Post Human Variations by Richard Carlson
What follows is my talk at the World in Process (Collective Yoga) Conference in Auroville last week. This talk was on Saturday after Debashish’s talk – he covered similar ground in talking about the effects of globalization and the differences between the view of those who see it as a flattening of the world and Sri Aurobindo who envisions it as an advance of Human Unity -. On Sunday Debashish and I had a further chance to engage before the conference in a dialog which was quite spontaneous and in my opinion more revealing than the drier presentation of the previous day.
At any rate the paper here which the talk was based on, fairly well sums up my whole rap on the subject regards the differences between humans vanishing into technology and technology vanishing into humanity. In one form or the other its been presented on SCIY, but this piece pretty much sums it up.
Before it starts let me defer to a definition of the post-human as applies to the transitional being which disappears into technology.
Katherine Hayles is someone I believe to be one of the most important scholars considering the birthing of the transitional human being or the posthuman. She often dovetails her work on complexity and literary theory while exploring the implications of the technologically enhanced human. In her book How We Became Post Human she explores through a study of cybernetics, complexity theory, and literature the cultural and human constructions technology makes possible as the coming of the posthuman. Her work expresses concern for the advent of a future which will become disembodied and assimilated to machinic existence. In this book she calls out for other voices to provide embodied narratives of a future.What is the post human? Think of it as point of view characterized by the following assumptions. First, the post-human view privileges informational patterns over material instantiations, so the embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life. Second the posthuman view considers consciousness regarded as the seat of human identity in Western tradition long before Descartes thought he was a mind thinking, as an epiphenomena, as an evolutionary upstart trying to claim that it is the whole show when actuality it is only a mirror sideshow. Third the posthuman view thinks the human body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other prosthesis becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born. Forth, and most important, by these and other means, the posthuman configures human being so that it can be seemlessly articulated with intelligent machines. In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals (Hayles 1999). Interestingly in her book written six years later My Mother was a Computer, she has gradually accepted the fact that our existence has become so mediated by technology that it is now hard now to imagine a future which will be wholly embodied. Of course here is where I imagine Sri Aurobindo voice needs to be heard.Post Human Variations by Richard Carlson
To speak of the post-human is now becoming fairly widespread in our global culture. This is not only due to science fiction but due to critical scholarship as well which has realized the enhancements to the human that technology makes possible. If Nietzsche’s proclamation of the “death of god” helped annunciate the spirit of modernity, Michael Foucault statement about “the death of man” appears to be the prophetic insight of post-modernism.
But if technology makes possible the advent of the post-human how does this square with Sri Aurobindo’s vision of the future species?Perhaps surprisingly he does not discount the possibility that technology may facilitate things along. Here is a quote from The Life Divine which seems to address the matter:
1
“Consciousness itself by its mutation will necessitate and operate whatever mutation is needed for the body. It has to be noted that the human mind has already shown the capacity to aid nature in the evolution of new types of plant and animal; it has created new forms of its environment, developed by knowledge and disciplined considerable changes in its own mentality. It is not an impossibility that "man should aid nature consciously also in his own spiritual and physical evolution and transformation" -my emphasis- The urge to do it is already there and partly effective though still incompletely understood and accepted by the surface mentality; but one day it may understand go deeper within itself and discover the means, the secret energy, the intended operation of Consciousness-Force within which is the hidden reality we call Nature” ( LD p843/ 844)
Now here is the Mother in her comments on “the Divine Body” chapter of Sri Aurobindo’s Supramental Manifestation (1957)
2
“that human science is making a very sincere effort to find truth, (and) is surprisingly enough, drawing closer and closer to the essential truth of Spirit. (and) It is not impossible to foresee a moment where the two will unite in a very deep and close understanding of the essential truth”
But if humans can consciously assist nature in our physical and spiritual evolution, is this necessarily the same evolution that we are witnessing today? Here I will reference Marshall McLuhan who in the 1960s proved to be one of the first prophetic voices as to the effect electronic technology would have upon us. McLuhan’s (1964) view of technology was that in a very real sense it manages to turn the human body inside out
3
1) Cloths are an outering of the skin2) The wheel the outering of the foot3) Print an outering of the word4) Mechanical energy the outering of the muscles,
and perhaps in what is one of the most famous of McLuhan’s enigmatic statements, often parroted today by Bill Gates :
5) Electronic media an outering of the collective central nervous system
Moreover, if we extend McLuhan’s insights to the present we could say:
6) The world wide web maybe an outering of the collective mind7) Some forms of biotechnology an outering of our cells 8) Cloning an outering of our DNA
But if technology is collectively turning us inside out this is of course much different from the individual process of yogic transformation which proceeds through the development of the interior technologies of meditation, tapasya, and surrender and ends in inner enlightenment and not exterior commodification
So the difference between collective exteriorization and individual interiorization of consciousness is one stark contrast between the evolution of the post human via technology and the global economy and the Aurobindian transitional being
Another contrast has to do with the idea of the disappearance of the human. Here the notion of how Sri Aurobindo envisions the disappearance of the human into its post-human destiny contrast shapely with how many critical theorist see the disappearance of the human in the present day.
Of course its not hard to see what these theorist are speaking about when we witness the way in which we are all increasingly wired into technology: jacked into the world wide web, linked up by wireless, tuned into television, downloading streaming images into our living rooms 24/7. Interestingly we see as many commercial images in one day as someone alive during Sri Aurobindo’s youth did in an entire life time. What effect does that have on the evolution of consciousness? McLuhan had an interesting observation regarding our interface with technology. Ironically he proclaimed that human beings have become sex organs for their machine. Because while technology satisfies our desires we ensure it continued survival and reproduction.
The communications theorist Arthur Kroker (2004) speaks of this unique relationship between humans and technology as a vanishing of the human into technology. Here he refers to the implications of ubiquitous computing:
4
with embedded processors and the Web as harbingers, ubiquitous computing will light up the digital future. However, what will be the human response when the realization grows that many computers share each of us. And that we have become exactly what McLuhan predicted -the wired sex organs of the cyber-machine allowing it to fecundate and develop while it reciprocates with increase in personal wealth; passive servomechansisms of an externalized central nervous system; He continues that in this way:.... –electrooptics can be seen as a parasite/predetor boarding the metabolic vehicle of human flesh. From without and now from within, interfacing every orifice of the human sensorium with artificial plug-ins, which such intensity that the artificial environment that is really being managed and monitored is data flesh itself? In ubiquitous computing we become figure to the ground of technology, body environments to the electronic sensorium. The flip is complete (Kroker 2004)
But, while these post-modernist warn about the dangers of a post-humanity in which “humanity vanishes in technology”, in the Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo in his use of the infinitive “to vanish” flips this verb to envisage one possible post-human destiny as being not that of “humanity vanishing into technology” but rather “technology vanishing into humanity”. The difference is subtle, but the meaning is decisive. In envisaging his integral vision of the future Sri Aurobindo reverses the notion of a technologically disembodied species destiny or of the “disappearance of humans into technology” as he posits an embodied post-human existence in which technology vanishes into humanity.
Here is Sri Aurobindo from chapter 2 of The Life Divine:
5“Science itself begins to dream of the physical conquest of death, expresses an insatiable thirst for knowledge, is working out something like a terrestrial omnipotence for humanity. Space and Time are contracting to the vanishing-point in its works, and it strives in a hundred ways to make man the master of circumstance and so lighten the fetters of causality”
And as he continues in this passage to speak about wireless technology it is almost as if he has a pre-cognition of the internet:
6”As the outposts of scientific Knowledge come more and more to be set on the borders that divide the material from the immaterial, so also the highest achievements of practical Science are those which tend to simplify and reduce to the vanishing-point the machinery by which the greatest effects are produced. Wireless telegraphy is Nature's exterior sign and pretext for a new orientation. The sensible physical means for the intermediate transmission of the physical force is removed; it is only preserved at the points of impulsion and reception. Eventually even these must disappear; for when the laws and forces of the supraphysical are studied with the right starting-point, the means will infallibly be found for Mind directly to seize on the physical energy and speed it accurately upon its errand. There, once we bring ourselves to recognize it, lie the gates that open upon the enormous vistas of the future.
And then he marvelously extends this metaphor of “vanishing” to the ego as it at last vanishes into the Divine7”Yet even if we had full knowledge and control of the worlds immediately above Matter, there would still be a limitation and still a beyond. The last knot of our bondage is at that point where the external draws into oneness with the internal, the machinery of ego itself becomes subtilised to the vanishing-point and the law of our action is at last unity embracing and possessing multiplicity and no longer, as now, multiplicity struggling towards some figure of unity.” (LD chapter 2)
Although it is a rather a subtle difference “humanity vanishing in technology” or “technology vanishing in humanity” to create the post-human future, I believe its implications are vast and need to be more fully explored by those following the path of Integral Yoga. Because the other side of the flip we wind up on may make all the difference in the world to the future evolution of consciousness and in determining the divergence of our species destiny in what Sri Aurobindo refers to as “the hour of the unexpected”.
At any rate the paper here which the talk was based on, fairly well sums up my whole rap on the subject regards the differences between humans vanishing into technology and technology vanishing into humanity. In one form or the other its been presented on SCIY, but this piece pretty much sums it up.
Before it starts let me defer to a definition of the post-human as applies to the transitional being which disappears into technology.
Katherine Hayles is someone I believe to be one of the most important scholars considering the birthing of the transitional human being or the posthuman. She often dovetails her work on complexity and literary theory while exploring the implications of the technologically enhanced human. In her book How We Became Post Human she explores through a study of cybernetics, complexity theory, and literature the cultural and human constructions technology makes possible as the coming of the posthuman. Her work expresses concern for the advent of a future which will become disembodied and assimilated to machinic existence. In this book she calls out for other voices to provide embodied narratives of a future.What is the post human? Think of it as point of view characterized by the following assumptions. First, the post-human view privileges informational patterns over material instantiations, so the embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life. Second the posthuman view considers consciousness regarded as the seat of human identity in Western tradition long before Descartes thought he was a mind thinking, as an epiphenomena, as an evolutionary upstart trying to claim that it is the whole show when actuality it is only a mirror sideshow. Third the posthuman view thinks the human body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other prosthesis becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born. Forth, and most important, by these and other means, the posthuman configures human being so that it can be seemlessly articulated with intelligent machines. In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals (Hayles 1999). Interestingly in her book written six years later My Mother was a Computer, she has gradually accepted the fact that our existence has become so mediated by technology that it is now hard now to imagine a future which will be wholly embodied. Of course here is where I imagine Sri Aurobindo voice needs to be heard.Post Human Variations by Richard Carlson
To speak of the post-human is now becoming fairly widespread in our global culture. This is not only due to science fiction but due to critical scholarship as well which has realized the enhancements to the human that technology makes possible. If Nietzsche’s proclamation of the “death of god” helped annunciate the spirit of modernity, Michael Foucault statement about “the death of man” appears to be the prophetic insight of post-modernism.
But if technology makes possible the advent of the post-human how does this square with Sri Aurobindo’s vision of the future species?Perhaps surprisingly he does not discount the possibility that technology may facilitate things along. Here is a quote from The Life Divine which seems to address the matter:
1
“Consciousness itself by its mutation will necessitate and operate whatever mutation is needed for the body. It has to be noted that the human mind has already shown the capacity to aid nature in the evolution of new types of plant and animal; it has created new forms of its environment, developed by knowledge and disciplined considerable changes in its own mentality. It is not an impossibility that "man should aid nature consciously also in his own spiritual and physical evolution and transformation" -my emphasis- The urge to do it is already there and partly effective though still incompletely understood and accepted by the surface mentality; but one day it may understand go deeper within itself and discover the means, the secret energy, the intended operation of Consciousness-Force within which is the hidden reality we call Nature” ( LD p843/ 844)
Now here is the Mother in her comments on “the Divine Body” chapter of Sri Aurobindo’s Supramental Manifestation (1957)
2
“that human science is making a very sincere effort to find truth, (and) is surprisingly enough, drawing closer and closer to the essential truth of Spirit. (and) It is not impossible to foresee a moment where the two will unite in a very deep and close understanding of the essential truth”
But if humans can consciously assist nature in our physical and spiritual evolution, is this necessarily the same evolution that we are witnessing today? Here I will reference Marshall McLuhan who in the 1960s proved to be one of the first prophetic voices as to the effect electronic technology would have upon us. McLuhan’s (1964) view of technology was that in a very real sense it manages to turn the human body inside out
3
1) Cloths are an outering of the skin2) The wheel the outering of the foot3) Print an outering of the word4) Mechanical energy the outering of the muscles,
and perhaps in what is one of the most famous of McLuhan’s enigmatic statements, often parroted today by Bill Gates :
5) Electronic media an outering of the collective central nervous system
Moreover, if we extend McLuhan’s insights to the present we could say:
6) The world wide web maybe an outering of the collective mind7) Some forms of biotechnology an outering of our cells 8) Cloning an outering of our DNA
But if technology is collectively turning us inside out this is of course much different from the individual process of yogic transformation which proceeds through the development of the interior technologies of meditation, tapasya, and surrender and ends in inner enlightenment and not exterior commodification
So the difference between collective exteriorization and individual interiorization of consciousness is one stark contrast between the evolution of the post human via technology and the global economy and the Aurobindian transitional being
Another contrast has to do with the idea of the disappearance of the human. Here the notion of how Sri Aurobindo envisions the disappearance of the human into its post-human destiny contrast shapely with how many critical theorist see the disappearance of the human in the present day.
Of course its not hard to see what these theorist are speaking about when we witness the way in which we are all increasingly wired into technology: jacked into the world wide web, linked up by wireless, tuned into television, downloading streaming images into our living rooms 24/7. Interestingly we see as many commercial images in one day as someone alive during Sri Aurobindo’s youth did in an entire life time. What effect does that have on the evolution of consciousness? McLuhan had an interesting observation regarding our interface with technology. Ironically he proclaimed that human beings have become sex organs for their machine. Because while technology satisfies our desires we ensure it continued survival and reproduction.
The communications theorist Arthur Kroker (2004) speaks of this unique relationship between humans and technology as a vanishing of the human into technology. Here he refers to the implications of ubiquitous computing:
4
with embedded processors and the Web as harbingers, ubiquitous computing will light up the digital future. However, what will be the human response when the realization grows that many computers share each of us. And that we have become exactly what McLuhan predicted -the wired sex organs of the cyber-machine allowing it to fecundate and develop while it reciprocates with increase in personal wealth; passive servomechansisms of an externalized central nervous system; He continues that in this way:.... –electrooptics can be seen as a parasite/predetor boarding the metabolic vehicle of human flesh. From without and now from within, interfacing every orifice of the human sensorium with artificial plug-ins, which such intensity that the artificial environment that is really being managed and monitored is data flesh itself? In ubiquitous computing we become figure to the ground of technology, body environments to the electronic sensorium. The flip is complete (Kroker 2004)
But, while these post-modernist warn about the dangers of a post-humanity in which “humanity vanishes in technology”, in the Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo in his use of the infinitive “to vanish” flips this verb to envisage one possible post-human destiny as being not that of “humanity vanishing into technology” but rather “technology vanishing into humanity”. The difference is subtle, but the meaning is decisive. In envisaging his integral vision of the future Sri Aurobindo reverses the notion of a technologically disembodied species destiny or of the “disappearance of humans into technology” as he posits an embodied post-human existence in which technology vanishes into humanity.
Here is Sri Aurobindo from chapter 2 of The Life Divine:
5“Science itself begins to dream of the physical conquest of death, expresses an insatiable thirst for knowledge, is working out something like a terrestrial omnipotence for humanity. Space and Time are contracting to the vanishing-point in its works, and it strives in a hundred ways to make man the master of circumstance and so lighten the fetters of causality”
And as he continues in this passage to speak about wireless technology it is almost as if he has a pre-cognition of the internet:
6”As the outposts of scientific Knowledge come more and more to be set on the borders that divide the material from the immaterial, so also the highest achievements of practical Science are those which tend to simplify and reduce to the vanishing-point the machinery by which the greatest effects are produced. Wireless telegraphy is Nature's exterior sign and pretext for a new orientation. The sensible physical means for the intermediate transmission of the physical force is removed; it is only preserved at the points of impulsion and reception. Eventually even these must disappear; for when the laws and forces of the supraphysical are studied with the right starting-point, the means will infallibly be found for Mind directly to seize on the physical energy and speed it accurately upon its errand. There, once we bring ourselves to recognize it, lie the gates that open upon the enormous vistas of the future.
And then he marvelously extends this metaphor of “vanishing” to the ego as it at last vanishes into the Divine7”Yet even if we had full knowledge and control of the worlds immediately above Matter, there would still be a limitation and still a beyond. The last knot of our bondage is at that point where the external draws into oneness with the internal, the machinery of ego itself becomes subtilised to the vanishing-point and the law of our action is at last unity embracing and possessing multiplicity and no longer, as now, multiplicity struggling towards some figure of unity.” (LD chapter 2)
Although it is a rather a subtle difference “humanity vanishing in technology” or “technology vanishing in humanity” to create the post-human future, I believe its implications are vast and need to be more fully explored by those following the path of Integral Yoga. Because the other side of the flip we wind up on may make all the difference in the world to the future evolution of consciousness and in determining the divergence of our species destiny in what Sri Aurobindo refers to as “the hour of the unexpected”.
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