Okay. For this post at least, I will use Wikipedia definitions
until I can update them with RL dictionary and encyclopedia references. I
apologize, it's a cop-out I usually do not do, unless I feel lazy, or in this
case, do not currently have access to my reference books, since they are packed
in a box currently.
Has anyone taken a look at society lately? Noticed how
fractured it is? I am quickly realizing that the growing division in
humanity is an underlying reason why I buy into Transhumanism,
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism)
though I don't buy into the posthuman bit, I think our sense of individuality
is too strong for that. Also, strong language, strong opinions, and
unfairness will abound following this sentence. That being said, tell me
what you think.
This is a post I should have done first, I realize, but this blog is
so all over the place, first a political thing, then tech and transhumanism
oriented, now it is some bastard-child hybrid of the two. It has evolved,
as have my opinions, since I started seeing the world for what it is and not
through the rose colored glasses of the far left or far right. Inertia,
friction, and gravity have conspired to bring me to the lowest point in the arc
of my opinions and keep me there. Know what? For the first time
since I left the church, I feel content. My opinions are now based more
on being part of humanity that being human.
Being part of humanity, I have come to a stark realization. We desperately hold onto personal descriptors that really mean
nothing.
We are constantly being forced
to believe they do, as though they have a supernatural power to protect us from
the bogeyman. Is there a difference between being proud of whom you are as
opposed to what you are?
What you are is
simple: human.
Nothing more, though many
would have you believe you are much less.
What seems to be one of the goals of
the transhumanist philosophy, what I gather from it, is to mitigate the power
of those descriptors. Race, gender, physical appearance, age, what are
they? When it comes down to it, they literally are nothing more than a
fluke of timing. One more stoplight, one more beer, even something as
trivial as a bad grade on your older sibling’s report card and you might not be
here.
It doesn't take much to disrupt
the events leading to fifteen minutes of sweating and groaning followed by
someone shuddering in orgasm. And yet, we allow skin color, hair color,
sexual organs or our time on earth to trivialize our existence.
Guess how trivial your existence is (without further demeaning
yourself with a useless descriptor)? You are unique, and interesting,
just like the six and a half billion other people on mother earth.
Feel better? And yet we allow ourselves
to be cut off from that number by these stupid categories, which, instead of
defining us and distinguishing us, demoralize and weaken us.
Race, gender, physical appearance, and age. These four
categories have been the foundation of all discrimination, intolerance,
repression and oppression since man began singing history (history has its root
in the Greek “histor” meaning inquiry, knowledge from inquiry, or judge, not
“his story” as some theists and a few other “ists” would have you mistakenly
believe). Just read any religious or historical text or any myth.
Now, I am not saying that most of us
have control over how these characteristic affect our lives.
I realize that the majority of cultures are
still scrabbling their way out of a pit created by perceptions that stem from
the dark ages.
This part of my opinion
is geared, somewhat selfishly, toward my particular culture, United States
American, and somewhat to the entirety of
modern western civilization, both seeming desperate to find a shovel
they will use to dig a new pit, since the dark ages were so… comforting.
Think of it like this: What if you were able to look as old or
as young as you wanted? Wanted to be a tanned bronzed beach goddess
today, or a dashing black-skinned prince this evening? What if you
were to be that "light through yon window breaks" or standing with a
sword in hand in the winter of our discontent? What would the world be
like if we put on appearances like we put on clothes? How liberating
would it be if you were defined by how adroit your mind is instead of how tall
you are? Through transhumanism, all these and more are possible.
I will also be continuing this into two or three other posts. One will focus on women in the modern environment and the emerging environment of the future, and one will be about all those cry babies whining because they are being oppressed for their religion and the lack of a place in the future for religion.
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