Vichy wrote:You miss the point. I am not my species. I am not other members of my species. I am not responsible for the past or present of my species. I am not responsible to my species. There is no intrinsic value to genetic relations.
On this issue I'm pleased to agree with Vichy entirely.
Vichy wrote:And finally, specifically, if it came down to Humans or Terminators, I'd vote Skynet any day.
Every day, I come closer to believing this. I'm a pessimist by temperament. I'm an optimist by normative political commitments because the only choices are to defend liberalism or to perish without a struggle. And so much has been achieved, and the world is so lovely around us, that it seems impossible that it all might fail. But human history has mostly been about suffering, and reason suggests to me that we are significantly likely as a species to return to such normality.
I usually consider transhumanism to be the perfection of humanism, a conceptualision of what it would truly means to raise the circumstances of
homo sapiens to a fully rational, conscious, dignified condition. But the choices I see the world making in our age suggest that the only hope for the humanism is to spiritually and physically isolate oneself from the mass of humanity. Taken by their words and deeds, they are mad; they despise intellectual honesty and consider real passion, love, and independence immoral. I think of everything in my own life that makes breathing more than a duty and remember that most people in this world, if asked, would state convictions which logically imply the destruction of all this, chiefly through patriarchy and religion.
There are a few, a very few, people who want to know and explore and
live. They matter unspeakably to me, and I'm so tired of watching this hideous world betray them and leave them to die. But most human beings have their souls beaten out of them in childhood; commanded to follow their parents' myths their minds are broken; commanded to work for others their wills for broken; commanded to repress their desires their hearts are broken. Those who remain will poison and crucify, burn and scrape the living flesh from those who see with their own eyes, while worshipping the fathers and lords and priests who maimed them. In the Enlightenment humanity had one beautiful chance to make the world over again, and I think it very likely that it will throw that chance away- throw it away
now, after so many victories won so partially, so narrowly, at at so much cost.
That most of human history has been a crawling mess of ignorance, poverty and slavery, with independent thought forbidden and women treated like domestic animals, means nothing. They will return to it. They will have their flags and totems and churches, and in seeking their own spiritual death they will ensure that others die physically.
The libertarian project was originally about creating a world for people who wished to be able to truly live as free individuals, but libertarianism failed to ground itself deeply and the bulk of the movement has been taken over by mentalities which never knew the soul of individualism and loathe its character and characteristic manifestations. The humanist currents of culture which have allowed for historically unprecedented levels of human freedom and happiness have bled thin and are being rejected by derationalising or rebarbarising societies. Prometheus will be bound again to his rock, Adam and Eve to their curses- and a world will rejoice to see Zeus and Jehovah restored.
Human beings are human only twice- once when they seek natural pleasure, once again in acts of conceptual consciousness. All other times the human spirit is hostage to the demands of convention and tradition which demand the sacrifice of perception and passion and yet hold the social keys to individual survival. The good and the just want always to close these gaps in their prison walls; the essence of the good and the just as most understand these concepts is the physical and spiritual preservation of the group against all other groups and against internal dissidents. Once the last gap is closed and premodern society reestablishes itself, society will become whole, virtuous, organic once again. Everyone will know their place and no one will be alone, and everyone will feel vindicated in their unhappiness.
The terminators are a better option. Please, strap me to a table and replace everything with cyberware. Essence 0 is an acceptable price tag. What is beautiful in human potential does not require community with one's fellow humans on their social terms. Genuine citizenship in the rare liberal society which functions to create a more favourable environment for the self-determined individual is an inestimable value which ought to be appreciated by rational people. In the historical majority of times where this is not the case (and such times are even more absolutely given for those not on top of the social classpile), the illusion of a common good merely naively leaves oneself more vulnerable to witch trials.
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