One "richard holt" declares:
Apart from transhumanism I find no other coherent ideology to carry forward the Englightenment project. I believe in progress based upon scientific knowledge and the exercise of reason.To this, I respond:
"You realize of course that 'The Enlightenment' had many tendencies, lasted quite a while, took different forms depending on where or when it is now said to have been happening? It wasn’t a Party with a Platform.
"Extraordinarily diverse movements have framed themselves as 'carrying on The Enlightenment Project' including US Neocons, totalitarians rationalizing Stalinist abuses, and flabbergastingly silly Randroidal 'Objectivists' (as well, of course, as plenty of appealing ones).
"There is no such thing as “progress” as such, only progress toward ends, and one only knows if that progress is desirable if you specify them. “The exercise of reason” is also too heterogeneous to tell us much without specifics.
"For me, it is desirable to struggle for a sustainable, consensual, equitable, democratic planetary multiculture (and this struggle prominently includes technodevelopmental social struggle).
"Reading their works, observing their antics, and following their leaders and representative members I cannot say that cybernetic totalists, singularitarians, transhumanists, techno-immortalists, nano-cornucopiasts, greenwashing geo-engineers are reliable allies (those who are not outright foes) in progressive struggles according to those specified ends."
Whereupon "richard holt" says (among other things, there is considerable snippage so do refer to the original should it interest you):
[P]olitical struggle... needs to be prioritised and pragmatic. I think humanity is in a sink or swim situation and i fear that an accelerating future is already outpacing our capacity to understand and take appropriate action. It may be that only post-humanity will be equipped to deal with the challenges we face.To which I then return:
For me the top priority is to address existential risks: [like] unfriendly AI... To be a transhumanist, in my understanding is to place hope in becoming better [he means "enhanced" "Humanity+" "posthuman"] people in order that we may better cope with these issues.
"If you think the bad behavior of a Robot God or the social disruption that would be caused by the arrival of multi-century life extension for a lucky few demand more urgent attention than anthropogenic climate change, resource descent, neoliberal precarization, human trafficking, and weapons proliferation, chances are you have found your way less to pragmatism than to Robot Cultism. Wake up, and be of some use to the world."
6 comments:
Most of what is posted at Accelerating Future is rubbish. Transhumanism is not some quasi-Christian do-gooder ideology for maximizing meaningless measures of social progress. Rather, transhumanism is at its core a Nietzschean enterprise which seeks to turn our technology upon ourselves and engineer supermen. Transhumanism is about becoming superheros and demigods, and there's no reason to be ashamed of this!
I’m sure you agree with most of this, but where your sick and soporific mind sees all this as something dark and sinister, I see it as a key to progress. There is no space to elaborate here, but suffice it to say that your anti-transhumanist Christo-Marxist ideology is *deeply erroneous and delusional*, with no basis in nature, philosophy or the metaphysics of our universe.
Like the Nietzsche of the Nazis your Nietzsche is peddling New Age platitudes for self-appointed supermen.
My Nietzsche, rather, is recasting philosophy as a project of self-overcoming (from "overman," rather than the superman beloved of death-dealing dimwits) demanding a conscious and conscientious humanity take responsibility for the verdicts of truth and goodness and beauty they offer up to the hearing of the world. You might read this -- if you do read -- as a project in key respects analogous to the late Freud's proposal of "analysis interminable."
About my "Christo-Marxism":
Short answer -- bwahahahahahaha!
Longer answer -- I'm an atheist, not a Christian. I consider Marx too determinist and parochial to stand on his own without many amendments from over a century of post-marxist and anti-marxist critical theory. Not to mention, I happen to regard the verdict of history to be that democratizing reform -- however painful and heartbreaking -- has a better, however inadequate, progressive track record than revolution.
While you can draw some comfort from pseudonymity -- "Sith Master," yet? How awfully embarrassing for you! -- you really should try nonetheless to be less dumb in public places.
Sir, you mind is a festering hive of useless mental constructs! Might I suggest some form of meditation to quiet your hyper-active monkey mind?
"Verdict of history"? Who cares about such things? The only verdict that matters is my direct experience of reality. When I say "Christo-Marxist" I'm referring to this kind of "right hand path" thinking, in which you submit yourself to external, collectivist morality rather than finding your values within yourself. The latter is Nietzsche's idea of Overman, I agree with you there. It just so happens that my vision of an Overman also includes physical and mental superpowers, which I want for my own power and glory, not because I care about the improvement of the human race in the abstract.
This is the philosophical division that really matters: right hand vs. left hand path, individualism vs. collectivism, will to power vs. will to justice. The conflict between the two produces progress, not the victory of one side.
It may be difficult to have meaningful conversations with one such as you who is obviously guided by Western academic constructs more than by self-knowledge and deep intuition. My experience with people of your philosophical bent is that ultimately you are just making elaborate excuses for weakness and failure.
As for my name, I am a serious disciple of the Sith Path (my own creation), which is the path of psychic power, progress through conflict and unlimited empire, and I see no reason to be anything but proud of it!
Well, isn't that special?
> Transhumanism is about becoming superheros and demigods. . .
> but where your sick and soporific mind sees all this as
> something dark and sinister, I see it as a key to progress.
> There is no space to elaborate here. . .
>
> My experience with people of your philosophical bent is
> that ultimately you are just making elaborate excuses for
> weakness and failure.
From William James' _The Varieties of
Religious Experience_ ("The Value of Saintliness",
pp. 406 - 407; the Nietzsche is from _Zur Genealogie der
Moral_, Dritte Abhandlung, Sect. 14):
"The sick are the greatest danger for the well. The weaker,
not the stronger, are the strong's undoing. It is not **fear**
of our fellow-man, which we should wish to see diminished;
for fear rouses those who are strong to become terrible
in turn themselves, and preserves the hard-earned and
successful type of humanity. What is to be dreaded by us
more than any other doom is not fear, but rather the great
disgust; not fear, but rather the great pity -- disgust
and pity for our human fellows. . . . The **morbid** are
our greatest peril, not the "bad" men, not the predatory
beings. Those born wrong, the miscarried, the broken --
they it is, the **weakest**, who are undermining the vitality
of the race, poisoning our trust in life, and putting
humanity in question. Every look of them is a sigh --
'Would I were something other! I am sick and tired of
what I am.' In this swamp-soil of self-contempt, every
poisonous weed flourishes, and all so small, so secret,
so dishonest, and so sweetly rotten. Here swarm the
worms of sensitiveness and resentment; here the air smells
odious with secrecy, with what is not to be acknowledged;
here is woven endlessly the net of the meanest of
conspiracies, the conspiracy of those who suffer against
those who succeed and are victorious; here the very
aspect of the victorious is hated -- as if health,
success, strength, pride, and the sense of power were
in themselves things vicious, for which one ought eventually
to make bitter expiation. Oh, how these people would
themselves like to inflict the expiation, how they thirst
to be the hangmen! And all the while their duplicity
never confesses their hatred to be hatred."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, _Zur Genealogie der
Moral_, Dritte Abhandlung, Sect. 14
(quoted in William James' _The Varieties of
Religious Experience_ ["The Value of Saintliness"])
> Most of what is posted at Accelerating Future is rubbish. >
Transhumanism is not some quasi-Christian do-gooder ideology for >
maximizing meaningless measures of social progress.
From C. S. Lewis, _That Hideous Strength_,
Chapter 8, "Moonlight at Belbury"
"'This Institute -- Dio meo, it is for something better than
housing and vaccinations and faster trains and curing
the people of cancer. It is for the conquest of death: or
for the conquest of organic life, if you prefer. They are
the same thing. It is to bring out of that cocoon of organic
life which sheltered the babyhood of mind the New Man,
the man who will not die, the artificial man, free
from Nature. Nature is the ladder we have climbed
up by, now we kick her away.
. . .
Our Head is the first of the New Men -- the first
that lives beyond animal life. As far as Nature is
concerned he is already dead: if Nature had her
way his brain would now be mouldering in the
grave...'
'You are frightened?' said Filostrato. 'You will get
over that... [I]f you were outside, if you were mere
canaglia, you would have reason to be frightened...
It is the beginning of power. He lives forever.
The giant time is conquered...'
'It is the beginning of Man Immortal and Man
Ubiquitous,' said Straik. 'Man on the throne of the
universe. It is what all the prophecies really
meant.'
'At first, of course,' said Filostrato, 'the power will
be confined to a number -- a small number -- of
individual men. Those who are selected for
eternal life.'
'And you mean,' said Mark, 'it will then be extended
to all men?'
'No,' said Filostrato. 'I mean it will then be reduced
to one man. You are not a fool, are you, my young
friend? All that talk about the power of Man over
Nature -- Man in the abstract -- is only for the canaglia.
You know as well as I do that Man's power over Nature
means the power of some men over other men
with Nature as the instrument. There is no such thing as
Man -- it is a word. There are only men. No! It is not
Man who will be omnipotent, it is some one man, some
immortal man. . .
We have found how to make a dead man live. He was a
wise man even in his natural life. He lives now forever;
he gets wiser. Later, we make them live better -- for
at present, one must concede, this second life
is probably not very agreeable to him who has it.
You see? Later we make it pleasant for some --
perhaps not so pleasant for others. For we can
make the dead live whether they wish it or not.
He who shall be finally king of the universe can give
this life to whom he pleases. They cannot refuse
the little present.'
'And so,' said Straik, 'the lessons you learned at
your mother's knee return. God will have power to
give eternal reward and eternal punishment.'
'God?' said Mark. 'How does He come into it?
I don't believe in God.'
'But, my friend,' said Filostrato, 'does it follow that
because there was no God in the past that there
will be no God also in the future?'
'Don't you see,' said Straik, 'that we are offering
you the unspeakable glory of being present at the
creation of God almighty? Here, in this house,
you shall meet the first sketch of the real God. It
is a man -- or a being made by man -- who will
finally ascend the throne of the universe. And rule
forever.'
'You will come with us?' said Filostrato. 'He has
sent for you!'
'Of course he will come,' said Straik. 'Does he think
he could hold back and live?'
'And that [other] little affair...,' added Filostrato.
'You will not mention a triviality like that. You will
do as you are told. One does not argue with the
Head.'"
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