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July 15, 2004
Humanities Coming Long Life and Prosperity
Humanity is going to survive. Already we are undergoing rapid technological change, becoming more modular, flexible and adaptable. In a very real sense almost every human alive today is in the process of becoming transhuman.
This is an issue I’ve thought about a long time – the future, the future of humanity, of life and intelligence. It would be fair to say it has been my life long obsession. For almost that entire time, this obsession has taken its toll on my ego, resulting in times of joy, optimism and delight, as well as grief, sorrow and crippling paranoia. I’ve delved deep into both science and mysticism, inner and outer space, looking for answers, clues to where life is heading. Some would say that life is heading nowhere in particular, that it is nothing more than a product of blind evolution and random mutation meandering its way through time. But yet, there is evolution. Although perhaps on the microscopic scale random mutation reigns supreme, over time there is a clear movement from simplicity to complexity. From homogeneity to diversity. From entropy to extropy. Now life has filled every niche, even niches that no scientist could ever have thought possible less than a decade ago. There is life in the bottom of the ocean, in high pressure boiling water, and miles deep below the Antarctic ice shelf. Humanity with our intelligence has steadily moved from cave dwelling hunter gatherers, barely surviving from one generation to the next, into a global species capable of surviving everywhere, even in the cold vacuum of outerspace.
There is a vector then to this march of evolution through time. And it hasn’t come without its fair share of bruises. Solar Storms, tectonic shifts, cometary and meteor impacts, global atmospheric poisoning, super-volcanoes, ice ages and global warming – resulting in at least 5 major extinctions in earth’s history.
And now we have our modern era. One that for most people is filled with fear and gloom, and what some scientista are now saying is earths sixth great extinction. Throughout history humanity has had its own fair share of bruises - starvation, disease, famine, wars, plagues, cultural clashes, and mother nature. Yet we have survived every manner of both environmental assault and human folly. And now in our present era we are experiencing the most rapid change our planet has ever seen, due almost entirely to a feedback loop in which we are directly amplifying and being amplified by. Depending on who you talk to, and more importantly how you interpret the overwhelming amount of incoming data, we are either heading for extinction or transcending into something altogether new and spectacular – a quantum evolutionary leap equivalent or exceeding in magnitude all evolutionary leaps before it.
At this point almost every intelligent person has weighed in on the subject. Technologist like Bill Joy thinks that our chances of survival are slim. The astophysicist Martin Rees and the technologist-inventor Ray Kurzweil are putting our odds at around 50/50. And the Singularitarians are saying that unless a super intelligence can be created soon, are odds of making it are less than 1%. So who’s right? One thing is for certain, the means of our destruction are multiplying and falling into ever greater numbers of hands. As Mark Pesce says, we are rapidly approaching the day when, for all intents and purposes, every child will have tactical nuclear weapons.
Yet, despite these alleged facts and expert pontificated probabilities, I’m placing my bets on the survival and prosperity of intelligent life. And it won’t be just survival that is life’s inheritance, but abundant, glorious, diverse and ultimately supremely happy life expanding rapidly out into the universe towards infinity.
How did I come to this conclusion? First and foremost life has always made it, and the historical evidence continues to mount. But more importantly - despite every major new piece of data that says we shouldn't be here, we shouldn't have survived, our existence is testament that we did! The fact that anything exists at all is pretty miraculous. And according to inflationary theory, our universe teeters on the edge of zero-point vacuum fluctuations that could wipe us all out in an instant. Yet we are still here! But something more than just scientific evidence moved me to this conclusion. Not long ago, for a few precious moments I slipped the bonds of my ego long enough to see that life is doing just fine, despite my own ego’s particular problems or worries to the contrary. All my life, I have in some manner placed my ego at the center of what is important, what constitutes what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’, what will improve our odds of survival and/or diminish it. Like most people, I deeply feared death in some manner or other. Yet, as I look around at all that is happening, my ego, and probably yours too is under assault from constant accelerating change, information anxiety, unpredictability and increasing uncertainty as to whether we as individuals will survive. Because I placed my worldview within the context of my ego, I increasingly came to the conclusion that life will not make it. When it is more accurate to say that any one individual life, including mine is faced with greater uncertainty. In turn I placed my ego in line with humanity and life as a whole, mistakingly placing the odds of my survival in line with that of the whole species. Having transcended my ego long enough to see this, I no longer despair at what has always been true anyway, that my ego will not survive even if my physical form remains intact. The changes are too drastic for my ego to remain intact. Each day our ego's go through almost imperceptible little mini-deaths and rebirths. Every so often, a traumatic even results in a larger death and rebirth of our worldview. Hopefully this rebirth results in a more positive and life affirming mindset. As the world goes through more change, our ego has to evolve, and transcend itself more and more if it hopes to stay in the game, amidst increasing novelty and unpredictability.
In every sense the world politic has never been more unstable than it is now. Those in power are feeling this change even more than we are. While we experienced the ups and downs of economic cycles, those at the top lived under relative stability. But now the degree of change is so rapid, that even their cocoon of stability is under direct assault. Their long used habits of maintaining the status quo are failing, and they are having to constantly re-think new ways of maintaining control. As a friend reminded me recently quoting Star Wars, "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers". This fact is scaring the hell out of them, and so they are rapidly making attempts to bring the entire resources of the globe under their direct control. The evidence is all around us. The question is will they succeed? No. They may come close, but things are moving way too fast now. Change is so great that all their models of control are obsoleted before they can ever become policy. In the time it takes them to think up a new method of control, life and change have evolved past their model. Unfortunately these people are really desperate. Think of them as drug addicts who have become long accustomed to having absolute power, or at least sufficient power to maintain their way of life. They are now loosing that power to the decentralized forces of the network. More and more power is falling into the hands of more and more people, at ever cheaper costs. Al Qaeda may be a convenient boogeyman for them, but it is also symbolic of this decentralization that is scaring them so much.
Bruce Sterling has speculated that this decentralization of power is going to make for one very crazy ride, where thugs of every variety will be committing atrocities all over the globe. A complete breakdown of nation states into tribal feuding thugs, duking it out for control of markets and territories, while the rest of us are caught in the middle. I have no doubt this is one likely possibility. Unfortunately, this acceleration of technological savvy and networked intelligence will continue to increase, and those thugs in turn will find it increasingly difficult to maintain any kind of control.
Meanwhile, the chances of accidental or intentional release of a nasty bug that wipes out a large percentage of humanity is becoming more likely. The question is how will humanity respond to all of this? If there is one thing people hate it is despotism. Every chance people are given a chance they always choose democracy. Despite ever increasing stupidity of the US government in attempting to lock down the internet, the world is wising up to this. I have no idea how any of this will shape up or shake out. My guess is there is going to be a lot of death and destruction. I would not be surprised at all if 80% or more of humanity is wiped out ever the next 20 years. Some have even said that is in fact the agenda of those in power. That may be so, but their biggest mistake will be thinking they will control this new world in the wake of so much death and destruction. Although 80% of humanity might be dead, the remaining 20% are going to be extremely motivated. And even though the technologies of control will be unprecedented, so too will the power of technology be in the streets. The collective power of the network made possible by ever smarter social software will allow collective action like the world has never seen. The balance of power is already shifting in this direction at rapid pace, and desperate attempts to tip that balance back will be temporary at best.
So after every major catastrophe, despotism, global war, nuclear attacks, biological virus, there will be survivors. Because if life has learned anything is that it wants to survive. And humanity being the intelligent edge of this evolutionary life force will use all of its drive to survive. Through the massive collective action of individuals powered by decentralized networks, people will build new communities and move forward past all of these horrible atrocities. We/They will look back at all the mistakes that were made that led to such devastation and vow never to repeat them. We/They will be deeply grateful to all of us alive today who lived right now doing our best to sort it all out, and who were alive as humanity and all of life enters the coming bottleneck. Life and in turn humanity will go on to prosper, evolve into transhumanity, post-humanity taking the best of everything and shedding the worst as it moves out into the cosmos. Our ego's have no choice.
Hey! Good morning, sunshine! Glad to see you're back in the light. ;)
I agree with a lot of what you are saying, Paul. We are moving into a time of great upheaval, where the population of humans has grown so large so quickly that all of our control mechanisms are failing. Humanity has grown quite unwieldy and we're trying to come to terms with this fact. How do we effectively manage dwindling resources? How do we prevent our huge population from becoming a fine dining opportunity for any number of bacteria or virii? How do we contain ancient tribal conflicts that have grown and mechanized into machines of modern warfare? We are adolescents facing maturity and trying to fend it off at the same time. We have some serious growing pains. The human ape must shed its instincts in order to evolve further. Tribal conflicts, alpha males warring over resources, beating their chests and showing their teeth: these are habits of the Old Aeons wearing thin on the rest of us simple lazy apes. The dream of the collective is freedom, luxury, and the languid ease of a long life.
I believe anything is possible.
Posted by: lvx23 at July 15, 2004 11:35 PMYep, I went into quasi-hibernation mode. I've been busy taking care of more mundane concerns, with the site being unavailable and all. It also allowed me some valuable time to engage in some long overdo mental vacation activities. :)
Posted by: Paul Hughes at July 15, 2004 11:52 PMIf 80% of human population dies then I don't think the infrastructure which provides our computers with electricity and high bandwidth network access will survive. This global earth thing is just too much interconnected now. If one part collapses then it takes down the others, too.
We are in the midst of an unprecedented explosion in technology, and more importantly the power of that technology is increasingly in the hands of the people.
The Internet has OBSOLETED all forms of Hierarchy. They are all ending. The trick is not to pay too much attention to the death throws of the old system.
There has never been a better time to be optimistic. All the tools to end large scale human suffering are at our fingertips and the powers-that-be can no longer repress peoples' natural desire for a better world.
Of course, if you watch the mass media, the mouth of the old hierachical system, you get depressed, cause they derive their power from fear. They have most people hypnotized by fear, having been fed a steady diet of disasters, war, murders, disease etc since infancy.
But this is only an illusion. Trying reading sciencedaily.com. Almost everyday there's a medical breakthrough that will astound you. Yesterday they reported on a breakthrough using genetic engineering to modify the immune system to eliminate skin cancer a formerly incurable disease.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/07/040715075529.htm
Cancer will be controlled or cured within ten years or so. Virtually all other human diseases will be eliminated as biology shifts from hardware to software.
Numerous alternatives to oil are available, and soon cars will run on inexhaustible fuels like water.
The pessimism going around is certainly understandible given our lame-ass president. Let's hope this pathetic chapter in our history is coming to an end.
But I believe that one of the main reasons that people are so apocalyptic now, is that envisioning some kind of dramatic global disaster, like viruses wiping everyone out, is somehow more comforting, than the truth that the future is exploding with potential and that we'll actually have to take responsibility for fullfilling our wildest dreams.
Marianne Williamson's famous quote is appropriate here:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are POWERFUL BEYOND MEASURE.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us."
Cheers,
Dlight
I feel this fear (of awakening to the knowledge that "we are powerful beyond measure") in every single moment of my life. I admit that I feel VERY frightened of this possibility and I spend an enormous amount of energy every day to block this inner "something" from coming out. I know beyond doubt that by holding back I cause a great amount of suffering to myself and everyone around me, and by letting go, life would possibly be much-much better, but I simply cannot find a way to get rid of my blocks and let this "whatever" happen: even the tiniest bit of this inner reality is way too powerful and scary for my everyday "me" now.
This all started with an LSD experience which I had about 7 years ago. It was my first trip, and it was a full-blown psychedelic experience: I was taken beyond anything that I ever dreamt about reality. I would say that on that first trip, I truly understood the basis of this world. I was at the root of the Tree of Life, at the end of the road, at the last step, where the whole phenomenal world - consisting of ideas manifesting in myriad analogic forms in a fractal-like way - was totally understood (I mentally managed to trace back every possible phenomenon to the basic principles of the Four Elements - Earth, Fire, Water, Air - as sources of everything). As I became convinced that I understood the phenomenal world on all levels, in its totality, this strong, undeniable sense of mental fulfillment and satisfaction triggered a release of all my clingings to the phenomenal world (I feel that the Holy Grail of Science, the Unified Grand Theory is an archetypical symbol of this final understanding when the truth-seeker is fulfilled, steps back and makes place for the Lover of God). After stepping beyond the basic duality of Truth and Justice ("science") I arrived at the Singularity of Love ("religion"): I was left face-to-face in profound silence with the only "thing" left, my (and my world's) polar opposite: a central light which I would call God.
This grand opposite called me to unite with it, to rest in it, to be one with it. It was a very gentle, almost sensual feeling, this calling. I was affected to the last bit of myself. With tears in my eyes, I felt God's infinite Love, the totality of every possible feeling, every emotion, the 100%, with bad and good being fused together, pouring out from the centre of God's heart. After all the eons of suffering, the desperate longing was about to be satisfied, the world was about to meet the Father again. It was a feeling of coming home, of being taken back to the Kingdom: very deep, very moving, very spiritual feelings/intuitions which are so strong, so absolute that you cannot think about them as something apart from you any more: they ARE you, these experiences, as if you yourself became the experience of bowing down and giving in and letting go... (forgive me, I cannot give this experience the proper treatment - you may get a feeling possibly from what I'm babbling here.)
Then, as I slowly drifted towards this "velvet center of the universe", suddenly it came, like an alarm clock, a flash of undescribable terror, a warning sign, that I as an independent entity will undoubtedly DIE if I let my "self" unite with God. This realization shocked me like lightning down to my very depths: in an instant I was propelled out of the entrance to Paradise, got back to the outer reality and Earth-time started to tick again (I came to the theory that the above events happened in one single moment which then - thanks to the circumstances or my karma or God's will - acted as a doorway to the timeless dimension, like a door of the Temple of a Thousand Doors in Michael Ende's Neverending Story). I was really terrified and my "reality" was absolutely fucked up. I was so much under the effect of what just happened that my notions of "me" and the "world" simply didn't exist. I had a clear and vivid remembrance of being in God's presence and the meaning of all what I've just seen, and at the same time I was standing in the middle of the phenomenal world, not knowing even if I actually exist in some form or not. My mind was so clean like that of a child being born at that moment. Fortunately, fate somehow found a route and recreated my reality for me, but when the effects of the drug wore off, this reality was changed forever.
For me, this first trip was like an initiation into the highest order of existence, into the Core of Everything. The whole external world melted to nothing, even my senses were "replaced" with their inner equivalents: my vision, my hearing and even my soul and my mind became only servants of the Grandest Magician, without any selfish self-purpose at all, they faithfully displayed the deeply symbolic, visual/aural/mental/emotional expressions of God's Word (at the end I was about to become nothing else but God's Word). This first trip got me connected with powers of such unbelievable grandeur which are simply billions time more powerful than anything I've ever experienced as a human being. On that trip, I got into such mind-boggling, awesome realizations about the Universe that I could not even think about them afterwards as they were expressed in a "language" which was based on something much more fundamental than human rational intellect (later I found very close parallels in the scriptures and commentary works of the Buddhist tradition).
Since then, I experienced very powerful inner realities while tripping. But I never got to even 1/1000000 of what I "experienced" on this first trip. Since then, all my trips are earth-bound, I never ever managed to break free from these bonds that keep us focused at this particular frequency range. I could not find the door again, no matter how hard I tried (and I did). But the energy, the unbelievable grandeur still appeared, only in a disguised, much down-scaled, I would say "transformed" way. As if my being would transform for me the billions of watts of power inside to something which I could handle with my limited human facilities. During my upcoming trips, I slowly came to know a deeper "self" inside myself which I would not call human at all; it is much more like a very intelligent, dragon-like alien, which only uses my human being as kind of an "interface" to this outer reality. When I experience this dragon-self, I feel it to be much closer to my true identity than my earthly self. This led me to the belief that if I could just wake up once as that alien being then all my worldly problems would be instantly solved because then all my decisions would be based on the intuitive first-hand knowledge of the universe that this inner being possesses and not the limited earth-bound rationalizations (which always seem really very limited in comparison). As a dragon, I possess a very charming kind of alien "elegance": I can intuitively dance with the world, but as a human, I feel like a brick, a very short-sighted, robotic, mechanic kind of existence which is severely limited by what it thinks to be possible.
The problem is that I have a tremendous fear of this dragon. He seems to be a very dangerous entity. It is so free, so far away from the moral, ethical principles of humanity that I feel it would totally disrupt all "my" human relations and transform me into something like a monster. It is bound only by that thing which Chogyam Trungpa used to call "Crazy Wisdom", it is like a spiritual warrior, whose only source of power is Truth and Love, but Truth and Love in God's sense, not the world's sense. (And to me it seems that God thinks a "bit" different about these things as we limited human beings.) If you add to this the fact that the Christian tradition uses the serpent as the symbol of evil (even if the Chinese think otherwise), plus that the Book of Enoch talks about 12 keys which, when collected, can be used to open the gate through which the furious dragon enters into this world, this all starts to become pretty scary.
It's sad that our culture cannot give any pointers, any guidance in cases like this. Sometimes I feel so alone... Not even my psychedelic friends have any sort of idea of what I'm going through. And living through this all by myself is a tremendous task. I've read a lot since then but most spiritual works talk only about the positive side of spirituality. There is very little mention of how to deal with the dark side of ourselves. So I have to find this out all by myself. (I admit that the final scenes of Matrix: Revolutions were a big help - these Wachowskis really know something.)
So for me, letting go is definitely not easy. I really wouldn't like to "fulfill the wildest dreams" of this dragon being until I'm completely sure that this is OK and fits into God's plan (okay, by theory this shouldn't be a problem - as He is One/Everything -, but this fear in me sits too deep and cannot be touched by theoretical considerations).
Thanks for reading.
And sorry for my bad English.
Dear Cellux,
Thanks for the extremely open confirmation of the fear that I was describing. I thought this fear was more of a subtle unconscious thing, but it's cool to see that someone is plainly aware of it.
There are very effective (non-drug) therapies available to help you integrate the huge chasm between the ecstatic world you experienced, and the responding fearful one. The dragon that you speak of is just one of many of powerful personalities inside of us, that result from us compartmentalizing and blocking our deep energy channels. You can systematically heal this, becoming more and more comfortable and integrated with your almost unlimited inner power.
Email me if you like, perhaps I can help.
Best of luck,
Dlight
Dear Cellux,
Thanks for writing in your heartfelt thoughts. I resonate with a lot of what you are saying. I have felt often what you talk about. For me there seems to be a threshold which I always turn away from at the last second. Immediately beyond this threshold lies infinite power and freedom. On the surface this sounds like what deep down all of us want. But when I get to this threshold, the deep core, viceral part of myself, almost instictually pulls back, sensing perhaps that "I" would be destroyed if I go any further. Its very paradoxical, this feeling.
However, over the last several years I have learned to integrate negative emotions very effectively. This has allowed me to push this threshold further out, to even cross over it in some very real sense. In the last four years or so, I have achieved sublimes states of ecstacy, bliss, and radical happiness that I never even knew could exist. I'm not waxing poetic, I'm actually being literally serious. Each time I get into one of these extreme happy states one my first thoughts is, "Wow, I bet no one has ever imagined that a human being could experience this!". "Wow, the universe allows these states to exist, or more accurately maybe I'm experiencing the real universe, and the other more mundane realities are the illusion." Now, I know these states to not only be real and extraordinary, but they are a more accurate reflection of the real reality. I don't buy anymore the ultra-post-modernist, relativistic/nihilist/existentialist view that all realities are arbitrary, and in essence "equal". That's pure bullshit, no matter how elegant that view is intellectually. After more than 15 years of this post-modernist nihilism, I finally stepped out of it long enough to experience these states, which has changed my life utterly for the better. I now endeavor to help others get there too.
If you are interested in finding out more of the SPECIFICS of how I personally do this, please write to me at psiphius at yahoo.com
Warmest Regards,
Paul
Posted by: Paul Hughes at July 20, 2004 09:35 PMI believe we will survive: Our communications technology will grow as our physical technology develops as well. We will organize online, and we will be more receptive.
What gives me great hope is this: Every day, I get into a ton of metal, and drive it 60 MPH in one direction. Meanwhile, a steady stream of large metal bullets flying directly my way at 60 MPH *nearly missing me* by about 2-5 feet. This goes on for some time, every day of the week.
And for the most part, it works out okay.
Posted by: Lion Kimbro at July 20, 2004 09:40 PMit's your ego. it doesn't want to die. it's programmed to survive. that's why you can't cross the threshold of the self and go "beyond" to a realm where you as an individual don't exist. ego. narcissism. it's very animal and very human.
Posted by: daniel at July 22, 2004 09:10 PMwe don't even need drugs
just realize that this is a dream
when you expand your sense of self it becomes a lucid dream
you can change reality at will around you
you're a thought organism living in a body created out of your mind, not the other way around
when you shed your ego and construct more acurate reality maps, you're able to surf the waves of hyperspace
there are really infinite earths
everything is
it doesn't matter how many things get destroyed because anthropically no one will be there to contemplate their nonexistance
all that matters is the the system keeps iterating to infinity
it always has
and it always will
maybe
Posted by: Phil at July 23, 2004 07:09 PM