model for an organization such as EXI.

$^{7}$Such media include public speeches, interviews, ads, and a number of products that an Extropian press (the ‘ExPress’) might publish: pamphlets, books, software, videos, taped lectures and written courses, etc.

$^{8}$This is not the only way to think of it, however. A competing view characterizes the high seas as res communis, an area held in common by all of the human race. These different

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conceptions can lead to opposing conclusions—the latter is particularly antagonistic to our project. For a discussion of these issues see O’Connell, D. P., The International Law of the Sea, vol. II, ed. I. A. Shearer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).

⁹Anchored floating islands and sea platforms that make contact with continental shelves may encounter opposition from adjoining coastal States, however, for they sometimes claim continental shelves as extensions of their territory.

¹⁰Consider case histories of such attempts in Erwin S. Strauss’s How to Start Your Own Country (Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics, Unlimited, 1984).

¹¹Note that the only success stories in Strauss’s book relate to radio pirates who won popular acclaim by snubbing statist pretensions.

¹²Hence “Free Oceana” - a name that will be widely understood and that conjures up romantic images of pioneers struggling for freedom on the bounding main. Let us save more esoteric titles, such as “Extropolis” for a day when our principles are more widely known and our self-sufficiency more securely established.

¹³Bruce Sterling suggests this strategy in Islands in the Net (Ace Books, 1988).

¹⁴We will be ideally situated to harvest energy from sunlight, waves, and temperature differentials. If magneto-hydrodynamic drive pans out, we may find ourselves well-placed to recharge ships on long hauls between ports.

Another possible growth industry: iceberg shipping. There appear to be at least a couple of unexplored means of moving bergs cheaply. After blasting an iceberg into a streamlined shape, we might melt masts into its surface and (with a computer’s help) sail it to our destination. Or we might exploit temperature differences between the ice and surrounding waters to power a Sterling-type engine.

¹⁵Although we might find ready profits in trades that statists have driven underground (e.g., prostitution, drug use, gambling, animal fights, etc.), we should think twice before basing our economy on them. For one thing, doing so would hurt our image in the eyes of the public and draw the ire of statists world-wide. For another thing, we are unlikely to find the customers and dealers drawn by such trade very good company (yes, things might be different if statists didn’t prohibit such activities elsewhere, but we cannot wish away the negative externalities of their policies). Note that I am not saying we, like statists, should outlaw such activities. What the members of Free Oceana do in private is their own concern. I am merely pointing out the arguments against Free Oceana, as a corporate body, actively promoting and supporting such trades.

¹⁶For an extended discussion of the constitutional features of private communities, see Donald J. Boudreaux and Randall G. Holcombe, “Government by Contract,” Public Finance Quarterly 17, no. 3 (July 1989): 264-280. For a more general discussion of private communities, see Spencer Heath MacCallum, The Art of Community (Menlo Park, CA: Institute for Humane Studies, 1970).

¹⁷Given that we will build Free Oceana from scratch, we might more accurately call its surface area “artificial estate.”

¹⁸If a secondary market in free transferable titles to Free Oceana’s artificial estate were to develop, however, these two alternative sorts of voting franchises would tend towards functional equivalence.

¹⁹At least as far as Free Oceana is concerned, these are public goods.

²⁰With the option to contract out these services.

²¹Things get a bit tricky here. Who decides whether or not an alternative legal system satisfies the basic principles? Because the rule of law is something of a public good, it seems appropriate to let those chosen to interpret the Oceanic Code decide whether to approve the first candidate for an alternative legal system (with the burden of proof in favor of the newcomer). But in order to protect against a legal monopoly, we should thereafter let all approved legal systems join in deciding whether to admit competitors (with the Oceanic Code breaking ties). To prevent “court packing” we would have to set limits on the “cloning” of legal systems—perhaps by giving legal codes voting power proportional to the number of their customers.

An even more lenient approach to this problem would stipulate that a legal systems is “innocent until proven guilty.” Only upon proving that it is structured so as to systematically violate the set of essential personal rights could the Oceanic Code invalidate the renegade legal code. Again, we might wish to dilute the Oceanic Code’s power by giving alternative legal codes a say in this matter and allocating them voting power in proportion to their customers.

²²For a more complete explanation and defense of polycentric law, see Tom W. Bell, “Privately Produced Law,” Extropy 3, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 12-20.

²³Max More deserves the credit for thinking up this apropos name.

²⁴You can join this virtual community by sending your e-mail address and a hook up request to extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu”. Our thanks to Perry Metzger, and now David Krieger, for hosting this service.

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