5/19/23: POSTHUMAN – THE PREFERRED ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE W/ CHRIS AND SHEREE GEO AND FREEMAN

As we go about our days almost nothing feels as immediate, as wholly our own, as our selves. You are always in there somewhere, thinking and feeling, directing action, like a little “you” managing the controls. But when we take a closer look at the idea of the self as a person inside us we often wonder if that spark remains working after our body doesn’t.

Yes, death is a concept that many of us cannot comprehend. It is not just the thought of having the body run its course, it is the idea of nonexistence that has my brain going into turmoil.

There is always faith that tells us that the “the little you” or the soul goes on — but transhumanism and the technologies that we have been exposed to — may yet be a way to keep the body animated in a post-human state.

Transhumanism has been discussed a lot as this seems to be the agenda for our future, but no one can even think about the spooky nature of living a posthuman existence.

Posthumanism is a concept originating in the fields of science fiction, however, it is what comes after transhumanism takes hold where even after death, technology can revive you or it can keep you living way beyond your first transition from death to a posthuman lifestyle.

Posthumanism marks a careful, ongoing, rethinking of the dominant humanist or anthropocentric account of who “we” are as human beings. In the light of post-humanist theory and culture, “we” are not who “we” once believed ourselves to be. And neither are “our” others.

Posthumanist criticism has certain things in common with “antihumanism.”

It will be a re–conception of what it means to be human. Many people of faith believe that when they die they go to either heaven or hell — a concept that simplifies the final judgment.

But what if you could be revived in a whole new way, where it is discovered that the brain still sends signals for some time after the dying process?

The posthuman is roughly synonymous with the “cyborg” or even the unconventional Zombie –if the methods do not include machine parts to keep the body alive.

Posthumanism broadens the scope of what it means to be a valued life form and to be treated as such (in contrast to certain life forms being seen as less-than and being taken advantage of or killed off); it “calls for a more inclusive definition of life, it is the option to die and then rise again as something new but still, there are parts of you that still show humanity.

Whether we like it or not, Hollywood has done a great job of giving us a glimpse of what posthuman existence will be like.

Today extreme violence can crop up at some point during a movie. Some film genres are based on violence: horror, war, westerns, crime, and terror.

This is especially true of science fiction and zombie and cyborg movies where ‘replicants’ namely androids/robots are executed or ‘retired’ and zombies are mowed down with machine guns. And because replicants from movies like Blade Runner and zombies like The Walking Dead and World War Z are not ‘human’ then the representation of any form of violence can be used to ‘take them out’.

In both instances, the replicants and zombies are in revolt globally. If we were to argue that both stories were symbolic representations of contemporary global issues then we could explain this depiction of the revolting masses as symbolic of elite anxieties regarding the ever-growing masses of slum dwellers and refugees in the world today.

Take a look around the major cities like San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. They have people walking aimlessly around the cities strung out on heroin and fentanyl.

It was recently reported that Los Angeles officials are trying to stop the spread of the flesh-eating drug xylazine that has taken over the city.

The ‘zombie drug’, a veterinary tranquilizer approved in the US for cows and horses, is now flooding the illicit US drug market, with dealers often cutting it with cocaine and heroin.

But it is most often used to cut fentanyl.

The drug has spread to Los Angeles of late, with news crews capturing people hunched over and on the ground, strung out on the drug. The problem, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s officials say, is that the drug is technically a legal substance.

The county is now desperately trying to track xylazine’s presence throughout the city. The drug has literally created what looks like flesh-eating Zombies as the brain is controlled by the drug and the body is literally being turned inside out.

Nurses have described the wounds caused by xylazine as appearing as though something is ‘eating away your flesh from the inside.

We have been acclimated to this type of posthuman scene with the advent of the Zombie film.

What is most interesting is that you may recall that back in back in 2010 through 2012, FEMA began doing drills about “zombie apocalypse” scenarios. Their explanations were “that if everyone is prepared for a zombie apocalypse they’ll be prepared for everything”. What’s interesting is that this story was brought back up in 2021 and continued through the pandemic.

We live in a global system that has created these problems but is not able to resolve them. Moreover, these numbers are constantly increasing and no state or international organization has been able to reverse the figures, hence the anxiety of living in a Posthuman world with apocalyptic morality.

In Blade Runner 2049 the fear is that the replicants could start reproducing themselves and overrun the planet and in World War Z masses of zombies have already started to take over the world. In both films, the overriding concern is how to stop them. In Blade Runner 2049 a replicant’s child must be found and destroyed and in World War Z the discovery is made that inoculation with a pathogen causes the zombies to ignore the humans.

The use of violence to destroy the replicants and zombies is depicted in very graphic scenes. We are familiarized with regular violent scenes of ‘people’ being killed with machine guns, shot point blank in the head, knifed in the heart, or executed on the spot. We do not question the morality of such actions because they are ‘androids’, ‘robots’, and ‘zombies’. We are told that they are a posthuman threat and so we give all of the murder and mayhem a pass– but our brains register every killing, and scenario as real.

We are taught the posthuman rejection of human dignity, justice before the law and extrajudicial executions. It is now a common thing to see police officers gunning down a suspect online– or watching a gang stab an old man to death on YouTube.

There are a mountain of videos about people “dropping dead” but before they do and they look as if they are “Seeing something” attacking them before they spin around and go into a convulsive death.

When we see police brutality in videos– the argument always is whether or not the perp deserved it– and people making excuses and justifying brutal shootings online.

Are we becoming like the mob who shouts ‘take him out’ are we cheering on death because of posthuman acceptance and Posthuman programming?

On a symbolic level, the human body is becoming more objectified as a dehumanized punch bag, while on a philosophical level, there is a move away from humanism to an apocalyptic ‘posthuman’ view. We are becoming less and less shocked at the sight of torture, pumping blood, bones sticking out, severed limbs, massive gashes in the body, knife wounds and multiple bleeding bullet holes.

In society who benefits from the constant portrayal of interhuman and and interspecies violence in the movies?

Movies especially those that have a body count have a mass popular base and therefore will influence attitudes in society as people watch and discuss films they see in theatres and on television.

Anymore, films and TV shows are the mouthpieces of the Pentagon and the Hollywood Military-industrial complex.

The other day I was watching The film, The Kingsman on HBO. I forgot how much I liked that movie. However un the film there is a brutal scene where a man who is part of the Kingsman is mentally controlled and becomes a killing machine. He proceeds to kill a congregation of a small church.

The scene is well choreographed with the song Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd playing in the background.

What is most interesting is that the church was said to be a racist white supremacist cult — which made it okay to waste these people — and of course this has a whole new meaning aa President Biden during a commencement speech at Howard University said that white supremacy the “most dangerous terrorist threat.”

Biden’s speech created “The Other” where now people who support him will see white people as fair game for attack. Even if the white individuals are white supremacists it plants the seed for posthuman vigilantism.

Its easy to hate people who are demonized — it is easy when we are baptized into the world of posthumanism.

Elites foment controversy to keep the people fighting with each other as a form of divide and rule. By recycling controversies in different forms again and again elites create as many divisions as possible that prevent people from uniting as one, and, more importantly, uniting against them.

But sadly words like what Biden has given just fortify the hate and the idea that people deserve to die. It is like those who stated during the pandemic that those who did not get vaccinated should be turned away at emergency rooms when they got COVID-19.

Or how about employers who supported coercion in forcing their employees to get vaccinated against their will or lose their jobs?

How inhumane was this action? Again this created “the other” yet again and solidifies the pathway to a posthuman existence.

There is also the posthuman lie that we can and will be able to survive a limited Nuclear exchange. Any nuclear explosion creates radiation, heat, and blast effects that will result in many quick fatalities.

Direct radiation is the most immediate effect of the detonation of a nuclear weapon. It is produced by the nuclear reactions inside the bomb and comes mainly in the form of gamma rays and neutrons.

Direct radiation lasts less than a second, but its lethal level can extend over a mile in all directions from the detonation point of a modern-day nuclear weapon with an explosive yield equal to the effect of several hundred kilotons of TNT. Microseconds into the explosion of a nuclear weapon, the energy released in the form of X-rays heat the surrounding environment, forming a fireball of superheated air. Inside the fireball, the temperature and pressure are so extreme that all matter is rendered into a hot plasma of bare nuclei and subatomic particles, as is the case in the Sun’s multi-million-degree core.

But don’t worry. Thanks to our posthuman programming there will be super mutants and Road Warrior heroes that will still be alive walking around with their bodies still running and minds made of slush.

Science will find a way to create a worldwide Lazarus miracle to signal the bodies of the dead to rise up again and be more than human.

Of course, they will be posthuman — capable of being expendable like mindless drones.

We are now expected to make room for non-human things within the scope of our moral concern. Post-human ethics, therefore, encourages us to think of things that may not be entirely human. However, with apocalyptic morality, we seem to feel alienated by those who do not necessarily behave like we do.

And we can think about creative ways to eliminate them from our lives.

That is your posthuman thinking taking over.

Becoming a robot is so easy — no reason to think, or care about anything else.