130 Comments

Gorgeous.

Attempting to pull leftists away from the religion of progress is a deeply difficult work, though inscribed in the very same texts they cite in optimism are often warnings against that kind of utopian thinking.

Transhumanism seems to me often a refuge for people who are in some kind of deep pain themselves. I know several people with chronic illnesses who are true believers in its promises, and it's not difficult to understand why they'd search escape from their "meat sacks." Trying to explain to them that there is no body (and therefore no experience of joy, love, etc.) without pain always sounds hollow, but I think it's because they have to come to that understanding themselves. All we can do is help them as they get there, and though that doesn't sound like an exciting revolution, it's the only revolution that would really matter.

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We've already tried the Hippie parallel society experiment. That's what we the Hippies were doing back then. And look where we are today. Transhumanism cannot live in parallel with anything. It is about control and domination by its very nature, or should we say by its very non-nature.

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I agree with several commenters that the transhumanist camp is based on control and totalizing, so it's questionable whether they would allow an alternative. But I have another problem with the whole essay--and so many others. There is a brontosaurus in the room that it ignores. Our society, our economy, the ecosphere on which we utterly depend, are all on the verge of collapse. We have been refusing to countenance limits--but in the real world there are limits. Climate change is just one of these, where we're running out of at atmospheric sink, but the plummeting biodiversity is equally critical, along with various resource scarcities and other forms of pollution. The idea that billions of humans can live in artificial reality, presumably with an endless flow of electricity and nutrients to keep them going-where are the nutrients and the electricity coming from/ sure, automation can replace human labor but what about the power for the robots, the materials to build them, the materials for everything else?

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In one (and important) sense of "the metaverse" it is a hypothetical future iteration of the internet. Many people believe it cannot be created "at scale". I hope it can't.

Here's one sci-fi version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hrwbc5qCZ4

As I contemplate this, I am already feeling ensconced in an artificial 3-D virtual world created by a cabal of giant corporations and billionaires. It's a delusional 3-D mindspace in which we play Make Believe together about the nature of our actual 3-D natural world. We pretend, for example, that we can--and ought to--keep capitalist industrial civilization growing (measured in GDP and GWP) indefinitely into the limitless horizon we call "the future". We generally pretend this agenda hasn't already assured innumerable kinds of collapse -- ecological, social, economic.... We pretend electric cars, wind turbines and photovoltaic sourced energy can replace fossil fuels so economic growth will be able to continue indefinitely. And on and on and on. Pure ignorance and delusion. But it's not just pure ignorance and delusion! It's official ignorance and delusion as adopted by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. See Goal 8. https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal8# Essentially every government on Earth has adopted this absurd delusional fake 'reality'. And the public discourse of the "developed world" treats this delusion as if it was ... well, real.

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I like this thought experiment of the Transhumanists and the Hippies living peacefully side by side. It plays right into my reflex response to the times - 'well, you go inside and Stay Safe if you want to; I'll carry on out here.' It's interesting to play with the idea of coexistence to see how it could work: would we, the Hippies, be like the savages in Brave New World, officially excluded and having a bad time but actually living the more interesting life with the coolest people?

But this would not be permitted because, as you go on to suggest, the Transhumanist agenda goes hand in hand with the aspiration for complete social control. So suppose that works, at least in some societies, because only some societies have the means to do it. And therein lies the point: even on its own terms, without the 'threat' of the alternative life modelled by the hippies, would it be sustainable? Examples of controlled societies from history have one thing in common: collapse. Collapse ostensibly for economic reasons but actually from existential ones: the populations were too diminished to function properly. (Two ongoing examples of North Korea and Syria kind of prove the point). Is Digital enough to transcend this, to keep societies functioning well enough to sustain the control?

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Brilliant insights, thank you. 2 minor additions and a quote from the essay back at you.

1.) You hint at but don't mention the gut biome as the human "second brain." There's a lot of interesting research in that field, how the second brain keeps us balanced, in many ways.

2.) The transhumanist vs naturalist dichotomy seems to have a direct parallel in the history of the last 500 years of the New World. Colonizers vs. original indigenous inhabitants. That history has been and continues to be extremely one-sided although most recent Summit of the Americas wasn't all bad. Some countries abstained in solidarity with excluded nations. But Chevron Oil company victory in court over the attorney that won a law suit against them is more representative.

Suggesting you take a look at Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America.

3.) These are the key paragraphs in your essay, moving forward.

How to flip the binoculars so we all see clearly? Otherwise, H.G. Wells imagined future Time Machine traveler really will find two completely different species uneasily co-existing on our planet when he travels into the far distant future. (Assuming climate change or nuclear or some other catastrophe hasn't wiped out all of humanity by then.)

"Imagine what surveillance technology would do if it were directed by the people at the government, rather than by corporations and government at the people. Imagine if every government decision and expenditure were fully transparent. This idea taps into one of the principles that run deeper than technology: transparency. Lies, gossip, secrecy, and information control can turn any society, Stone Age or Digital Age, into a hell. Dehumanization can turn any society into a slaughterhouse. Good-versus-evil narratives can turn any society into a war zone."

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A surgeon said that in the past over 90% of people would have their hands on their pelvis/groin area as they woke up from anaesthesia Today, the same number are groping for their mobile devices. My passion is studying neuroscience, and it is a fact that the human brain has mapped the devices; so really, how far are we from the metaverse world physiologically speaking? I often observe the younger generations who do not know the times before technology like some of us do- their trance- like expressions as they stare at their screens. Transhumanism will not be a hard sell to the young (the Lego corporations know this), and they will never have the perspectives (brilliant in my opinion) presented in this essay. Note: I am a hippie!

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Matthias Desmet's book just came out (in English) today, and it resonates surprisingly with Charles's themes, coming from a different starting place. https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-psychology-of-totalitarianism/

You may associate Desmet with the meme "mass formation" which he brought to the COVID resistance last fall. The story he told sounded a little too pat, in my opinion, as if it had been formulated in retrospect to be applicable to all the details of the COVID derangement.

The new book dispels my doubts. Desmet takes a broad historic view of human culture and traces the origins of totalitarianism to Enlightenment culture that devalued the mystical and the emotional aspects of humanity and enthroned Reason as the faculty that separates us from the beasts. A mechanistic view of life arose from the science of the 19th Century, and curiously survived the Quantum revolution which should logically have discredited it. Disorientation followed from losing the values of life and joy and community, and continues into the 21st Century.

The disconnection and the vacuum of living values has left us vulnerable to totalitarian manipulation that offers some facsimile of community for people whose inner lives are starved for meaningful relationship.

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A very informative article about where we are heading, and I do join your call upon both groups to benefit from each other, I still have a problem with something, doesn't it seem a little bit naive that the people responsible for the transhumanist agenda won't try to use brute force and oppression to force the other group to be part of the matrix? and I don't really think the hippies' communities will have a chance of emergence as promptly as you suggest they might do, for instance they might have a base somewhere like the Amish, but that doesn't mean that everyone will be able to access it, whether it for lack of transportation like what is happening in China in regards to one's vaccine status and transportation, I fear it isn't going to be a frictionless competition, it will always resort to "I have the weapons and technology, therefore I am the stronger and you must obey or I exterminate you" it is even worse than that, it is more like " I can create robots to kill you while I sit at home controlling them" sort of, I do agree with you, that being part of nature, is such deeply engrained in us as a species, that no technology will be able to destroy and that nature will always find a way in, but I amn't so sure anymore, Humans are highly adaptable, and they can learn to live with mental illness than to dare and go outside in nature, or face it. But then there is another issue, I fear that Humanity will be the privilege of the elite, and transhumanism will be the burden of the rest of us, it is the working class may it be the modern working class, programmers and engineers, which is going to be forced into transhumanism in order to maintain a competitive edge against each other, it isn't the elite that is going to mutilate themselves to become cyborg, it is the others that will suffer lack of access to nature, and lack of fresh air, lack of humanity basically.

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Natural birth is not easy, but about 95% of women can give birth as it was designed, with good support. Its primary suppressor is imposition of medical artifactual theory + pharmaceutical/mechanical intervention in the process, AND attendants full of fear (of the sheer physicality of birth itself, and either of litigation or being blacklisted by so-called colleagues in the care 'team'). It is NOT the incapacity of women (yes, I'll say it again, women!) giving birth, but the social structures that seek to control their experiences.

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There is a lot of confusion about. Lots of people think the word 'progress' means something which in fact it does not. They associate it, that is, with various myths of progress. There are actually more than a handful of such myths. One of them might be called the capital P Myth of Progress. This is perhaps the most popular one, or has been (it's rapidly losing popularity, actually). This is the Myth Charles speaks to in this very short video.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBE4pK04KpM

Curiously enough -- and very importantly -- many of us hold to quite the opposite notion of progress. (I include myself here.) Progress, for us would involve removing dams from rivers, stopping the expansion (and beginning the dismantling of) airports, ending road construction, eliminating automobile dependency, aiding ecosystem restoration and expanding biodiversity. I call this eco-cultural progressivism. It's the opposite of tecno-industrial "progress".

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So grateful for your brilliant ability to communicate! You are a true modern day philosopher and profit.

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Have you read John Michael Greer's After Progress? You might find value in it. Also, the belief in spiritual "evolution" is one of the "heads" of the God of Progress, one that most New Agey types share and that the transhumanists can ally with and coopt. But as you hinted at, lurking underneath, is the Shadow of the New Age Movement: The earth has limits, our bodies have limits, every natural process is subject to diminishing returns...This is also one mythopoetic way to interpret Ursula LeGuin's Those Who Walk Away From Omelas.

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The only part of this essay that I felt uncomfortable with is the glossing over of eugenics. It is indeed a dangerous ideology, which leads logically to genocide. We should recognize that.

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To reinforce this BRILLIANT SPOT ON essay with a statement and useful links:

There is an evil predator globalist technocratic elite agenda of eugenics/depopulation/genocide using bioweapon poison jabs, war, EMF radiation, GEOENGINEERING, starvation and economic collapse - THE GREAT RESET/AGENDA 2030/4TH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION to get rid of billions of 'useless eaters' and to use nano tech to turn the survivors into ROBOTIZED COMPLIANT SLAVES! WAKE UP AND RESIST! DO NOT COMPLY! These are psychopath megalomaniacs who want to play god by turning all life into digitized metaverse mechanistic synthetic biology to be manipulated by their AI algorithms. A more demonic sickening idea is nearly impossible to imagine!

APPALLED AND HORRIFIED AT INSANE TYRANNICAL PROTOCOLS THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH HEALTH AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH TOTALITARIAN CONTROL! REVERSE THIS NOW!

MAKE THE WORLD AND AMERICA 2019 AND FREE AGAIN!

NO, I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE MORONIC SCARIANT SHMARIANT MONKEYSHINES! WAKE UP ALREADY!

TOTALLY CONDEMN BIDEN AND ALL OTHER POLS WHO HAVE NO POWER TO LAWLESSLY ACT LIKE AN EMPEROR OR DICTATOR AND DECREE JAB CROW 'SHOW ME YOUR PAPERS' FASCIST SEGREGATION/DISCRIMINATION/APARTHEID VIOLATIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION, THE NUREMBERG CODES AND EVERY CIVIL RIGHT IMAGINABLE.

NO GREEN NEW DEALS OR BUILD BACK BETTER FROM THE CRIMINAL TECHNOCRAT TYRANTS KLAUS SCHWAB AND HIS CRONIES FROM THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM.

STOP THE TERRIBLE TYRANNY OF THE TECHNOCRATS GLOBAL AGENDA OF TOTAL SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL USING THE VIRUS AS EXCUSE AND PROPAGANDA TOOL!

NO MUZZLING STIFLING MASK MANDATES! NO FORCED VACCINES! END TORTUROUS DEVASTATING LOCK DOWNS NOW! I WANT MY LIFE BACK.

https://wrenchinthegears.com

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2020/10/14/klaus-schwab-and-his-great-fascist-reset-an-overview/

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com

https://pandemicfacts.info

https://sonsoflibertymedia.com/covid-19-roadmap-12-step-plan-to-create-a-totalitarian-new-world-order-were-on-number-8-headed-towards-number-9/

https://questioningcovid.com

https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1581-james-corbett-breaks-down-the-great-reset/

http://www.stopcp.com/GlobalResetPSYOP/GlobalResetPSYOPMindMap.html

https://everydayconcerned.net/2020/09/04/breaking-major-investigative-report-by-association-of-french-reserve-army-officers-finds-covid-19-pandemic-to-have-a-hidden-agenda-for-global-totalitarianism-nanotech-chipping-of-all-5g-irradia/

Pam Popper: https://makeamericansfreeagain.com

Del Bigtree: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/highwire

https://www.technocracy.news

Naomi Wolf: https://dailyclout.io

www.nojabforme.info

https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-must-awaken-from-corona-coma-reject-great-reset-robotic-technocracy-assert-common-humanity/5745213

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What happens when you're in the Metaverse when your phone goes dead or the power goes out?

That may be a very rude awakening.

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