The fall of the metamachine will be a catastrophe on an unprecedented scale. It will cause immense suffering. This should never be minimized or avoided. Still, it must come down, if we want to remain human. If we want the earth to remain the earth. All of it must be kept from those who believe that man is a "hackable animal" and that nature is standing reserve.
Things I need to do in the meantime:
First step, stop shoring up the imperium in whatever form it may take. Particularly, as it lives in my own heart.
Next, learn how to do real things. How to make things, fix things and grow things. Natural farming for example.
Learn to walk in spiritual darkness and unknowing. St. John of the Cross, the Cloud of Unknowing, etc.
1. US (and to a lesser extent, UK) concepts of "left" vs "right", "liberal" vs "conservative" really make sense only within the context of contemporary US/UK politics.
Hence the interminable internet debates about "was Hitler really a socialist"? Answer: yes, if you cherry pick your facts, just as one could make an equally valid argument that he was an uber-conservative, if you cherry pick your facts.
2. IIRC, humans tried a similar transhumanist experiment with the "godbuilders" in the early USSR. It did not end well. If humans would just try to be more like cats, or would just learn their place, none of this would be necessary.
Thank you for the recommendation. Perhaps, we can pull the Machine down, but if not, there need to be spaces set aside in the hearts of men for wilderness, the Divine, and all that is sacred. Marx wrote of modernity: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred is profaned.” My life's work is to invert that, and to re-sanctify all that has been profaned.
I picked up a three volume "spiritual history" of the west at the church bookstore the other day. By an Orthodox priest/blogger names John Strickland; it's a history of Christendom from Pentecost onward and how it more or less desecrated itself into the ideology of man-made "utopias." He identifies the schism of 1054 as when things began to go badly for the West. Quite an interesting read; may be something that would interest you as his diagnosis is not dissimilar to yours.
Enoch- I have gotten a lot from Fr. Strickland's work. It is a big reason I became (Western-Rite) Orthodox. I am looking forward to the final volume of the the series, concerning our own time, The Age of Nihilism. I believe it will be out this Fall.
Once you are deeper into the books, I would love to hear your thoughts on the whole series and its implications for the topic at hand, i.e., the machine and human flourishing, spiritual and otherwise. -Jack
Thanks Jack - I'm honestly a few weeks away from posting the first-ever essay on my sub stack (heretofore they've been published in other places) and I'm planning on posting a few thoughts there, eventually. it's a good series so far.
As I said, I have gotten a lot out of Fr. Strickland's books. It is from a perspective we need more of, I think. I look forward to your first post. -Jack
Thanks for the Guardian reference. That was a fascinating read. I thought it was interesting that Bohan (the transhumanist) used to study literature but gave it up after she discovered transhumanism. She also said something that struck me: that fiction, as an exploration of the human experience, was a tragic repetition of “We work, we learn, we love, we lose, we die,”, and that transhumanism offered something “better”.
I don’t think she quite sees how much of a poet and storyteller she herself has become; only she is projecting her imagination not with words and verse, but with tech discoveries and optimistic futurism. She even calls her book a “love letter to humanity”.
That doesn’t negate her argument, but I’m often struck by how much new tech developments are invariably accompanied by spokespeople (often physically attractive, verbally articulate, and upbeat) who don’t actually know much about the stuff they’re talking about, but sure do a good job at getting everybody to pay attention and to believe.
Peter- The photos of Bohan that accompanied the article were an interesting touch. I can't imagine the same kind of photo shoot being done for a Ray Kurzweill piece, for example. -Jack
Yes, I noted the photos too. Striking with their black-white contrasts, grey cityscapes, and meditative facial expressions. The sense of sweet dystopia.
Today I've been alternating between reading the Guardian article with Bohan and listening to the Corruption of Christianity interview with Ivan Illich. Good combo!
I just read the Erik Hoel essay. Something about it leaves me uneasy. Yes, maybe I agree with his broader take, i.e., humans must remain human. There are a few things at loose ends with his position.
1. His idea of a fully human human is somewhat different than my own. Shakespeare or not, he seems to put far more emphasis on the myth of progress and technology...he just doesn't want *certain* technology. Fine, how does he propose we stop the wrong kind? Isn’t his right kind of progress also a problem? He seems to think more like an engineer and mathematician than like Shakespeare. Which is ironic. He's pushing the Enlightenment view, is he not?
2. I don't think enough human beings *right now* care much about Shakespeare. Even among those who probably should. I wish I cared more. There are a handful of plays I truly love, a few I like well enough, some of the sonnets, etc. I have had decades to read Shakespeare (and until my recent book purge owned the complete works) but my actual interests lay elsewhere. In the end, Shakespeare doesn't interest me as much as I wish he did. But maybe I am being too literal. Yet wouldn't a Laozi test be better? Or a Buddha test ? A Jesus test for truly human humans? Mohammed? Dante? But now we are back to square one deciding what is fundamental to being human. That question matters, and we won't ever agree. The mess continues as always. Is the mess back to Shakespeare? Are there other kinds of human messiness than the Shakespearean kind?
So while I also reject the Nietzche option and the Turing option etc. I don't take Shakespeare as central either. Though, after all that, I am open to the option that it is, in fact, our messy Shakespearean nature which is leading us down our current path of disaster. The tragedies are full of those who transgress what are taken to be natural and just limits. They are punished for it. But do we ever learn? This is the problem presented in A Canticle for Leibowitz. So then maybe it is our very Shakespearean nature that is the problem. What option allow us to transcend the Shakespearean?
I think that is what the young woman transhumanist thinks she is doing. She's trying to solve the Shakespearean in us.
In a sense, Christianity is a form of transhumanism (aka theosis). How likely are we to take that radical path? It might solve the problem if we could. But we haven’t. Again, this brings up A Canticle for Leibowitz. The Shakespearean wins and the world ends. The Christians unwittingly make the whole tragedy possible. A Canticle for Leibowitz is very Shakespearean in its view of the Shakespearean. Is there a way out?
I admit that this is, ironically, a complete mess of a comment. I hesitate to post it because it is probably not thought out enough. Maybe I will delete it later. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...
Peter- When I read the Hoel piece, I thought of you. Maybe a Pilgrims in the Machine post?
Yes, human nature is messy and not entirely--or at times, even mostly--under our conscious control. Yet, it is that very messy human nature that has created all our disasters--and yes, our "glories"-- including the meta-disaster we are facing now. Shakespeare is full of characters with great ambition, for both good and ill, and though order is restored, the disruption causes great suffering. Is this what we are trying to preserve?
The transhumanist young woman is entirely misguided, but I am not sure her initial impulse is all wrong. We do need a more human transhumanism, rather than the machine form she, and others propose.
The forms we have inherited from various religious traditions are very effective. But they are difficult and require great sacrifice and are usually slow in their effect. The enlightened are usually, not always, but usually very old. Do we have that kind of time?
(On the other hand we are living under a gerontocracy now. They are hardly wise. To the contrary. Which is what happens, I gather, when our wisdom traditions are put aside).
Until we are able to live something closer to Chapter 80 of the Tao Te Ching then the cyborg crowd will feel justified in imposing their insanity on the rest of us. I just don't know how we get to Ch. 80. But then again, I probably don't have to know. So there's that. -Jack
I have not yet had a chance to read the Hoel piece, as it’s a long one, and headier than the Bohan article. I looked at chapter 80 of the Tao Te Ching, though; it was beautiful. I’m sure I read it in my youth, but I must have been too young and wayward to appreciate it.
I don’t know where this thought is coming from, but it seems to me that one of the things that drives a society is the thing we regard as our “event horizon”. I’ve been to the Alps a number of times, and there’s something about the mountains that makes me wonder what’s beyond them, and makes me want to climb them, and this feeling is wrapped up in a sense of awe and spirit. And of course when you get to the top of the mountain, there is just more mountain, and yet the feeling remains.
For those who want to live chapter 80 lives, it seems to me the event horizon involves keeping our eyes right in front of us, on the simple and tangible things. Then, that same sense of awe and spirit, which is inherent in us, manifests in those simple things.
In the Machine world, the event horizon is new technology, new values, new everything; endless changing landscapes. The whole thing is dizzying and unhealthy, and yet because of our capacity for awe and spiritual feeling, it nevertheless compels us to chase after the horizon. The challenge for the pilgrim is refusing to run, refusing to chase the false horizon, and keeping one’s eyes grounded.
Maybe I will write about this at greater length at some point (if so I will have to self-plagiarize the mountain metaphor). Thanks for mentioning chapter 80.
Your mountain metaphor and event horizon gets to the heart of the problem of the Ch. 80 life. Even if a group were able to find a hidden valley in which to live such a life, it doesn't take much to disrupt it. It is much easier to break something than it is to repair it.
I had a friend from college who took her motto from the title of "Life is Elsewhere" by Milan Kundera. After graduation, she travelled extensively all over the planet. She did this for 10 years, as a "free spirit". But from my observation it may have been a very exciting life--particularly for a girl from the suburbs--but I dare say, it never made her happy.
I think she would, even still, dismiss the ch. 80 life as anathema. This could be so even for someone who initially showed great enthusiasm for such a life. They might grow disillusioned and think, wrongly I would argue, that life is, in fact, "elsewhere" i.e., over the next mountain, and the next.
Then there is the larger scale problem of some talented, charismatic lunatic taking over. Or on an even bigger scale the historical problem of say, a Alexander the Great, thinking that he has to, literally, take over the world--and almost does it!
This is, again, expressed well in A Canticle for Leibowitz. First as an ambitious individuals playing strategic games to take over the American continent. This can be both as territorial and political ambition in Hannegan, the Mayor of Texarkana. As well as the scientific ambition and historic-sized ego of Hannegan's brilliant cousin, Thon Taddeo.
In the last section the territorial and political ambitions are less that of individuals, but now as baked into the very institutions that govern us. The game of chicken can only be won by driving straight and not swerving. What if nobody chooses to swerve? It comes down to the line in Thucydides: the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must. To swerve is to be "weak" and to be conquered. Once great nations can no longer turn aside from this formula, understandably not wanting to be conquered, the result seems to be inevitable. I hope it isn't.
These problems are not easily overcome. In our fallen world, perhaps they are intractable. Worse for us, if so. -Jack
“In our fallen world, perhaps they are intractable.” This is the hard truth that gets thrown into the mouth of our idealism, which thinks it has the teeth and stomach to digest it.
Paul, thank you for recommendations! Reading one of them reminded me that I have been wondering for a while what was the church in Bucharest that impressed you...
The fall of the metamachine will be a catastrophe on an unprecedented scale. It will cause immense suffering. This should never be minimized or avoided. Still, it must come down, if we want to remain human. If we want the earth to remain the earth. All of it must be kept from those who believe that man is a "hackable animal" and that nature is standing reserve.
Things I need to do in the meantime:
First step, stop shoring up the imperium in whatever form it may take. Particularly, as it lives in my own heart.
Next, learn how to do real things. How to make things, fix things and grow things. Natural farming for example.
Learn to walk in spiritual darkness and unknowing. St. John of the Cross, the Cloud of Unknowing, etc.
Watch and pray. Watch and pray. Watch and pray.
A good enough start.
Tower of Babel, Shelley’s Frankenstein…I never thought those would be seen as positive instruction manuals. Good Lord!
Thank you. Enjoy your break
Enjoy your holidays! Writing you this as I enjoy mine here on the beautiful Valentia island. : )
Thank You, Sir! Looking forward to reading from Your links.
Peace be with You. :-)
Thanks have a wonderful break 🌻
Marvellous recommendations! Thank you Paul, you're a treasure.
Paul- I hope you and the family are having a beautiful vacation. Thank you for the recommendations. I look forward to your next set of essays. -Jack
Thank you in particular for the recommendation of D.H. Lawrence substack. I am not at all familiar with his work. This is helpful.
1. US (and to a lesser extent, UK) concepts of "left" vs "right", "liberal" vs "conservative" really make sense only within the context of contemporary US/UK politics.
Hence the interminable internet debates about "was Hitler really a socialist"? Answer: yes, if you cherry pick your facts, just as one could make an equally valid argument that he was an uber-conservative, if you cherry pick your facts.
2. IIRC, humans tried a similar transhumanist experiment with the "godbuilders" in the early USSR. It did not end well. If humans would just try to be more like cats, or would just learn their place, none of this would be necessary.
Thank you for the recommendation. Perhaps, we can pull the Machine down, but if not, there need to be spaces set aside in the hearts of men for wilderness, the Divine, and all that is sacred. Marx wrote of modernity: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred is profaned.” My life's work is to invert that, and to re-sanctify all that has been profaned.
Marx is an odd one to quote
I picked up a three volume "spiritual history" of the west at the church bookstore the other day. By an Orthodox priest/blogger names John Strickland; it's a history of Christendom from Pentecost onward and how it more or less desecrated itself into the ideology of man-made "utopias." He identifies the schism of 1054 as when things began to go badly for the West. Quite an interesting read; may be something that would interest you as his diagnosis is not dissimilar to yours.
Enoch- I have gotten a lot from Fr. Strickland's work. It is a big reason I became (Western-Rite) Orthodox. I am looking forward to the final volume of the the series, concerning our own time, The Age of Nihilism. I believe it will be out this Fall.
Once you are deeper into the books, I would love to hear your thoughts on the whole series and its implications for the topic at hand, i.e., the machine and human flourishing, spiritual and otherwise. -Jack
Thanks Jack - I'm honestly a few weeks away from posting the first-ever essay on my sub stack (heretofore they've been published in other places) and I'm planning on posting a few thoughts there, eventually. it's a good series so far.
As I said, I have gotten a lot out of Fr. Strickland's books. It is from a perspective we need more of, I think. I look forward to your first post. -Jack
Thanks Paul, these all look very interesting. Have a good holiday
Thanks Paul for taking the time out to post these recommendations. Definitely going to check them out. Enjoy the break.
Thanks for the Guardian reference. That was a fascinating read. I thought it was interesting that Bohan (the transhumanist) used to study literature but gave it up after she discovered transhumanism. She also said something that struck me: that fiction, as an exploration of the human experience, was a tragic repetition of “We work, we learn, we love, we lose, we die,”, and that transhumanism offered something “better”.
I don’t think she quite sees how much of a poet and storyteller she herself has become; only she is projecting her imagination not with words and verse, but with tech discoveries and optimistic futurism. She even calls her book a “love letter to humanity”.
That doesn’t negate her argument, but I’m often struck by how much new tech developments are invariably accompanied by spokespeople (often physically attractive, verbally articulate, and upbeat) who don’t actually know much about the stuff they’re talking about, but sure do a good job at getting everybody to pay attention and to believe.
Peter- The photos of Bohan that accompanied the article were an interesting touch. I can't imagine the same kind of photo shoot being done for a Ray Kurzweill piece, for example. -Jack
Yes, I noted the photos too. Striking with their black-white contrasts, grey cityscapes, and meditative facial expressions. The sense of sweet dystopia.
Today I've been alternating between reading the Guardian article with Bohan and listening to the Corruption of Christianity interview with Ivan Illich. Good combo!
I just read the Erik Hoel essay. Something about it leaves me uneasy. Yes, maybe I agree with his broader take, i.e., humans must remain human. There are a few things at loose ends with his position.
1. His idea of a fully human human is somewhat different than my own. Shakespeare or not, he seems to put far more emphasis on the myth of progress and technology...he just doesn't want *certain* technology. Fine, how does he propose we stop the wrong kind? Isn’t his right kind of progress also a problem? He seems to think more like an engineer and mathematician than like Shakespeare. Which is ironic. He's pushing the Enlightenment view, is he not?
2. I don't think enough human beings *right now* care much about Shakespeare. Even among those who probably should. I wish I cared more. There are a handful of plays I truly love, a few I like well enough, some of the sonnets, etc. I have had decades to read Shakespeare (and until my recent book purge owned the complete works) but my actual interests lay elsewhere. In the end, Shakespeare doesn't interest me as much as I wish he did. But maybe I am being too literal. Yet wouldn't a Laozi test be better? Or a Buddha test ? A Jesus test for truly human humans? Mohammed? Dante? But now we are back to square one deciding what is fundamental to being human. That question matters, and we won't ever agree. The mess continues as always. Is the mess back to Shakespeare? Are there other kinds of human messiness than the Shakespearean kind?
So while I also reject the Nietzche option and the Turing option etc. I don't take Shakespeare as central either. Though, after all that, I am open to the option that it is, in fact, our messy Shakespearean nature which is leading us down our current path of disaster. The tragedies are full of those who transgress what are taken to be natural and just limits. They are punished for it. But do we ever learn? This is the problem presented in A Canticle for Leibowitz. So then maybe it is our very Shakespearean nature that is the problem. What option allow us to transcend the Shakespearean?
I think that is what the young woman transhumanist thinks she is doing. She's trying to solve the Shakespearean in us.
In a sense, Christianity is a form of transhumanism (aka theosis). How likely are we to take that radical path? It might solve the problem if we could. But we haven’t. Again, this brings up A Canticle for Leibowitz. The Shakespearean wins and the world ends. The Christians unwittingly make the whole tragedy possible. A Canticle for Leibowitz is very Shakespearean in its view of the Shakespearean. Is there a way out?
I admit that this is, ironically, a complete mess of a comment. I hesitate to post it because it is probably not thought out enough. Maybe I will delete it later. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...
These are all good questions. Much to muse on.
Peter- When I read the Hoel piece, I thought of you. Maybe a Pilgrims in the Machine post?
Yes, human nature is messy and not entirely--or at times, even mostly--under our conscious control. Yet, it is that very messy human nature that has created all our disasters--and yes, our "glories"-- including the meta-disaster we are facing now. Shakespeare is full of characters with great ambition, for both good and ill, and though order is restored, the disruption causes great suffering. Is this what we are trying to preserve?
The transhumanist young woman is entirely misguided, but I am not sure her initial impulse is all wrong. We do need a more human transhumanism, rather than the machine form she, and others propose.
The forms we have inherited from various religious traditions are very effective. But they are difficult and require great sacrifice and are usually slow in their effect. The enlightened are usually, not always, but usually very old. Do we have that kind of time?
(On the other hand we are living under a gerontocracy now. They are hardly wise. To the contrary. Which is what happens, I gather, when our wisdom traditions are put aside).
Until we are able to live something closer to Chapter 80 of the Tao Te Ching then the cyborg crowd will feel justified in imposing their insanity on the rest of us. I just don't know how we get to Ch. 80. But then again, I probably don't have to know. So there's that. -Jack
I have not yet had a chance to read the Hoel piece, as it’s a long one, and headier than the Bohan article. I looked at chapter 80 of the Tao Te Ching, though; it was beautiful. I’m sure I read it in my youth, but I must have been too young and wayward to appreciate it.
I don’t know where this thought is coming from, but it seems to me that one of the things that drives a society is the thing we regard as our “event horizon”. I’ve been to the Alps a number of times, and there’s something about the mountains that makes me wonder what’s beyond them, and makes me want to climb them, and this feeling is wrapped up in a sense of awe and spirit. And of course when you get to the top of the mountain, there is just more mountain, and yet the feeling remains.
For those who want to live chapter 80 lives, it seems to me the event horizon involves keeping our eyes right in front of us, on the simple and tangible things. Then, that same sense of awe and spirit, which is inherent in us, manifests in those simple things.
In the Machine world, the event horizon is new technology, new values, new everything; endless changing landscapes. The whole thing is dizzying and unhealthy, and yet because of our capacity for awe and spiritual feeling, it nevertheless compels us to chase after the horizon. The challenge for the pilgrim is refusing to run, refusing to chase the false horizon, and keeping one’s eyes grounded.
Maybe I will write about this at greater length at some point (if so I will have to self-plagiarize the mountain metaphor). Thanks for mentioning chapter 80.
Peter-
Your mountain metaphor and event horizon gets to the heart of the problem of the Ch. 80 life. Even if a group were able to find a hidden valley in which to live such a life, it doesn't take much to disrupt it. It is much easier to break something than it is to repair it.
I had a friend from college who took her motto from the title of "Life is Elsewhere" by Milan Kundera. After graduation, she travelled extensively all over the planet. She did this for 10 years, as a "free spirit". But from my observation it may have been a very exciting life--particularly for a girl from the suburbs--but I dare say, it never made her happy.
I think she would, even still, dismiss the ch. 80 life as anathema. This could be so even for someone who initially showed great enthusiasm for such a life. They might grow disillusioned and think, wrongly I would argue, that life is, in fact, "elsewhere" i.e., over the next mountain, and the next.
Then there is the larger scale problem of some talented, charismatic lunatic taking over. Or on an even bigger scale the historical problem of say, a Alexander the Great, thinking that he has to, literally, take over the world--and almost does it!
This is, again, expressed well in A Canticle for Leibowitz. First as an ambitious individuals playing strategic games to take over the American continent. This can be both as territorial and political ambition in Hannegan, the Mayor of Texarkana. As well as the scientific ambition and historic-sized ego of Hannegan's brilliant cousin, Thon Taddeo.
In the last section the territorial and political ambitions are less that of individuals, but now as baked into the very institutions that govern us. The game of chicken can only be won by driving straight and not swerving. What if nobody chooses to swerve? It comes down to the line in Thucydides: the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must. To swerve is to be "weak" and to be conquered. Once great nations can no longer turn aside from this formula, understandably not wanting to be conquered, the result seems to be inevitable. I hope it isn't.
These problems are not easily overcome. In our fallen world, perhaps they are intractable. Worse for us, if so. -Jack
“In our fallen world, perhaps they are intractable.” This is the hard truth that gets thrown into the mouth of our idealism, which thinks it has the teeth and stomach to digest it.
Paul, thank you for recommendations! Reading one of them reminded me that I have been wondering for a while what was the church in Bucharest that impressed you...