Pathless
Fiercely Interdependent
This is going to grow out of the Selfishness and Society thread over in the politics section. I thought about replying there, but decided I'd rather start a new thread to explore the idea of transcending the lived and felt organic experience of the human body within nature. My thoughts and questions here originate in part of a post by wil:
This bolded idea of the "next plane of existence" is central to many religions: certainly the Christian and Muslim traditions hold that eternal life in heaven is more important than this Earthly life, even going as far as to encourage believers not to be "of this world." Similarly in the Eastern traditions: Buddhism, for all of its mindfulness, bodhisattvas, and dwelling peacefully and contentedly within Samsara, still has a major focus on transcendence--that recurring idea that somehow, ultimately, life is illusory and a product of ego and attachment. Hinduism in its various forms preaches a similar aesthetic transcendence: all is one in Brahma, and the human being's primary goal in life, at least after a certain point, should be to merge himself with that Ultimate Reality.
Leaving the realm of religion for the non-spirituality of the modern day scientific atheist, some people seek after a scientific or science-fictional vision of transcending the limits of nature: colonizing space, nanotechnology restructuring the very molecular foundations of life, genetically engineering ourselves to perfection, or even downloading human consciousness into clean and pristine robot bodies (which somehow translates to immortality).
Back to wil's statement: "I am feeling all is in divine order and I am making proper preparations for the next plane of existence." Implicit in this is an assumption that G!d (or whatever divine label you like) has plans for us to transcend the body or our consciousness as we have known/experienced it. Perhaps we will become pure spirit, perhaps a machine-mind hybrid, or perhaps we will keep our bodies but receive a surge of higher consciousness that allows us to transcend that much-dreaded duality.
"Making proper preparations for the next plane of existence" also has a technological, scientific progress sound to it, to my ears. "Ladies and gentlemen, please bring your tray tables and seat backs into the upright and locked position, we will soon be exiting this third dimension and entering the transcendent dimension of hyper-reality." Western civilization has been after this transcendence for some time, at the very least since the industrial revolution. We have so much invested in this notion of transcendence, of reaching that point where we have bested nature and its limits through the application of our creativity, technology, and intellect, that the paradigm is rarely questioned and never seriously challenged.
Where do we think we are headed? After transcendence, what is life like? What's our goal here? And what evidence have we been given that our goal is real and reachable?
It seems to me that we have been pursuing this dream of transcendence, of super-achievement if you will, for so long that it has become foundational in the way we are. It's as if it is part of our programming, our reason for being. Yet if we stop to ask questions about it, to doubt: "So, what is this transcendent end-state we are working towards? Is it worth it? Is it feasible, workable, realistic?" what kind of answers do we come up with?
It seems to me that this whole progressive trajectory of civilization, rooted as it is in this faith of transcending limits, is absurd and unrealistic. It's stupid, especially now. It's mesmerizing, yes; more that that, it is foundational to our society, and so questioning it does not come easy. But let me go back to "it's stupid, especially now."
Technology, as practiced as a progressive, ever-improving, ever-more energetic tool by what is now global civilization, has gotten to the point where it drives us. What was intended to be a tool and to make our lives easier, fuller, freer, and filled with leisure, has effectively enslaved us. Our economics are completely profit-based; this is so implicit now that it seems absurd to suggest that economics could be anything else but profit-based. But while economics is now defined as "a social science that is concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services" in my Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, the definition of economy has its roots in household management, from the Greek oikos (house) and nemein (to manage): "archaic: the management of household or private affairs and esp. expenses."
As our economics have become more and more profit-based and more and more oriented towards production and consumption, we have begun to act with the assumption that economics is all about finances and wealth, when it in fact should be tied definitively to ecology, and should root us to our home, the Earth.
The problem I have with the transcendent belief system is that it compels us to neglect our home. It recurrently and insistently promises us that something better is coming, is coming, just around the corner, it's coming. It's a carrot dangled, it's a promise of a treat, of eternal life or a dramatic shift in perspective and experience--beyond human, beyond the animal, beyond the Earth, beyond life as we know it. We get so hung up on this pay-off of the beyond that we fail to appreciate the beyond we are already in, the miracle of our existence, and the sheer divinity and magnificence manifest in the world.
I find it horrible and extremely sad that we continue to mortgage our beautiful birthright of experience and connection and deep interdependence with our home, the Earth, because of a fantastic speculation about some other future or some other place that we have no evidence for. And as far as technology goes, not only has it not provided evidence that it is or ever will live up to its promise of bringing perfection or even a better life for all (or even most, or even a non-majority many); it has actually degraded the environment, our senses, our traditions, our wisdom, and our opportunities to experience the natural world.
When do we realize that we have been deluded, whether by our own efforts or by those of a machine-society? Do we dare? It's painful to give up the promise of transcendence, because when we do, we must recognize that here and now is what we have--which is wonderful, actually; although at the same time we cannot help but notice how much we've neglected and trashed the here and now.
Thoughts? Reactions? Responses?
wil said:
This bolded idea of the "next plane of existence" is central to many religions: certainly the Christian and Muslim traditions hold that eternal life in heaven is more important than this Earthly life, even going as far as to encourage believers not to be "of this world." Similarly in the Eastern traditions: Buddhism, for all of its mindfulness, bodhisattvas, and dwelling peacefully and contentedly within Samsara, still has a major focus on transcendence--that recurring idea that somehow, ultimately, life is illusory and a product of ego and attachment. Hinduism in its various forms preaches a similar aesthetic transcendence: all is one in Brahma, and the human being's primary goal in life, at least after a certain point, should be to merge himself with that Ultimate Reality.
Leaving the realm of religion for the non-spirituality of the modern day scientific atheist, some people seek after a scientific or science-fictional vision of transcending the limits of nature: colonizing space, nanotechnology restructuring the very molecular foundations of life, genetically engineering ourselves to perfection, or even downloading human consciousness into clean and pristine robot bodies (which somehow translates to immortality).
Back to wil's statement: "I am feeling all is in divine order and I am making proper preparations for the next plane of existence." Implicit in this is an assumption that G!d (or whatever divine label you like) has plans for us to transcend the body or our consciousness as we have known/experienced it. Perhaps we will become pure spirit, perhaps a machine-mind hybrid, or perhaps we will keep our bodies but receive a surge of higher consciousness that allows us to transcend that much-dreaded duality.
"Making proper preparations for the next plane of existence" also has a technological, scientific progress sound to it, to my ears. "Ladies and gentlemen, please bring your tray tables and seat backs into the upright and locked position, we will soon be exiting this third dimension and entering the transcendent dimension of hyper-reality." Western civilization has been after this transcendence for some time, at the very least since the industrial revolution. We have so much invested in this notion of transcendence, of reaching that point where we have bested nature and its limits through the application of our creativity, technology, and intellect, that the paradigm is rarely questioned and never seriously challenged.
Where do we think we are headed? After transcendence, what is life like? What's our goal here? And what evidence have we been given that our goal is real and reachable?
It seems to me that we have been pursuing this dream of transcendence, of super-achievement if you will, for so long that it has become foundational in the way we are. It's as if it is part of our programming, our reason for being. Yet if we stop to ask questions about it, to doubt: "So, what is this transcendent end-state we are working towards? Is it worth it? Is it feasible, workable, realistic?" what kind of answers do we come up with?
It seems to me that this whole progressive trajectory of civilization, rooted as it is in this faith of transcending limits, is absurd and unrealistic. It's stupid, especially now. It's mesmerizing, yes; more that that, it is foundational to our society, and so questioning it does not come easy. But let me go back to "it's stupid, especially now."
Technology, as practiced as a progressive, ever-improving, ever-more energetic tool by what is now global civilization, has gotten to the point where it drives us. What was intended to be a tool and to make our lives easier, fuller, freer, and filled with leisure, has effectively enslaved us. Our economics are completely profit-based; this is so implicit now that it seems absurd to suggest that economics could be anything else but profit-based. But while economics is now defined as "a social science that is concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services" in my Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, the definition of economy has its roots in household management, from the Greek oikos (house) and nemein (to manage): "archaic: the management of household or private affairs and esp. expenses."
As our economics have become more and more profit-based and more and more oriented towards production and consumption, we have begun to act with the assumption that economics is all about finances and wealth, when it in fact should be tied definitively to ecology, and should root us to our home, the Earth.
The problem I have with the transcendent belief system is that it compels us to neglect our home. It recurrently and insistently promises us that something better is coming, is coming, just around the corner, it's coming. It's a carrot dangled, it's a promise of a treat, of eternal life or a dramatic shift in perspective and experience--beyond human, beyond the animal, beyond the Earth, beyond life as we know it. We get so hung up on this pay-off of the beyond that we fail to appreciate the beyond we are already in, the miracle of our existence, and the sheer divinity and magnificence manifest in the world.
I find it horrible and extremely sad that we continue to mortgage our beautiful birthright of experience and connection and deep interdependence with our home, the Earth, because of a fantastic speculation about some other future or some other place that we have no evidence for. And as far as technology goes, not only has it not provided evidence that it is or ever will live up to its promise of bringing perfection or even a better life for all (or even most, or even a non-majority many); it has actually degraded the environment, our senses, our traditions, our wisdom, and our opportunities to experience the natural world.
When do we realize that we have been deluded, whether by our own efforts or by those of a machine-society? Do we dare? It's painful to give up the promise of transcendence, because when we do, we must recognize that here and now is what we have--which is wonderful, actually; although at the same time we cannot help but notice how much we've neglected and trashed the here and now.
Thoughts? Reactions? Responses?
