Solve et Coagule Posted by Steve on October 10, 1997 at 12:31:34:
Evolution is a theory that seems to emphasize that the
appearances of individual forms are but the stepping
stones of life's progress from adaptation to
adaptation to predicament to predicament.
The Transhumanist Movement is a contemporary
philosophical "movement" that seems to emphasize that
the power of humans to analyze their environment and
engineer it to their desires is starting to be changed
by the growing power of humans to analyze themselves
and engineer THAT to their own desires. Various forms
of genetic enginering and cyborg-ization are implied.
Note that one form of transition/distinction (old style
Evolution) is giving way to another style of
transition/distinction (Transhumanist Engineering).
One form of crossing is changing into or joining with
another form of crossing. Distinctions merge, not to
blur and lose their identities, but to refocus and
recontextualize each other AND each other's
predicaments, giving vivid new dimensions of
menu-selectable meanings to each other's possible
values, goals, and actions.
The "eternal" forms of distinction themselves are
thereby refreshed. Every paradox has two resolutions:
a vicious cycle of spiritual negation,and a positive
spiral/cycle of spirit growth and flowering unto a
personal climax.
Will we choose to mold our forms after movie stars and
the "TV people"? marketing patterns in flesh and spirit
already trodden and mass marketed?
Or in fact will we surrender our store-bought immortalities
and attempt to break new ground, and joyfully die in the
proccess, even though we COULD have sat back and
watched the universe evolve in virtual reality, safe
in our orbital pleasure fortresses, with our self
reinforcing engineered DNA strings regenerating
themselves to the latest tunes marketed to us by the
military/industrial/entertainment complex?
Engineered immortality will be the most socially
conservativizing technology ever developed.
Transhumanist body engineering will be the most
liberalizing technology ever developed.
And they will crash head on into each other in the
21st century in the greatest autopoietic cross cultural
trainwreck ever seen in human history.
"Brightly, brightly, and with beauty",
as V.M. Smith would say!