It was with great interest that I read early cyberpunk culturalist Douglas Rushkoff’s article, “The Russians aren’t coming to Silicon Valley, they’re already here” as in various ways it mirrors aspects of my lecture Transhumanism’s Roots which traces transhumanism’s roots in theology, occultism, evolution, also how it is a slippery slope to postgenderism, considers it within pop-culture via movies, TV, etc. and includes a Q&A session.
Rushkoff hearkens back to the “early 20th-century Russian occult philosophers called the cosmists…that combined the ideas of Marxism with those of Russian Orthodoxy — all in a perfected, technologized future…technology could bring humanity to its next evolutionary level.”
He notes that “The cosmists developed what could be considered the first technology religion…the cosmists were probably the first to think of transcendence as a problem of engineering…the perfection of human beings…life-extension technologies…Even the dead would eventually be resurrected through new technologies.”
Well, “today’s transhumanists” seek “uploading consciousness to a silicon chip, developing a fully aware artificial intelligence, or reprogramming human DNA for immortality.” And a key point, “it’s not merely a coincidental repeat of common human religious tropes.”
One pop-cultural reference that I mention in the article is the book “The Humanoids” which was made into the movie “The Creation of the Humanoids.”
As you can see at Transhumanism – before “Blade Runner” there was “The Creation of the Humanoids” 1962 AD movie the tale is told about androids who develop a theology of their own and even techno-resurrect dead humans to use as the stuff of which androids designed by androids are made.
Douglas Rushkoff references the “Track Two Diplomacy” meetings which took place in the 1980s AD and wherein “leading Russian scientists and spiritualists engaged with their American counterparts…at the Esalen Institute” which caem up in my review of the self-professed possessed Jeffrey J. Kripal’s book Mutants and Mystics.
This meeting included “conversations led by rocket scientists and computer engineers…spiritual and consciousness pioneers…shamanic studies scholar” and is said to have been “highly psychedelic.”
The transhumanist techno-religious aspect of it leads to Rushkoff to conclude that this is why “Google lost interest in ‘organizing the world’s information,’ and is now so intent on developing AI and a server cloud for Kurzweil’s consciousness” or, perhaps it is organizing the world’s information towards AI ends.
Also of historical Transhumanism interest may be Charles Rubin’s book Eclipse of Man: Human Extinction and the Meaning of Progress. He mentions William Winwood Reade’s 1872 AD book The Martyrdom of Man a few quotes from which are:
These bodies which now we wear belong to the lower animals; our minds have already outgrown them; already we look upon them with contempt. A time will come when Science will transform them by means which we cannot conjecture, and which, even if explained to us, we could not now understand, just as the savage cannot understand electricity, magnetism, steam….
You blessed ones who shall inherit that future age of which we can only dream; you pure and radiant beings who shall succeed us on the earth; when you turn back your eyes on us poor savages…buried in gloomy superstitions, ignorant of Nature….
men will master the forces of nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds. Man then will be prefect; he will then be a creator; he will therefore be what the vulgar worship as a god.
But even then, he will in reality be no nearer than he is at present to the First Cause, the Inscrutable Mystery, the GOD.
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