Visions of silicon-brain hybrids operating digital control centers, served physically in all respects by robots, living wholly in an artificial reality, represent merely the culmination of a trend, not any change in direction. Already and for a long time, humans have to some degree lived in a virtual reality—the reality of their concepts, stories, and labels. The Metaverse immerses us in it still further.
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.
As a former (still?) leftist, I am experiencing the same difficulty with my far left family and friends. I love your last paragraph in which you describe patience and compassion. We each can only get there when we can get there, and in general we are all a bunch of adolescents, learning together.
It’s ultimately by example anyway, made apparent by how we choose or not choose to kindly interact with others, how we choose to live, as Rick Archer of ‘Buddha at the Gas Pump’ hints, that we have any right to offer advice or opinion. We need to be invited into the asking (‘There’s something different about you, and I want it, too .. what have you been doing differently?’) to offer advice or opinion.
I think part of the issue is in framing. We don’t want to point fingers at human enemies, but perhaps we can at broken systems we can all agree are broken. There are plenty of broken systems to choose from that those on the left and right can all agree upon - I’ve sure found them with friends on the right and our conversations are lively. The main thing is to speak without pitchfork language but with hope, with constructive dialogue and problem solving. We used to be able to do that, and we can choose to return to it.
I'm not here to defend "the left", I'm just saying it doesn't exist. It's strange because Americans have been fed so much propaganda about Communism so that the state could justify waging war on any country trying any alternative to Capitalism, with the US in charge, that you don't even know what it is! Apart from the scape goat.
I don't see any need to justify my right to give my opinion, nor to ingratiate myself to others whilst doing so. If I did, I'd be a politician.
Apologies- I don’t mean to offend, and I’m not sure what I said. Every one of us has a right to our opinion, our own interpretations after careful sensemaking. We need everyone’s reflections, insights and ideas. None of this will work unless we all know that our voices, our individual experiences matter.
I see the propaganda you speak of. I think we’ve been forced into left-right boxes due to our political system and to mass media and algorithms that feed outrage rather than togetherness and cooperation. Also, unfortunately, due to our own immaturity as a species.
Listening to our ‘other’ does not mean to stoop or ingratiate. Rather, it is a sign of respect given to another equally worthy human being. A namaste. I find that my most meaningful conversations now are either with those who entirely let down their guard and want to talk about possible meanings of life and our collective future, and with those who hold very different viewpoints but love to talk with me anyway as a ‘common ground, potential solutions’ endeavor. And to be perfectly honest, my very favorite conversations lately have been with a presently homeless man in our community who just wants his carefully built tiny enclave in the woods to be left alone by the city. He’s tired of rebuilding, of losing his belongings when the city once again razes his hidden home on public land. He’s beyond trying to fit into our clearly broken and absolutely unaffordable society. He loves the trees and the birds and the quiet, the stars and the wind, and any kind person willing to accept him just as he is. When I was a kid I longed to live like him, and now find myself in a glyphosated and sterile subdivision because we had to follow the job. We got boxed. I love my neighbors but I miss real community which for me must include along with humans stones and soil and toads. I miss real air and tangled wild spaces.
Not sure if you follow Naomi Klein or Joanna Macy or Vandana Shiva or Noam Chomsky or even Russell Brand (I HOPE I understand where he is going .. his YouTube stuff seems presently designed only to outrage but I think he’s collecting a larger audience .. by a means I am not enjoying) who have varying capacity and potential to move beyond our forced left and right boxes and point toward deeper problems that we all, separate from politics, can begin to troubleshoot together. I’ve also always thought of Charles as one of these folks.
I doubt I’ve addressed your concerns but thought I’d try. I’m low energy these days and have good and not so good listening and really hearing days. For this I again apologize.
I love how you framed all this! Part of what I’m hopeful about in the future is that what has divided us in the past (left v right or any other issue) will be recognized as counter-productive and we can all get busy with living an actual good life with our neighbor.
Everywhere anyone goes, it’s your goals, your ideas your very language shoved at on or in us at every turn.
It is the left that met those of us trying to end COVID1984 with threats, law enforcement, vehicles into crowds, gunfire and pipe bombs.
It is YOUR people that wish death on us for refusing these “vaccines”. Your chosen people that loved lockdowns, that devalued anything and everything that couldn’t exist virtually, called us nonessential and yes, CAUSED deaths.
You CHOSE these as your people and now would deny this. When an ideology produces legions of these “people” who are killing the rest of us and nothing more, that’s a fatal problem with said ideology.
All the lesser dead in this time of COVID1984 are at the feet of your chosen people.
You seem quite angry, and I suspect you have a different definition of the 'left' than I do.
I'd merely remind you that the most restrictive lockdown and forced vaccination regime outside of China was implemented by the right-wing government in Austria. Also, many of the orgs like WEF and Open Societies Foundation are just as much enemies of the left (OSF works with the CIA to undermine south american and african leftist revolutions).
If your perception of what is "left" is from an American lens and if Biden or Clinton would be included in that label, I'd suggest a more global perspective might benefit you deeply.
China STARTED these lockdowns 👁 started and spread yet another virus worse than the one that came out of their lab.
OSF & WEF currently love lefties, especially western ones as those are far more useful than the rest of us for their horribly inhuman plans to wipe out 90% of people.
Globally, much of the left has looooooved lockdowns. If I denied this, I may as well become a flat earther (might do so anyhow, if the free trip to space is still a thing)
And angry? YES I’m angry about this plan to kill 90% of people and make many of the survivors either envy that 90% or reduce them to such a pathetic subhuman state that they don’t know to envy the dead! That’s the big thing that has me angry!
A smaller issue that also annoys? Lefties looking to tie themselves in knots denying that most of their comrades drank the flavoraide gleefully, and acting like the rest of us didn’t come to the conclusion that this COVID1984 was all madness and highly *sinister* (yes, very deliberate word choice here 👁) before most on the left did, but you act like WE are the dumb ones and that you will lead us out of this.
With all due respect (nicely ambiguous phrase, that), no. No we don’t need you to lead us ANYWHERE, maybe, just MAYBE acknowledging that your side messed up bigly would be a good first step if you’re actually serious about a world where people on the left can coexist with others
i'm not here to defend 'the left' either but I would seriously invite you to reflect on your assumption that all of these technocratic authoritarian initiatives are carried out by 'the left'. I'm not sure in what sense multi national corporations with a militant profit incentive sand ruthless adherence free-market neo-liberal capitalism is in any meaningful sense 'left'.
The only way you could possibly conceive of that as 'leftist' is by invoking conspiracy theorists - such as the popular one that a bunch of grouchy intellectuals in Frankfurt somehow plotted the collapse of western society itself in exquisite detail and perfection- so that the take-over of the world by corporate mega churches and the filling of peoples' brains with instagram glamour models and dancers s somehow their ingenious brain child (even though they would clearly have despised this state of affairs)
I just completed a manuscript on “Woke Ideology” and wrote a chapter dealing with that conspiracy theory.
Fascinatingly, even Adorno became victim to students in a way many professors have now and Habermas went so far as to call the student uprisings “left fascism,” since it had nothing to do with anything they were arguing for.
They failed in their ultimate goal, which was to stop the rise of authoritarian behavior. And you’re right: they’d be appalled at the state surveillance and mass identitarianism (on all parts of the political spectrum) that we see today.
LOL ask the 80-90% of leftoids that love COVID1984 this question 🙄
Seems that’s more useful, if learning is what you want to do, then denying this very obvious correlation 👁
Maybe contemplate just WHY the WEF lizards find your “comrades” (who would turn on you for wrongthink in an instant) so damn useful
Hint: it may have to do with how y’all never have an answer for just how the state is supposed to whither away once you’ve assumed control over everyone and everything 🙄 Your ideology has a Great Reset of sorts baked in and you wonder why they “love” you
i'm really not sure who you think you are talking to.. I recommend you don't expend much more energy talking like this on the internet. Even if you are very sure of your convictions at least reflect on what utility pouring all this bile out is having (HINT - not very much). I'm not being sarky - i'm genuinely suggesting that indiscriminate ranting like this is not going to help anything or anyone. I mean what you wrote above has nothing to do with me - as am not a 'leftist'. So I can only assume that spraying stuff like this out from your keyboard represents some kind of Cathertic therapy.
ok.. fair enough. I'm just saying its a kind of therapy has very limited usefulness.
More useful than pretending that there’s noooo correlation between leftism and a love of COVID1984, even though all the vicious bastards who Ave come at me, sometimes violently, over the past 2 years have been some variety of leftoid.
You not experiencing this likely means you hid your views or engaged in self censorship, which is cringe.
And LOL at this WhO dO yOu ThInK yOuRe TaLkInG tO nonsense…none of your comrades ever asked themselves this about us 👁
Folks, Charles is in bed with the UN World Food Program via Celo, Interspecies Money and Soulbound Tokenization and commodification of nature. His Sacred Economics is a shill's endeavor. To clarity! https://youtu.be/jlid9JC-aCw
so.. as explained in this article he doesn't see things such as interspecies as de-facto absolutely bad. so why would he not have some involvement with them? IF you're looking for your Bill Gates is a blood drinking illuminati confirmation then Eisenstein is not your man. Plenty of other people to supply that opinion to you.
Right, he's a snake oil salesman that people are raising up as some sort of righteous character. Polarity is key after all. Did you watch the conversation I linked previously? Here's another one that might help frame the problem that discusses "community" and "social good": https://youtu.be/rh8ydL28N5g
Sorry - you'r talking to the wrong person. I'm not interested in whatever crawl space war Alison McDowell has decided to engage in with Eisenstein and certain other figures in progressive niches. I've been down those kind of roads - brought the T-shirt and was left to honestly reflect on the meagre balance left by such an escapade.
I don't view Eisenstein as some avatar of truth or arbiter of my opinion - so i don't need anyone to 'open my eyes' to how evil and wrong he is (something certain people apparently seem to spend a suspiciously large amount of effort on doing given that he is not exactly known outside of certain progressive niches).
As someone else aptly wrote - his article could be summarised as 'technology used beyond a certain sane and appropriate measure can become harmful to us all'.
I'm new here too. In order to comment one needs to subscribe. Whatever C Eisenstein's leaning, his essay does a good job inbshoeing how KS amd Co., Bill Gates, WEF and organizations have arrived at their conclusions that their way is the only (inevitable) way.
Hi - you mean why did I click a subscribe button for Charles Eisenstein? Because he expresses certain existential angsts in current society in an apt way- I had similar myseld at times. Despite the popular internetz crawlspaces trend from people who spend a but too much time immersed in them to call absolutely everyone in the public eye a 'grifter' or such I believe he is relatively sincere.
I am less impressed by any specific recommendations or ideas he has for reaching 'the more beautiful world out hearts know is possible' but it's still valuable for people to express & reinforce the general intent.
The problem with trying to separate leftists from progressivism/transhumanism is that they share a lack of exterior; no outside can exist, in their targeted ideal, they are all that exists. Period.
I'd be interested to know just who and/or what you consider to be in your category "leftists." What your definition of "leftists" is, and what evidence you can point to when you put progressivism and transhumanism in the kind of slash configuration that you do. It sounds more like you have decided on an enemy and use those words to name it, without a clear definition of any of those words.
Let’s put it this way…when I go to in person actions against this agenda, it isn’t the left supporting us. No, they’re the ones attacking us, driving cars into our protests, shooting up antimandate protests and attempting to bomb us.
Whenever anyone supports this bullshit, it tends to be leftoids of some kind (hammersickle types and vote blue types have mostly stood together on COVID1984, so I’m not gonna play the no true Scotsman game)
It’s also been the left that insists that they can’t coexist with anyone, that nothing outside and other than them can exist, with the backing of major institutions and media. Face it, you’re really not the revolution, 90% of your comrades embracing COVID1984 as a means of accelerationism was noted and won’t be forgotten.
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.
i think you are right that it was sold as a commodity, but more specifically, it was a movement that fell to capture rather quickly, through that commodification. controlled opposition is inherently tied to commodification.
it seems that the initial movement was one of overcompensation, and that a proper balance between the two worlds (primitive vs technological) takes some time to establish. maybe the time is ripe for that balance to be achieved.
time is running short, though, as CBDCs are right around the corner. hoping that may be the catalyst for a critical mass of humans to reject this system...
I think that there have always been groups of people who try as much as they can to live outside the system of the day, and I would say that that's precisely what these movements have done, is strike a good balance between the two worlds of primitive vs technological, mostly because they're the first to see the need for it.
100% agree. I said the same in part of my comment, although I used a lot more words. Brevity is not in my lexicon, but I so appreciate other like you for whom it is.
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?
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.
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.
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?
I believe that the globalist agenda will sputter and fail from internal contradictions if we only stand firm in our refusal to cooperate. But in case the totalitarian regime takes root, then surely it will need a pressure relief valve to keep dangerous dissidents like us from mixing with the crowds that they want to control. So sanctioned islands of escape seem plausible to me.
I suspect the 'sanctioned islands' in that scenario would turn out to be entire countries, in which case the world would effectively split along the lines Charles suggests. It would be very interesting - and potentially give poorer countries a huge injection of capital and skills hopefully mixed in with alternative values!
The globalist agenda is not new. What is new is the technology that makes total control a la 1984 possible. One must remember that the actual history of just the US for example is filled with insane cruelty, injustices, and atrocities; the slavery, the treatment of blacks, the annihlation of the natives, the treatment of workers, the wars and imperialism, etc. They have a long record of murder and assassinations. The industrialists like Prescott Bush who supported Hitler, etc. So, the idea of co-existence with those from the heart (the hippies), and those from the ego (the haters, narcissists, neo-nazis, and eugenicists) seems like the marriage of love and hate, which would be rocky, to say the least.
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."
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!
I reflected about this too, esp. as it's a subconscious action. My hunch is it's to do with comfort and security. The latter meaning a primitive motor response that is protective (the propagation of our species etc)? The surgeon who cited this did not expand on potential reasons, so I am open to other theories. (I occasionally sleep with my hands on my pelvis/lower belly and I also find that having a weighted pillow there if I can't fall asleep feels calming).
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.
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.
I share your fear that this is the most likely outcome (and to some extent the current state of things), that both the best of human experience and the best of transhuman experience will be hoarded by the elite. It would be similar to the 1927 movie Metropolis, where workers live in an undercity maintaining the machines that free the elites from practical concerns while the elites live in a garden paradise enjoying both intellectual pursuits and physical pursuits. Ironically, it might be the natural end-state of transhumanism that, once everything has been absorbed into a machine-society, the elites begin to feel disenchanted with it and then become the first to turn around and use their freedom to rediscover the natural world. I believe that's been a common cyclic pattern in many civilizations where, after a certain point, what was once viewed as a lifestyle of abject poverty is suddenly romanticized and seen as the highest thing to aspire to among the elites. This pattern is also brought to light in the old story of the fisherman and the businessman.
So that's my prediction. If humanity ever reaches the most extraordinary heights of science and technology that have ever been conceived of in fiction, it won't be long before those at the very top of the top of the top of society find themselves paying out everything they have for the privilege of living like monkeys.
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.
My wife had our 1st at home with the help of midwives, we're about to have another any day (also at home). I agree that natural birth ain't easy! I couldn't help but feel after my daughter was born that many women are shortchanging themselves with medicated/hospital births. They'll never understand the true strength and power within. My wife didn't know it was there until she tapped into it. Now that she knows it's there she uses it day in and day out.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
As a former (still?) leftist, I am experiencing the same difficulty with my far left family and friends. I love your last paragraph in which you describe patience and compassion. We each can only get there when we can get there, and in general we are all a bunch of adolescents, learning together.
It’s ultimately by example anyway, made apparent by how we choose or not choose to kindly interact with others, how we choose to live, as Rick Archer of ‘Buddha at the Gas Pump’ hints, that we have any right to offer advice or opinion. We need to be invited into the asking (‘There’s something different about you, and I want it, too .. what have you been doing differently?’) to offer advice or opinion.
I think part of the issue is in framing. We don’t want to point fingers at human enemies, but perhaps we can at broken systems we can all agree are broken. There are plenty of broken systems to choose from that those on the left and right can all agree upon - I’ve sure found them with friends on the right and our conversations are lively. The main thing is to speak without pitchfork language but with hope, with constructive dialogue and problem solving. We used to be able to do that, and we can choose to return to it.
I'm not here to defend "the left", I'm just saying it doesn't exist. It's strange because Americans have been fed so much propaganda about Communism so that the state could justify waging war on any country trying any alternative to Capitalism, with the US in charge, that you don't even know what it is! Apart from the scape goat.
I don't see any need to justify my right to give my opinion, nor to ingratiate myself to others whilst doing so. If I did, I'd be a politician.
Apologies- I don’t mean to offend, and I’m not sure what I said. Every one of us has a right to our opinion, our own interpretations after careful sensemaking. We need everyone’s reflections, insights and ideas. None of this will work unless we all know that our voices, our individual experiences matter.
I see the propaganda you speak of. I think we’ve been forced into left-right boxes due to our political system and to mass media and algorithms that feed outrage rather than togetherness and cooperation. Also, unfortunately, due to our own immaturity as a species.
Listening to our ‘other’ does not mean to stoop or ingratiate. Rather, it is a sign of respect given to another equally worthy human being. A namaste. I find that my most meaningful conversations now are either with those who entirely let down their guard and want to talk about possible meanings of life and our collective future, and with those who hold very different viewpoints but love to talk with me anyway as a ‘common ground, potential solutions’ endeavor. And to be perfectly honest, my very favorite conversations lately have been with a presently homeless man in our community who just wants his carefully built tiny enclave in the woods to be left alone by the city. He’s tired of rebuilding, of losing his belongings when the city once again razes his hidden home on public land. He’s beyond trying to fit into our clearly broken and absolutely unaffordable society. He loves the trees and the birds and the quiet, the stars and the wind, and any kind person willing to accept him just as he is. When I was a kid I longed to live like him, and now find myself in a glyphosated and sterile subdivision because we had to follow the job. We got boxed. I love my neighbors but I miss real community which for me must include along with humans stones and soil and toads. I miss real air and tangled wild spaces.
Not sure if you follow Naomi Klein or Joanna Macy or Vandana Shiva or Noam Chomsky or even Russell Brand (I HOPE I understand where he is going .. his YouTube stuff seems presently designed only to outrage but I think he’s collecting a larger audience .. by a means I am not enjoying) who have varying capacity and potential to move beyond our forced left and right boxes and point toward deeper problems that we all, separate from politics, can begin to troubleshoot together. I’ve also always thought of Charles as one of these folks.
I doubt I’ve addressed your concerns but thought I’d try. I’m low energy these days and have good and not so good listening and really hearing days. For this I again apologize.
I love how you framed all this! Part of what I’m hopeful about in the future is that what has divided us in the past (left v right or any other issue) will be recognized as counter-productive and we can all get busy with living an actual good life with our neighbor.
Why do you say "leftists" can't be pulled away from technology when the left barely exists in the world today? It's all very strange.
…you say this SERIOUSLY?
Everywhere anyone goes, it’s your goals, your ideas your very language shoved at on or in us at every turn.
It is the left that met those of us trying to end COVID1984 with threats, law enforcement, vehicles into crowds, gunfire and pipe bombs.
It is YOUR people that wish death on us for refusing these “vaccines”. Your chosen people that loved lockdowns, that devalued anything and everything that couldn’t exist virtually, called us nonessential and yes, CAUSED deaths.
You CHOSE these as your people and now would deny this. When an ideology produces legions of these “people” who are killing the rest of us and nothing more, that’s a fatal problem with said ideology.
All the lesser dead in this time of COVID1984 are at the feet of your chosen people.
Choose wisely. Tick tock.
You seem quite angry, and I suspect you have a different definition of the 'left' than I do.
I'd merely remind you that the most restrictive lockdown and forced vaccination regime outside of China was implemented by the right-wing government in Austria. Also, many of the orgs like WEF and Open Societies Foundation are just as much enemies of the left (OSF works with the CIA to undermine south american and african leftist revolutions).
If your perception of what is "left" is from an American lens and if Biden or Clinton would be included in that label, I'd suggest a more global perspective might benefit you deeply.
China STARTED these lockdowns 👁 started and spread yet another virus worse than the one that came out of their lab.
OSF & WEF currently love lefties, especially western ones as those are far more useful than the rest of us for their horribly inhuman plans to wipe out 90% of people.
Globally, much of the left has looooooved lockdowns. If I denied this, I may as well become a flat earther (might do so anyhow, if the free trip to space is still a thing)
And angry? YES I’m angry about this plan to kill 90% of people and make many of the survivors either envy that 90% or reduce them to such a pathetic subhuman state that they don’t know to envy the dead! That’s the big thing that has me angry!
A smaller issue that also annoys? Lefties looking to tie themselves in knots denying that most of their comrades drank the flavoraide gleefully, and acting like the rest of us didn’t come to the conclusion that this COVID1984 was all madness and highly *sinister* (yes, very deliberate word choice here 👁) before most on the left did, but you act like WE are the dumb ones and that you will lead us out of this.
With all due respect (nicely ambiguous phrase, that), no. No we don’t need you to lead us ANYWHERE, maybe, just MAYBE acknowledging that your side messed up bigly would be a good first step if you’re actually serious about a world where people on the left can coexist with others
i'm not here to defend 'the left' either but I would seriously invite you to reflect on your assumption that all of these technocratic authoritarian initiatives are carried out by 'the left'. I'm not sure in what sense multi national corporations with a militant profit incentive sand ruthless adherence free-market neo-liberal capitalism is in any meaningful sense 'left'.
The only way you could possibly conceive of that as 'leftist' is by invoking conspiracy theorists - such as the popular one that a bunch of grouchy intellectuals in Frankfurt somehow plotted the collapse of western society itself in exquisite detail and perfection- so that the take-over of the world by corporate mega churches and the filling of peoples' brains with instagram glamour models and dancers s somehow their ingenious brain child (even though they would clearly have despised this state of affairs)
I just completed a manuscript on “Woke Ideology” and wrote a chapter dealing with that conspiracy theory.
Fascinatingly, even Adorno became victim to students in a way many professors have now and Habermas went so far as to call the student uprisings “left fascism,” since it had nothing to do with anything they were arguing for.
They failed in their ultimate goal, which was to stop the rise of authoritarian behavior. And you’re right: they’d be appalled at the state surveillance and mass identitarianism (on all parts of the political spectrum) that we see today.
We prefer conspiracy realism at this point 🙄
They love your maskbrained comrades because the ideology demands a disconnect from material reality and subhuman levels of compliance
LOL ask the 80-90% of leftoids that love COVID1984 this question 🙄
Seems that’s more useful, if learning is what you want to do, then denying this very obvious correlation 👁
Maybe contemplate just WHY the WEF lizards find your “comrades” (who would turn on you for wrongthink in an instant) so damn useful
Hint: it may have to do with how y’all never have an answer for just how the state is supposed to whither away once you’ve assumed control over everyone and everything 🙄 Your ideology has a Great Reset of sorts baked in and you wonder why they “love” you
i'm really not sure who you think you are talking to.. I recommend you don't expend much more energy talking like this on the internet. Even if you are very sure of your convictions at least reflect on what utility pouring all this bile out is having (HINT - not very much). I'm not being sarky - i'm genuinely suggesting that indiscriminate ranting like this is not going to help anything or anyone. I mean what you wrote above has nothing to do with me - as am not a 'leftist'. So I can only assume that spraying stuff like this out from your keyboard represents some kind of Cathertic therapy.
ok.. fair enough. I'm just saying its a kind of therapy has very limited usefulness.
More useful than pretending that there’s noooo correlation between leftism and a love of COVID1984, even though all the vicious bastards who Ave come at me, sometimes violently, over the past 2 years have been some variety of leftoid.
You not experiencing this likely means you hid your views or engaged in self censorship, which is cringe.
And LOL at this WhO dO yOu ThInK yOuRe TaLkInG tO nonsense…none of your comrades ever asked themselves this about us 👁
Folks, Charles is in bed with the UN World Food Program via Celo, Interspecies Money and Soulbound Tokenization and commodification of nature. His Sacred Economics is a shill's endeavor. To clarity! https://youtu.be/jlid9JC-aCw
so.. as explained in this article he doesn't see things such as interspecies as de-facto absolutely bad. so why would he not have some involvement with them? IF you're looking for your Bill Gates is a blood drinking illuminati confirmation then Eisenstein is not your man. Plenty of other people to supply that opinion to you.
Right, he's a snake oil salesman that people are raising up as some sort of righteous character. Polarity is key after all. Did you watch the conversation I linked previously? Here's another one that might help frame the problem that discusses "community" and "social good": https://youtu.be/rh8ydL28N5g
On Polarity: https://odysee.com/@TechNOcracyNow:d/Polarity-is-Key-as-Human%2B-Catalyst:6?r=A5uUJzm67Qr8X6BzBtJ3FkAz4rA7AXHP
Sorry - you'r talking to the wrong person. I'm not interested in whatever crawl space war Alison McDowell has decided to engage in with Eisenstein and certain other figures in progressive niches. I've been down those kind of roads - brought the T-shirt and was left to honestly reflect on the meagre balance left by such an escapade.
I don't view Eisenstein as some avatar of truth or arbiter of my opinion - so i don't need anyone to 'open my eyes' to how evil and wrong he is (something certain people apparently seem to spend a suspiciously large amount of effort on doing given that he is not exactly known outside of certain progressive niches).
As someone else aptly wrote - his article could be summarised as 'technology used beyond a certain sane and appropriate measure can become harmful to us all'.
best of luck to you - i'm just not your audeicne.
I'm new here. Can you tell me why you subscribe to this Substack? Genuinely interested. (THANKS for repeating that summary.)
I'm new here too. In order to comment one needs to subscribe. Whatever C Eisenstein's leaning, his essay does a good job inbshoeing how KS amd Co., Bill Gates, WEF and organizations have arrived at their conclusions that their way is the only (inevitable) way.
Hi - you mean why did I click a subscribe button for Charles Eisenstein? Because he expresses certain existential angsts in current society in an apt way- I had similar myseld at times. Despite the popular internetz crawlspaces trend from people who spend a but too much time immersed in them to call absolutely everyone in the public eye a 'grifter' or such I believe he is relatively sincere.
I am less impressed by any specific recommendations or ideas he has for reaching 'the more beautiful world out hearts know is possible' but it's still valuable for people to express & reinforce the general intent.
The problem with trying to separate leftists from progressivism/transhumanism is that they share a lack of exterior; no outside can exist, in their targeted ideal, they are all that exists. Period.
I'd be interested to know just who and/or what you consider to be in your category "leftists." What your definition of "leftists" is, and what evidence you can point to when you put progressivism and transhumanism in the kind of slash configuration that you do. It sounds more like you have decided on an enemy and use those words to name it, without a clear definition of any of those words.
Let’s put it this way…when I go to in person actions against this agenda, it isn’t the left supporting us. No, they’re the ones attacking us, driving cars into our protests, shooting up antimandate protests and attempting to bomb us.
Whenever anyone supports this bullshit, it tends to be leftoids of some kind (hammersickle types and vote blue types have mostly stood together on COVID1984, so I’m not gonna play the no true Scotsman game)
It’s also been the left that insists that they can’t coexist with anyone, that nothing outside and other than them can exist, with the backing of major institutions and media. Face it, you’re really not the revolution, 90% of your comrades embracing COVID1984 as a means of accelerationism was noted and won’t be forgotten.
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.
When have "we tried the hippy parallel"? It was bought and sold as a commodity, but that's just more of the same.
i think you are right that it was sold as a commodity, but more specifically, it was a movement that fell to capture rather quickly, through that commodification. controlled opposition is inherently tied to commodification.
it seems that the initial movement was one of overcompensation, and that a proper balance between the two worlds (primitive vs technological) takes some time to establish. maybe the time is ripe for that balance to be achieved.
time is running short, though, as CBDCs are right around the corner. hoping that may be the catalyst for a critical mass of humans to reject this system...
I think that there have always been groups of people who try as much as they can to live outside the system of the day, and I would say that that's precisely what these movements have done, is strike a good balance between the two worlds of primitive vs technological, mostly because they're the first to see the need for it.
100% agree. I said the same in part of my comment, although I used a lot more words. Brevity is not in my lexicon, but I so appreciate other like you for whom it is.
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?
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.
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?
I believe that the globalist agenda will sputter and fail from internal contradictions if we only stand firm in our refusal to cooperate. But in case the totalitarian regime takes root, then surely it will need a pressure relief valve to keep dangerous dissidents like us from mixing with the crowds that they want to control. So sanctioned islands of escape seem plausible to me.
I suspect the 'sanctioned islands' in that scenario would turn out to be entire countries, in which case the world would effectively split along the lines Charles suggests. It would be very interesting - and potentially give poorer countries a huge injection of capital and skills hopefully mixed in with alternative values!
The globalist agenda is not new. What is new is the technology that makes total control a la 1984 possible. One must remember that the actual history of just the US for example is filled with insane cruelty, injustices, and atrocities; the slavery, the treatment of blacks, the annihlation of the natives, the treatment of workers, the wars and imperialism, etc. They have a long record of murder and assassinations. The industrialists like Prescott Bush who supported Hitler, etc. So, the idea of co-existence with those from the heart (the hippies), and those from the ego (the haters, narcissists, neo-nazis, and eugenicists) seems like the marriage of love and hate, which would be rocky, to say the least.
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."
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!
Why did past people wake from anesthesia with their hand on their groin? Genuinely curious.
I reflected about this too, esp. as it's a subconscious action. My hunch is it's to do with comfort and security. The latter meaning a primitive motor response that is protective (the propagation of our species etc)? The surgeon who cited this did not expand on potential reasons, so I am open to other theories. (I occasionally sleep with my hands on my pelvis/lower belly and I also find that having a weighted pillow there if I can't fall asleep feels calming).
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.
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.
I share your fear that this is the most likely outcome (and to some extent the current state of things), that both the best of human experience and the best of transhuman experience will be hoarded by the elite. It would be similar to the 1927 movie Metropolis, where workers live in an undercity maintaining the machines that free the elites from practical concerns while the elites live in a garden paradise enjoying both intellectual pursuits and physical pursuits. Ironically, it might be the natural end-state of transhumanism that, once everything has been absorbed into a machine-society, the elites begin to feel disenchanted with it and then become the first to turn around and use their freedom to rediscover the natural world. I believe that's been a common cyclic pattern in many civilizations where, after a certain point, what was once viewed as a lifestyle of abject poverty is suddenly romanticized and seen as the highest thing to aspire to among the elites. This pattern is also brought to light in the old story of the fisherman and the businessman.
So that's my prediction. If humanity ever reaches the most extraordinary heights of science and technology that have ever been conceived of in fiction, it won't be long before those at the very top of the top of the top of society find themselves paying out everything they have for the privilege of living like monkeys.
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.
My wife had our 1st at home with the help of midwives, we're about to have another any day (also at home). I agree that natural birth ain't easy! I couldn't help but feel after my daughter was born that many women are shortchanging themselves with medicated/hospital births. They'll never understand the true strength and power within. My wife didn't know it was there until she tapped into it. Now that she knows it's there she uses it day in and day out.
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".
So grateful for your brilliant ability to communicate! You are a true modern day philosopher and profit.
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.
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.
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
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.