Someone needs to tell that to the transgenders who seem to be waging an Orwellian war on the real world of biology, plumbing and chromosomes that affirm a 99%+ reality of two sexes.
A possible reframe... that the true illusion is that life and expression of masculine and feminine energy exist in binary in accordance to sex and with any relation to sexual attraction. The form of “man” and “woman” which exist in society at large is a poor reduction of many interactions of feminine and masculine energy.
In a healthy community, the potential should exist for a person of any sex to both be themselves (physically/ respecting their biology) and express their femininity and masculinity freely regardless of sexual preference.
That is to say the current trends of the transgender community and the anti-transgender community both follow the same false dichotomy... different sides of the same misleading coin...
Gay and lesbians are not confused about which sex they are. Their affections are for same sex which means they acknowledge there are male and female biology. They are not demanding admission to opposite sex spaces or sports, at least not where I live. Or chemically/physically mutilating themselves to conform their bodies to an imagined sexual identity. Or demanding that people acknowledge their identity.
I get it. I’m just suggesting that the “confusion” isn’t an inside out confusion but often an appropriate interpretation and processing of a rigid structure of what masculine and feminine mean in society. When the best option to be and express yourself with reciprocity is to change your biology, then it’s an intelligent choice which should be respected
I have met trans adults for whom it was an intelligent choice, but currently intelligence is often lacking in trans ideology. It's a mess now. See Charles' comment below. Sweden and other European countries have stopped physical, medical gender transition in minors as according to studies it wasn't producing the promised mental health benefits.
I’m not surprised to hear that at all. I think the idea of men = this presentation/affect/role and so on is the problem. A more fluid understanding of masculine and feminine energies and expressions is needed. There isn’t a problem of being born wrong sex but a problem of rigid thinking about what and how physical appearance impacts role and perception. I’m simply saying if that openness doesn’t exist it can make sense to look like you feel but surgery seems like a super radical step to me. But “transgender” doesn’t automatically mean surgery and hormones
Except when the nuanced term 'be yourself physically' is called 'bottom surgery' which is a horrific medical re-configuring of your being to which your body will never adapt.
I don’t think anything with surgery is “being yourself physically”. I mean the opposite.
I’m far from an expert in the matter (i’m not transgender) and really just wanting to bring to light that the transgender “insanity” is not driven by the individual level or by the “left” only. The whole concept of “gender identity” is very right wing to. To be a man/woman is to fulfill x role, etc.
The only sane way forward seems to be through openness and learning and most definitely not blaming, shaming, labeling or controlling.
When someone’s initial comment after a complex article on societal insanity is to bring up transgender like the OP did, I want to push back a bit. The last thing a struggling transgender person or intersex person needs is telling them they’re insane. I think highlighting the societal, cultural and medical aspects of it are relevant to provide context for everyone though.
I appreciate your perspective and sense to divert a conversation that started with some aggression. My heart breaks for those who imagine surgery to alter healthy body parts will make things well - including for my own parents who made that decision for me... The problem isn't with anyone's body - my working theory is, if we acknowledge those nature provides as not-male/not-female, we make space for expression and allow our culture to make room for anyone to know they can be whole before or after being altered by plastic surgeons.
I’m probably not qualified to answer that in a well contextualized way. On the surface it’s a mismatch between the experience of a person in their body, their perception of what it should feel like to be said gender, and probably who they identify with naturally within their environment
I have never worked with this in relationship to gender but I also work with it in my osteopathy practice (french trained under Guy Voyer). Remembering that the body (and probably the water in communication with the tissue structure) holds memory. I think this is a pathway to relieve dysphoria along with the autonomic nervous system and personal spiritual orientation
Oh i’m so sorry. I have terrible pregnancy brain. I assumed “gender dysmorphia” when you clearly said dysphoria. That’s completely my mistake. I actually am very familiar with dysphoria. Not around gender but in relation to trauma and trauma processing. It’s absolutely terrible and something I found relief from from a multifaceted but largely physiological and spiritual approach
That isn't true. I myself question trans ideology. It has gone to crazy extremes. Denying biological sex, for example. Insisting that biological males should compete in women's sports. Funneling minors into gender reassignment surgery and puberty blocking programs. All that is crazy. However, I also think we need to listen to the stories of trans people. As a societal fashion, it is crazy, but on a case-by-case basis it is complicated.
Trans stories like those whose reproductive systems were altered from their original state lamenting and blaming the hubris of the medical industrial complex? Because that story doesn't seem to be acceptable to the multi-gendered.
Also, interested how you think Girard applies to the situation?
I could of been a lot more thorough. I 100% support the decision of a trans person as the rigidity in society and their environment is real. For them to experience others interpreting their reality in the way they do the physical appearance needs to change. I’m merely saying that with an open, sensitive and responsive society (or even family) I think this would be different as it has been in other cultures in the past. The value of the “trans” biology is real, something that has wisdom, and something we should all respect without requiring the individual to change their structure.
I agree with your critique our society, and trans people help make clear that expressions outside the norm of 'man' and 'woman' should be normalized. Luckily!! Nature provides that expression in the form of those born intersex, whose current main plea with the medical powers is not to change the individual's structure (by restricting infant reproductive-system surgeries to those needed for the body's elimination).
We're still persecuted, via normalizing surgeries. My substack graphic journal tells my born-intersex story and imagines how a different culture embraces those with similar DSD (difference in sexual development). Thanks for offering the vision that embracing those born between sexes can be a part of healing, I agree! sarisimpapers.substack.com
I didn't say "Orwellian" in jest. Remember in 1984:
O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
“How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?”
“Four.”
“And if the party says that it is not four but five — then how many?”
“Four.”
The word ended in a gasp of pain.
EDIT: The more I think about it, that passage from 1984 also explains a lot of the COVID vaccine mindfuck we got from the CDC. You know, "Trust the science."
Lindsay, while I'd phrase it less forcefully, I must agree: my pencil-drawn content was removed by NAAS because it offended trans folk (of which I am technically one - having had multiple 'normalizing surgeries' for my intersex conditions). I also got a 10-day ban from r/intersex for asking some trans-questions. But from that burn's heat, I created sarismpapers.substack.com - which is slowly becoming more confrontational than what has been removed. I also agree with Charles below to listen intently to the wisdom of trans stories (including mine!). But I don't think that means a decision to medically alter healthy body parts should be endorsed or disguised by the phrase 'gender-affirming care.'
That happened to me on a spirituality forum in which I participated for 14 years. But it was one person, not a cabal, and she made such an issue about it that she intimidated all the others from even a polite response. I am no longer on that forum and was really disappointed that the others (all women) didn't speak up, because I know some of them agreed with me. It must be in the Zeitgeist.
Thank you so much for this… I have been struggling mightily with the “earn what your worth” spirtual crowd & the deep messages of shame & worthlessness that are heaped on the poor & working class & those who work with them. I am both. And as I watch and experience the financial bottom falling out from under us, I attempt to be open to what’s next & how to serve, while keeping myself housed & fed. It is scary. And I am open.
So, beautiful, one of your best yet! A friend of mine had an older woman mentor die ravaged by cancer. In tears she asked God what she was like now. Soon after she dreamed she saw her mentor who was simultaneously a little child, a young girl, a young woman, a mother, middle aged and old all at once, all of her beings alive together.
Le Guin has long been one of my faves. In EarthSea she also articulates the vital union of self and shadow. Reading this essay I'm reminded of this daily dance, beyond the lazy convenience of materialism or the comfort of the spiritual bypass. A good friend died last month and we'll honor his life next Sunday. His partner said he visited to assure her that he hadn't gone anywhere. She doesn't experience him gone. She didn't lose him. He simply outgrew his body. Death is that transition, ideally after a human life well lived, it is an invitation to a larger party. Rejoice!
Thanks Charles! This is a great articulation of thoughts, feelings, and experiences I’ve been grappling with. Might save me a few therapy sessions (were I in therapy :-). Nice to know one is not alone in this. An aphorism holds that “In a world of the blind, the sighted man is king”. In my experience, that sighted man is actually in Hell.
I highly recommend the delightful book Momo by Michael Ende. His storytelling is a bit more direct and simple than LeGuin's but pointing out the same things. The sickness of a culture that has outrun itself. In Ende's book it is the time stealers, the grey men, who have convinced everyone that if they only work faster and harder, life will be better and Momo is the heroine who 'saves' her friends by stealing back time. So many complex issues and yet at the root it seems to me that there is just way too much technology replacing the value of direct meaningful human interaction and we are innundated with so many people it is difficult for us to value the individual anymore. All of our so called 'care' agencies only reinforce this with one size fits all policies and paperwork. We are dehumanized at every single turn until we have become redundant in our own lives. Especially the elders. How many grandparents feel they have nothing to share with their children's children as all 'knowledge' is to be found on the internet these days? The old have no clear useful role anymore except to be a burden on an already overburdened system. And the young have to exhaust themselves just trying to pay rent and have a life. All of the ideas to 'fix' these problems just seem like so many bandaids to me because they do not deal with the real traumas and legitimate fears underlying our frenetic pace. We are a society that uses coffee to wake up in the morning and then uses alcohol or pot to wind down at night and in between we try to get everything done, which is basically impossible because we have made life so incredibly complex.
It is synchronicity, I think, because I just read this book and finished it last week. I felt the clear resonance with our current time and actually thought of you and some of your other essays where you describe our time of separation and our movement towards interbeing and connection. I feel the desire among the people I know. Thank you.
I cannot believe how serendipitous your essay is! I have just been recommending the Earthsea books to a French friend of mine. There are few of my friends who understand English but happily this friend does ….and loves reading!
You continue to inspire me and I do really feel that we’re singing from the same hymn book, this despite the differences in age and culture.
Great piece Charles, that last paragraph especially resonated.
As I was reading this, the theme of transhumanism kept coming back to me, both in its total domination desires (domination of good and natural human limits so much that they cease to exist) and its abject ideological hatred of death.
For the transhumanist, death is to be avoided and fought against at all costs - even if that means becoming something other than human (post-human) or cryogenically frozen only to come back to "life" when the technology exists - but as you say "if to be is to relate" (and if the "resurrected" transhumanist has come back to life in a world severed from all his or her past relationships - are they truly alive?
Also, in removing human limitations - transhumanists open the door for extreme ecological degradation. If limited human beings have caused this much ecological destruction - just think what catastrophic devastation could be caused by "unlimited humans"...
I see transhumanism therefore as one of the main threats to the Good Life you described in the final few sentences of this essay.
This short essay landed in my inbox at about the moment I planned to use the above photograph as a contemplative motif for further exploration into what I intended to get at in my essay, On Commoning -- https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-10-24/on-commoning/. The photograph is included in a Wikipedia page on the topic of "hostile architecture". Hostile architecture is intended to keep poor and homeless people from taking rest and shelter. That's what is hostile about it. And in the example from Stockholm we see bars meant not to keep prisoners inside a cage (a prison cell), but to keep otherwise free people from seeking shelter from rain or snow under a stairwell. It's a jail to keep prisoners out -- away from shelter or rest. That's what hostile architecture is designed for. Oftentimes it's meant to keep folks from resting on a park bench--maybe having a much needed nap.
I want to write about this in a philosophical way, and so I've been exploring the historical usage of terms like public and private again -- but in relation to commons and commoning. But that's when the phrase "the weight of libraries" hit me. There is a very long, complex history of the relation of public, private and communal ... in philosophy, which goes back at least as far as ancient Greece, and which was taken up in early modernity by Kant, then later by folks like Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, John Dewey and Nancy Fraser. And, quite frankly, as a want-to-be philosopher, I am feeling the "weight of libraries" in my wish to know this history so I can reasonably comment upon it. I want to legitimate and reveal another way of thinking (and thus living) which includes the notion of commons and commoning. But this is such a very radical thing to do in this time of hostile archetecture. And so I feel the weight of libraries -- and of this photograph.
The weight of libraries ... it is a weight of the past, the weight of the long history of ideas which provide refuge for a cage like the one we see in this photo. The weight is a burden. How does philosophy escape the burden of many years of pressing one's nose into book after book, or of "screen time"? https://carolineross.substack.com/p/the-machine-stops-us-moving
Our animal bodies know a cage when we see one. But how do we reveal the cage to those who do not see it as a prison? It's obvious to me that modern civilization has come to its obsolescence. What we regard as 'reason' is pitiful, heartbreaking... mad. Must we spend our lives in libraries as prisons? Or can we let the thousand words of a photograph awaken us from the trance?
When I saw that photo, I thought (this is a confession) I'd love to turn this prison in to a tiny house ... with a door and some windows. It's about the size of the home I require. What I need is time, not things or money. And something worthwhile to do with my time. The latter I have -- something worthwhile to do. But the burden of seeing crashes upon me like a wave from the sea of imagination. It's almost--very nearly--too much to bear.
"And, while technology in the West is certainly still progressing, it seems somehow impotent to accomplish anything really worthwhile, certainly anything on the scale of the problems that afflict us."
such potent and painful words. i am currently reading John Steinbeck's "America and Americans" (written in 1966) and this is feels like one of its the underlying theme...and a plea and prayer.
His following words linger in my mind most powerfully and connect me to the strength you are calling out for us to muster:
"Now we face the danger which in the past has been most destructive to the human: success--plenty, comfort, and ever-increasing leisure. No dynamic people has ever survived these dangers. If the anaesthetic of satisfaction were added to our hazards, we would not have a chance of survival--as Americans."
But his closing words, like yours, give me hope:
"We have failed sometimes, taken wrong paths, paused for renewal, filled our bellies and licked our wounds; but we have never slipped back--never."
So beautiful. I feel the way you do when I look at my daughter and granddaughters. The only time I feel a sense of normalcy and innocence. One must shut that door to feel the presence of God. Also, walking in the forest and being in nature helps to feel that presence.
Great piece. We live in eternity, and move through time. As biological creatures, death becomes us. We have no other option. Our only option is how we greet death, whether the small deaths that are a part of life or the great personal death we all face. We may face death, understanding its reality, with joy or fear, which is our great gift - our intent.
"To be sane is to see and accept what is real. "
Someone needs to tell that to the transgenders who seem to be waging an Orwellian war on the real world of biology, plumbing and chromosomes that affirm a 99%+ reality of two sexes.
A possible reframe... that the true illusion is that life and expression of masculine and feminine energy exist in binary in accordance to sex and with any relation to sexual attraction. The form of “man” and “woman” which exist in society at large is a poor reduction of many interactions of feminine and masculine energy.
In a healthy community, the potential should exist for a person of any sex to both be themselves (physically/ respecting their biology) and express their femininity and masculinity freely regardless of sexual preference.
That is to say the current trends of the transgender community and the anti-transgender community both follow the same false dichotomy... different sides of the same misleading coin...
Gay and lesbians are not confused about which sex they are. Their affections are for same sex which means they acknowledge there are male and female biology. They are not demanding admission to opposite sex spaces or sports, at least not where I live. Or chemically/physically mutilating themselves to conform their bodies to an imagined sexual identity. Or demanding that people acknowledge their identity.
I think that's what I mean :)
I get it. I’m just suggesting that the “confusion” isn’t an inside out confusion but often an appropriate interpretation and processing of a rigid structure of what masculine and feminine mean in society. When the best option to be and express yourself with reciprocity is to change your biology, then it’s an intelligent choice which should be respected
I have met trans adults for whom it was an intelligent choice, but currently intelligence is often lacking in trans ideology. It's a mess now. See Charles' comment below. Sweden and other European countries have stopped physical, medical gender transition in minors as according to studies it wasn't producing the promised mental health benefits.
I’m not surprised to hear that at all. I think the idea of men = this presentation/affect/role and so on is the problem. A more fluid understanding of masculine and feminine energies and expressions is needed. There isn’t a problem of being born wrong sex but a problem of rigid thinking about what and how physical appearance impacts role and perception. I’m simply saying if that openness doesn’t exist it can make sense to look like you feel but surgery seems like a super radical step to me. But “transgender” doesn’t automatically mean surgery and hormones
"But “transgender” doesn’t automatically mean surgery and hormones", yes
Beautifully put, Amy. The nuanced take such a nuanced situation requires.
Except when the nuanced term 'be yourself physically' is called 'bottom surgery' which is a horrific medical re-configuring of your being to which your body will never adapt.
I don’t think anything with surgery is “being yourself physically”. I mean the opposite.
I’m far from an expert in the matter (i’m not transgender) and really just wanting to bring to light that the transgender “insanity” is not driven by the individual level or by the “left” only. The whole concept of “gender identity” is very right wing to. To be a man/woman is to fulfill x role, etc.
The only sane way forward seems to be through openness and learning and most definitely not blaming, shaming, labeling or controlling.
When someone’s initial comment after a complex article on societal insanity is to bring up transgender like the OP did, I want to push back a bit. The last thing a struggling transgender person or intersex person needs is telling them they’re insane. I think highlighting the societal, cultural and medical aspects of it are relevant to provide context for everyone though.
I appreciate your perspective and sense to divert a conversation that started with some aggression. My heart breaks for those who imagine surgery to alter healthy body parts will make things well - including for my own parents who made that decision for me... The problem isn't with anyone's body - my working theory is, if we acknowledge those nature provides as not-male/not-female, we make space for expression and allow our culture to make room for anyone to know they can be whole before or after being altered by plastic surgeons.
I’m sorry you went through that. Sounds absolutely terrible. I think it’s a great idea! I like the “not” female/male idea a lot
Well said. Straightforward education on trans issues is critical now. What does Dysphoria mean?
I’m probably not qualified to answer that in a well contextualized way. On the surface it’s a mismatch between the experience of a person in their body, their perception of what it should feel like to be said gender, and probably who they identify with naturally within their environment
Dysphoria is the opposite of euphoria. Very unpleasant and for the trans person, a daily trial. Not an agenda, not a choice. Real pain.
I have never worked with this in relationship to gender but I also work with it in my osteopathy practice (french trained under Guy Voyer). Remembering that the body (and probably the water in communication with the tissue structure) holds memory. I think this is a pathway to relieve dysphoria along with the autonomic nervous system and personal spiritual orientation
Oh i’m so sorry. I have terrible pregnancy brain. I assumed “gender dysmorphia” when you clearly said dysphoria. That’s completely my mistake. I actually am very familiar with dysphoria. Not around gender but in relation to trauma and trauma processing. It’s absolutely terrible and something I found relief from from a multifaceted but largely physiological and spiritual approach
The world needs more people like you Amy!
That isn't true. I myself question trans ideology. It has gone to crazy extremes. Denying biological sex, for example. Insisting that biological males should compete in women's sports. Funneling minors into gender reassignment surgery and puberty blocking programs. All that is crazy. However, I also think we need to listen to the stories of trans people. As a societal fashion, it is crazy, but on a case-by-case basis it is complicated.
Trans stories like those whose reproductive systems were altered from their original state lamenting and blaming the hubris of the medical industrial complex? Because that story doesn't seem to be acceptable to the multi-gendered.
Also, interested how you think Girard applies to the situation?
I could of been a lot more thorough. I 100% support the decision of a trans person as the rigidity in society and their environment is real. For them to experience others interpreting their reality in the way they do the physical appearance needs to change. I’m merely saying that with an open, sensitive and responsive society (or even family) I think this would be different as it has been in other cultures in the past. The value of the “trans” biology is real, something that has wisdom, and something we should all respect without requiring the individual to change their structure.
I agree with your critique our society, and trans people help make clear that expressions outside the norm of 'man' and 'woman' should be normalized. Luckily!! Nature provides that expression in the form of those born intersex, whose current main plea with the medical powers is not to change the individual's structure (by restricting infant reproductive-system surgeries to those needed for the body's elimination).
We're still persecuted, via normalizing surgeries. My substack graphic journal tells my born-intersex story and imagines how a different culture embraces those with similar DSD (difference in sexual development). Thanks for offering the vision that embracing those born between sexes can be a part of healing, I agree! sarisimpapers.substack.com
I didn't say "Orwellian" in jest. Remember in 1984:
O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
“How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?”
“Four.”
“And if the party says that it is not four but five — then how many?”
“Four.”
The word ended in a gasp of pain.
EDIT: The more I think about it, that passage from 1984 also explains a lot of the COVID vaccine mindfuck we got from the CDC. You know, "Trust the science."
Lindsay, while I'd phrase it less forcefully, I must agree: my pencil-drawn content was removed by NAAS because it offended trans folk (of which I am technically one - having had multiple 'normalizing surgeries' for my intersex conditions). I also got a 10-day ban from r/intersex for asking some trans-questions. But from that burn's heat, I created sarismpapers.substack.com - which is slowly becoming more confrontational than what has been removed. I also agree with Charles below to listen intently to the wisdom of trans stories (including mine!). But I don't think that means a decision to medically alter healthy body parts should be endorsed or disguised by the phrase 'gender-affirming care.'
That happened to me on a spirituality forum in which I participated for 14 years. But it was one person, not a cabal, and she made such an issue about it that she intimidated all the others from even a polite response. I am no longer on that forum and was really disappointed that the others (all women) didn't speak up, because I know some of them agreed with me. It must be in the Zeitgeist.
Thank you so much for this… I have been struggling mightily with the “earn what your worth” spirtual crowd & the deep messages of shame & worthlessness that are heaped on the poor & working class & those who work with them. I am both. And as I watch and experience the financial bottom falling out from under us, I attempt to be open to what’s next & how to serve, while keeping myself housed & fed. It is scary. And I am open.
So, beautiful, one of your best yet! A friend of mine had an older woman mentor die ravaged by cancer. In tears she asked God what she was like now. Soon after she dreamed she saw her mentor who was simultaneously a little child, a young girl, a young woman, a mother, middle aged and old all at once, all of her beings alive together.
Le Guin has long been one of my faves. In EarthSea she also articulates the vital union of self and shadow. Reading this essay I'm reminded of this daily dance, beyond the lazy convenience of materialism or the comfort of the spiritual bypass. A good friend died last month and we'll honor his life next Sunday. His partner said he visited to assure her that he hadn't gone anywhere. She doesn't experience him gone. She didn't lose him. He simply outgrew his body. Death is that transition, ideally after a human life well lived, it is an invitation to a larger party. Rejoice!
Thanks Charles! This is a great articulation of thoughts, feelings, and experiences I’ve been grappling with. Might save me a few therapy sessions (were I in therapy :-). Nice to know one is not alone in this. An aphorism holds that “In a world of the blind, the sighted man is king”. In my experience, that sighted man is actually in Hell.
Send this to Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab. Ask them to read it at the next Davos meeting...in China.
I highly recommend the delightful book Momo by Michael Ende. His storytelling is a bit more direct and simple than LeGuin's but pointing out the same things. The sickness of a culture that has outrun itself. In Ende's book it is the time stealers, the grey men, who have convinced everyone that if they only work faster and harder, life will be better and Momo is the heroine who 'saves' her friends by stealing back time. So many complex issues and yet at the root it seems to me that there is just way too much technology replacing the value of direct meaningful human interaction and we are innundated with so many people it is difficult for us to value the individual anymore. All of our so called 'care' agencies only reinforce this with one size fits all policies and paperwork. We are dehumanized at every single turn until we have become redundant in our own lives. Especially the elders. How many grandparents feel they have nothing to share with their children's children as all 'knowledge' is to be found on the internet these days? The old have no clear useful role anymore except to be a burden on an already overburdened system. And the young have to exhaust themselves just trying to pay rent and have a life. All of the ideas to 'fix' these problems just seem like so many bandaids to me because they do not deal with the real traumas and legitimate fears underlying our frenetic pace. We are a society that uses coffee to wake up in the morning and then uses alcohol or pot to wind down at night and in between we try to get everything done, which is basically impossible because we have made life so incredibly complex.
It is synchronicity, I think, because I just read this book and finished it last week. I felt the clear resonance with our current time and actually thought of you and some of your other essays where you describe our time of separation and our movement towards interbeing and connection. I feel the desire among the people I know. Thank you.
I cannot believe how serendipitous your essay is! I have just been recommending the Earthsea books to a French friend of mine. There are few of my friends who understand English but happily this friend does ….and loves reading!
You continue to inspire me and I do really feel that we’re singing from the same hymn book, this despite the differences in age and culture.
Thank you Charles 🙏🏻🙋🏼♀️🌈✨❣️
The Earthsea series is available in French as Terremer.
Thank you. 🙏🏻 I will tell my friend!
Great piece Charles, that last paragraph especially resonated.
As I was reading this, the theme of transhumanism kept coming back to me, both in its total domination desires (domination of good and natural human limits so much that they cease to exist) and its abject ideological hatred of death.
For the transhumanist, death is to be avoided and fought against at all costs - even if that means becoming something other than human (post-human) or cryogenically frozen only to come back to "life" when the technology exists - but as you say "if to be is to relate" (and if the "resurrected" transhumanist has come back to life in a world severed from all his or her past relationships - are they truly alive?
Also, in removing human limitations - transhumanists open the door for extreme ecological degradation. If limited human beings have caused this much ecological destruction - just think what catastrophic devastation could be caused by "unlimited humans"...
I see transhumanism therefore as one of the main threats to the Good Life you described in the final few sentences of this essay.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture#/media/File:Exkluderande_design_i_Stockholm_2015.jpg
This short essay landed in my inbox at about the moment I planned to use the above photograph as a contemplative motif for further exploration into what I intended to get at in my essay, On Commoning -- https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-10-24/on-commoning/. The photograph is included in a Wikipedia page on the topic of "hostile architecture". Hostile architecture is intended to keep poor and homeless people from taking rest and shelter. That's what is hostile about it. And in the example from Stockholm we see bars meant not to keep prisoners inside a cage (a prison cell), but to keep otherwise free people from seeking shelter from rain or snow under a stairwell. It's a jail to keep prisoners out -- away from shelter or rest. That's what hostile architecture is designed for. Oftentimes it's meant to keep folks from resting on a park bench--maybe having a much needed nap.
I want to write about this in a philosophical way, and so I've been exploring the historical usage of terms like public and private again -- but in relation to commons and commoning. But that's when the phrase "the weight of libraries" hit me. There is a very long, complex history of the relation of public, private and communal ... in philosophy, which goes back at least as far as ancient Greece, and which was taken up in early modernity by Kant, then later by folks like Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, John Dewey and Nancy Fraser. And, quite frankly, as a want-to-be philosopher, I am feeling the "weight of libraries" in my wish to know this history so I can reasonably comment upon it. I want to legitimate and reveal another way of thinking (and thus living) which includes the notion of commons and commoning. But this is such a very radical thing to do in this time of hostile archetecture. And so I feel the weight of libraries -- and of this photograph.
The weight of libraries ... it is a weight of the past, the weight of the long history of ideas which provide refuge for a cage like the one we see in this photo. The weight is a burden. How does philosophy escape the burden of many years of pressing one's nose into book after book, or of "screen time"? https://carolineross.substack.com/p/the-machine-stops-us-moving
Our animal bodies know a cage when we see one. But how do we reveal the cage to those who do not see it as a prison? It's obvious to me that modern civilization has come to its obsolescence. What we regard as 'reason' is pitiful, heartbreaking... mad. Must we spend our lives in libraries as prisons? Or can we let the thousand words of a photograph awaken us from the trance?
When I saw that photo, I thought (this is a confession) I'd love to turn this prison in to a tiny house ... with a door and some windows. It's about the size of the home I require. What I need is time, not things or money. And something worthwhile to do with my time. The latter I have -- something worthwhile to do. But the burden of seeing crashes upon me like a wave from the sea of imagination. It's almost--very nearly--too much to bear.
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exkluderande_design
It is possible to translate the last page's linked content into English.
"And, while technology in the West is certainly still progressing, it seems somehow impotent to accomplish anything really worthwhile, certainly anything on the scale of the problems that afflict us."
such potent and painful words. i am currently reading John Steinbeck's "America and Americans" (written in 1966) and this is feels like one of its the underlying theme...and a plea and prayer.
His following words linger in my mind most powerfully and connect me to the strength you are calling out for us to muster:
"Now we face the danger which in the past has been most destructive to the human: success--plenty, comfort, and ever-increasing leisure. No dynamic people has ever survived these dangers. If the anaesthetic of satisfaction were added to our hazards, we would not have a chance of survival--as Americans."
But his closing words, like yours, give me hope:
"We have failed sometimes, taken wrong paths, paused for renewal, filled our bellies and licked our wounds; but we have never slipped back--never."
i hope he is right.
I think this is my favourite piece of everything you've written. it's beautiful. Thank you 🙏🏻
The last sentence is perfect! Wow.
So beautiful. I feel the way you do when I look at my daughter and granddaughters. The only time I feel a sense of normalcy and innocence. One must shut that door to feel the presence of God. Also, walking in the forest and being in nature helps to feel that presence.
Great piece. We live in eternity, and move through time. As biological creatures, death becomes us. We have no other option. Our only option is how we greet death, whether the small deaths that are a part of life or the great personal death we all face. We may face death, understanding its reality, with joy or fear, which is our great gift - our intent.