Transhumanism

[David Morris]

I like your sentiment.  Being human is a high aspirational  bar and a low
real one.
 David Morris

On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 7:06 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> When we're human, I'll think about transhumanism, maybe. Even Emerson's
> trans- has always bothered me.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> > On May 2, 2017, at 7:30 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks Mark, definitely an article with more than enough to interest
> > P-list readers (and it's not long at all!). I found it here but I'm
> > not sure if there's another, longer version:
> >
> http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/04/the-techno-libertarians-praying-for-dystopia.html
> >
> > I used to have more sympathy for transhumanism, the way a young,
> > white, straight, middle class, educated male from a first world
> > country might not see problems with ideologies that amplify
> > inequalities he doesn't yet know exist. When your greatest fear isn't
> > death by poverty or domestic violence or hate crime or being the wrong
> > colour (has anyone seen Get Out yet? Amazing film) but death by
> > literally just getting so old that you die, then maybe you will devote
> > a great deal of energy betting on technology and against nature. If
> > you go far enough down that rabbit hole, though, you might end up like
> > Peter Thiel, prominent in that article, who not long ago told an
> > interviewer that he's interested in injecting the blood of young
> > people so as to prolong his life indefinitely. Technovampires, who
> > woulda thought they'd become a real thing?
> > On the other hand, there is a strain of transhumanism (used to be
> > called posthumanism) that's more interested in abolishing the
> > distinctions between nature-human-technology and seeing them all meld.
> > That seems more fruitful as it isn't anti-organic, excuse the pun.
> >
> >> On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 3:19 AM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> I bet there aren't too many members of this list who wouldn't find a
> >> lot to admire in the three episode documentary series TechnoCalyps,
> >> which is available for free on Youtube.
> >>
> >> TechnoCalyps Part 1 - TransHumanism
> >> https://youtu.be/7MXQSbjBL7Q?
> >>
> >> TechnoCalyps Part 2 - Preparing for the Singularity
> >> https://youtu.be/u1n0QSnWyAA?
> >>
> >> Technocalypse Part 3 - Digital Messiah
> >> https://youtu.be/EvWuF_KXuDk?
> >>
> >> I found it thought provoking and occasionally challenging. I'd love to
> >> hear what P-Listers have to say about it.
> >>
> >> Jerky
> >>
> >>> On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 12:53 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>> Transcending Death via whatever technologies are available or
> imaginable is
> >>> nothing new.  Those technologies include AI (as in transference of
> personal
> >>> consciousness to an artificial brain), cryogenics, genetic
> engineering, etc,
> >>> as Pynchon noted in that essay (which was it?).
> >>>
> >>> David Morris
> >>>
> >>>> On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 10:59 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Part of a longer article which will look long so many will not even
> start
> >>>> reading it.
> >>>>
> >>>> If this doesn't remind you of the dismantling of V, tell me why?
> >>>>
> >>>> "Transhumanists view the human body as a system in need of
> technological
> >>>> disruption and ultimate transcendence, and neo-reaction views the
> state, the
> >>>> body politic, in much the same manner."
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Part of longer article:
> >>>>
> >>>> There is, in transhumanism itself, a strain of old-timey historical
> >>>> romanticism: a sense of history as an inexorable progress toward a
> >>>> teleological vanishing point, where all human meaning is subsumed and
> >>>> obliterated by a godlike technology. This belief that flesh is a dead
> >>>> format, and that our future — or that, at least, of a technological
> elect —
> >>>> involves a final merger with machines is one that interlocks in
> sinister
> >>>> ways with the view of democracy as a failed and outmoded institution.
> >>>> Transhumanists view the human body as a system in need of
> technological
> >>>> disruption and ultimate transcendence, and neo-reaction views the
> state, the
> >>>> body politic, in much the same manner. Seen in a certain way, this is
> a
> >>>> mind-set — a reductionist understanding of the world as a hackable
> system —
> >>>> inherent in the culture of computer science. The flesh is weak, and
> >>>> democracy is entropic; both are subject to forces of decay, to human
> >>>> inefficiencies and failings. As eccentric and fringe a phenomenon as
> Dark
> >>>> Transhumanism may be, it’s usefully viewed in this sense as an
> extrapolation
> >>>> of tendencies inherent in the mainstream techno-capitalism of Silicon
> >>>> Valley.
> >>>>
> >>>> *A version of this article appears in the May 1, 2017, issue of New
> >>>> YorkMagazine.
> >> -
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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