The Monthly Salon: July
Come and say your piece
I’m spending today thinking about what I’m going to say tomorrow at the Percy French Festival here in the Irish midlands, where I’ve been invited to give a talk about the coming transhuman future and how to respond to it. I expect I will be filletting my last two essays here for material. The theme of the festival, which begins today and ends on Friday, is Does The Soul Have a Future? Come along if you’re in the the area: it looks interesting.
(I have some more public events coming up this summer too: the full list is here.)
In the meantime, it’s time for the Monthly Salon. As ever, this is a space in which my readers, rather than me, get to determine the agenda and then discuss/debate/argue about it. I’ve been pondering a subject to introduce as a kind of jumping-off point, but I’ve noticed that when I do that, people tend to focus on that subject, and then it just ends up being about my opinions again. Sometimes a man needs a holiday from his opinions: and Lord knows, you all do by now.
So this time around I’m going to say nothing at all, and simply leave the floor open for anyone who wants to walk onto it and begin singing. Over to you …
The soul -- psyche -- refers somehow to a butterfly in its Greek etymology, I've heard. So, does the inner butterfly have a future? Did it ever have a past? I think when you start talking about the heart instead (the thing that pumps blood and has its own neurons), you start to ask some questions that the transhumanists somehow haven't even thought of yet, and the contrast between their dreams and the rooted biological-spiritual reality of the precious human body becomes quite stark indeed. I mean, compare these two passages:
"You've got to get out of your head and into your heart. Right now your thoughts are in your head, and God seems to be outside you...As long as you are in your head, you will never master your thoughts, which continue to whirl around your head like snow in a winter's storm or like mosquitoes in the summer's heat. If you descend into your heart, you will have no more difficulty. Your mind will empty out and your thoughts will dissipate...You will find life in your heart. There you must live."
— Saint Theophan the Recluse [Quoted by Archimandrite Meletios Webber in “The Mind, the Heart and the Way of Salvation” (Divine Ascent #9)]
Versus:
"The next organ on our list for enhancement is the heart, which, while an intricate and impressive machine, has a number of severe problems. It is subject to a myriad of failure modes and represents a fundamental weakness in our potential longevity...Although artificial hearts are beginning to be feasible replacements, a more effective approach will be to get rid of the heart altogether."
— Ray Kurzweil [The Singularity Is Near, 306]
Just today collected a library book about Caroline Norton (The Case of the Married Woman by Antonia Fraser), who in in 1820s was legally deprived access to her three small children following a trial that saw her accused of adultery. Her name was cleared in the trial, but her husband was still able to keep the children from her *and* control her earnings as an author, because (as most may know) at that time property owned by women reverted to the husband upon and within marriage. She became an activist and fought for women’s and mothers’ rights to, respectively, their own children and income/creative work.
I don’t yet know all the details or how well written the book is or isn’t, but it got me thinking about the situation women are facing today, that is the threat of being erased. In Norton’s day women’s identity and agency disappeared within marriage (levels of disappearance depending upon the whims and mercy of each husband). Today those who actually consider themselves the ones who fight for human rights are in large part enabling women’s erasure, the focus currently being on sports. Some say this sort of statement is hyperbolic, but the reality is even this ten years ago would have seemed unthinkable. Additionally, corporations and government are working together to pit groups against each other, with new and ridiculous offenses against trans individuals announced almost daily. Only days ago, an American politician was accused of endangering the lives of trans people because he asked a question.
Is there some sort of warped cyclical nature to thought that causes it all to go ballistic every century or so? What’s next for women? Since this has already seeped into literature and even music (“being a woman is a ‘vibe’”), it’s pretty apparent it’s not stopping with sports, and writing about women, even by women, is endangered. (And much else.)
Apologies if this comes off as unorganized thought - it’s 02:00 wandering of the mind thanks to sleeplessness. Any continuing thoughts, info, etc.?