H+ Trans Post Humanity
H+ Trans Post Humanity
Back in 1995 when Ground Zero was first heard, I had to dig for stories and possibilities and come up with potential realities within the reality of pre- 2000 jitters. It was a time of anxiety and speculation about what the future would hold. I would always use words like, this may happen, or it is coming, or we will be seeing it all go down in the near future. That was 16 years ago and now I am saying that things are no longer coming, they have arrived. All of the possibilities that we speculated about years ago seem to be transpiring now.
However I still hear other talk show hosts say that something is coming, that something is about to go down and I reminisce about an old Pink Floyd song where it says “one day you find that ten years have got behind you no one told you when to run, you miss the starting gun.”
I have heard the starting gun and I hope that those who listen to my shows that the starting gun has been fired and we are now in the big race for our lives and the security of our homes and family.
We have been seeing a great deal of worldwide crises. Every time we hear of a volcano erupting, or an earthquake, or even bad weather, we have tendency to lie to ourselves that there has to be someone responsible for these anomalies. We rely on HAARP and Chemtrails to somehow explain these events, but I would love to reiterate that history and future tense potential gives us the major kick in the head that we are looking at the 6th extinction level event to hit this planet.
The environment is damaged, or it is adapting to some other “normal” that we are contending with now. We are seeing global upheavals, unexplained animal deaths and human behavior that is quite destructive. We are seeking a suicidal end to what we have cherished. We may have the fight in us to scream and shout, but that is what happens before the final blow silences the screams of those who are in pain.
Einstein warned us that crisis is the pretext for extinction. Every crisis that we try to over analyze, every terrorist event that we develop new theories for is tantalizing mental masturbation but it does nothing to help us over come and get beyond our collective victimhood. We can manufacture all sorts of what ifs, but we may want to watchthe what now’s that indicate, the only hope we have now is to grow in knowledge and shatter old myths that seem to cloud our development.
In order to do this we may have to face voluntary human extinction with the promise that a better life awaits through technological advancement. It most certainly will be suggested as the culling and conversion process means voluntary extinction for the greater good of the many.
These themes have been the underlying points in Science Fiction films lately. From Spock giving his life for the Enterprise, to the underplayed Klattu telling everyone that if we die the earth survives and if the earth dies, we all die. It is a simple philosophy that doesn’t give us any hope. The inevitability, says Agent smith is your death and it makes a sound that echoes through the chasm of your soul that seems to be eaten up in the electronic cloud.
We are always wondering what our underlying purpose is in this world, and some people don’t even take the time to contemplate their place in the universe. They are very satisfied with being machines that eat. drink and defecate; only taking breaks for an occasional first shooter game or reality show.
The human experience seems to be a fight against toxicity, physically, mentally and spiritually.
We have never had abuse that feels this good. We thrive on the latest gossip and feed the darker power of hearing about the latest country bombed and fascist dictator assassinated. We sharpen our smiles like vampires ready for the next surge or mayhem so that we can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that we have avoided that harsh good night where the lights go out for you and your neighbors.
Everything that is broken we think we can fix. We throw money at it, harsh chemicals and weapons of mass destruction at it. We keep on doing this until we break even more things and destroy the environment,
The planet becomes unlivable in some areas and one again we breathe a sigh of relief that no one near us have had to leave their homes because of a bombing or even the release of a plague
It looks as if we need to become supermen in order to escape the fate of the extinction that is happening around us now.
. Nietzsche’s description of the UNBERMENCH is one who has surpassed humankind, but still cares for the transience and vitality that humankind represents. We all know the story of Pinocchio wanting to be a real boy – and yet there are many humans that feel that they need to become Pinocchio’s. The need for love and the need for humanity can be found in the Stanley Kubrick Movie A.I. The story was haunting, the creepiness compelling, and served as a warning to those who believe that full evolution from MECHA to ORGA is possible.
While there are pacemakers, titanium heart valves, and now bionic limbs in order to improve life, there are people that believe that voluntary conversion to machines will help in creating a heaven on earth. The new evolution is being prepared as we speak and many people are ready to convert. The question is, “How far will you go?”
On July 3rd 2009, Stephen Hawking spoke at a conference about how he believes humans have entered a new stage of evolution. Although It has taken homo sapiens several million years to evolve from the apes, the useful information in our DNA, has probably changed by only a few million bits. So the rate of biological evolution in humans, Stephen Hawking points out in his Life in the Universe lecture, is about a bit a year. We have sped up our evolution with the use of drugs, bodily enhancements and technology. The human we will see in the not too distant future, according to Hawking will be an advanced human, maybe even something that has a semblance to humanity without being human.
We are now entering a new phase, of what Hawking calls “self designed evolution,” in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA. At first these changes will be confined to the repair of genetic defects, like cystic fibrosis, and muscular dystrophy. These are controlled by single genes, and so are fairly easy to identify, and correct. Other qualities, such as intelligence, are probably controlled by a large number of genes. It will be much more difficult to find them, and work out the relations between them. Nevertheless, Hawking is sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression.
Hawking also says that in order for mankind to stretch out to into cosmos we will have to modify our bodies . Hawking believes, that we will have to employ intelligent machines based on mechanical and electronic components, rather than macromolecules, which could eventually replace DNA based life, just as DNA may have replaced an earlier form of life. From the ooze came a primitive form of life, from that life came man, from that life came modified human forms and enhanced bodies, and the future will be full of beings that are either nonhuman or human mechanized hybrids that can have super abilities.
Ever since man walked the earth he has made his world, destroyed it and made it all over again. As it is written biblically that God made man in his own image , it must be said that man has made things in his own image to his own liking in ways unprecedented for thousands of years. It has been speculated by many theorists that as man realizes his power he most often sees himself as a God and develops technological creations that imitate what is termed “natural “ or “human.”
By the time we get to the postmodern world that many human beings inhabit today, the lived-in, physical environment is for the most part, culturally produced. Reality is encountered mostly as virtual, or produced as an effect of human enhancements and operations. We are kept constantly surrounded by human productions and technology that is indistinguishable from magic. We are transported everywhere by machines within a realm totally fabricated by human engineering. We remain mesmerized by phenomena that are electronically simulated.
We lose ourselves in virtual worlds.
Most memories now, and collective unconscious thought has been pumped into you through electronic transmission. You accept reality through the electronic medium. All things both real and simulated have had an effect of your brain. You have retained everything based on what a controlled electronic dictum has given you. Our rational minds are now far from rational because we have had most of the objective reality replaced by Hyper-reality.
Once humans move beyond their repulsion of “life like machines” and becoming part machine themselves they reach a point of empathy.
As our fears of man and technology diminish we begin to see evolution steer towards Transhumanism.
A loose definition of Transhumanism is a point in evolution where man becomes something that is beyond human. Transhumanists see the human body as something that can be improved through science and technology. They also see technology as a means to where we can overcome suffering, aging, loneliness, and involuntary death. Transhumanist thinkers predict that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label “posthuman.” The symbol for Transhuman is H+ or “Enhanced Human.”
With the advent of Transhumanism, there seems to be a new way to cull a civilization by converting them to a grid where they can be controlled.
In 1958 Robert Sheckley wrote a piece of speculative fiction about a human’s consciousness being transferred into a brain- dead body. This can unleash something known as the Frankenstein consciousness where ethics once again need to be examined. While we have the capability of creating artificial intelligence do we have the capability of building a model of a brain complete enough to allow a conscious mind to emerge?
The other question is concerned with identity. Some people argue that, if a copy of a conscious mind is identical by all measures ignoring the fact that one is biological and the other is neuro-morphic software/hardware, it should be thought of as a continuation of the mind that was mapped and uploaded.
Others argue that a copy cannot be considered the same as the original, so the newly awakened consciousness must be another person. This where we wonder if Transhumanism is literally killing off a part of you to extend other parts of you. The brain is the most delicate and we debate the ethics of its transplantation. We don’t bat an eye about the use of other organs to be harvested from donors and to use body parts in order to live on in others.
In the Book “Change of Heart” dancer Claire Sylvia claims that after a heart and lung transplant operation, she discovered that new organs were not the only thing she inherited. She began to crave beer and Kentucky fried chicken. Her friends were also noticing that she would sometimes act like a teenager and walk like a boy. She claims that she inherited the traits of her young male donor. There have been other accounts of this phenomenon as well, which raises awareness about psycho-spiritual issues regarding consciousness and death. Is there organ memory within the body and if we transcend the body to machine will our mechanized bodies yearn for human needs like spiritual and emotional desire?
As you can possibly understand , Transhumanism or the Trans post humanity faces serious risks, especially from the misuse of new technologies. There are possible realistic scenarios that lead to the loss of most, or even all, of what we hold valuable. Some of these scenarios are drastic, others are subtle. Although all progress is change, not all change is progress. While there are advantages to most Transhuman or human enhancement technologies, we need to understand that perhaps it is a moral imperative to limit our ability to integrate with machines and technology. If not, we are looking at voluntary genocide.
It is happening now because we seem to be drawn to technological magic like moths to a flame.
