56
Fall 2009
If anything undoes us, this will be it: that our languages fail, that we misread each
other's intent, that we could not understand each other.
So I'm seeing here almost a theosophical epiphany of language trying to
bootstrap itself toward realms of platonic perfection, which as organic beings
we experience as Love. Love, Beauty, Truth — these are the vectors of human
becoming. They always have been, they always will be, and the technologies that
open these paths for us are no more and no less powerful than the human beings
that wield them. So this is an enterprise of integrity and millennial implication,
and what lies as the goal is true humanness, in sympathetic symbiosis with the
planet, and with these strange children that we have brought into the world, our
machines. That is the challenge at the end of history.
As we approach the event horizon, the only mature response is a humble
participation in its unfolding mystery... which involves a deep scrutiny of our
assumptions that the future will be the modified present, that the posthuman will
be merely "humanity plus."
We think we make the future. But it is equally true that the future makes us, to
the degree that our thoughts of the future constitute our minds in this moment,
and these minds constrain our experience both present and forthcoming.
The fantastic power of language and information upon which the psychedelic
transhumanists agree enthrones humble and compassionate intent as a crucial
touchstone in our construction of a posthuman ecology of minds. The prevailing
theme is that while we may not understand what we are, or are becoming, one
thing is clear: We're all on this trip together.
Terence McKenna: I'm seeing here almost a theosophical
epiphany of language trying to bootstrap itself toward realms
of platonic perfection.
ResouRces
Erik Davis
"The Posthuman Touch"
http://www.techgnosis.com/chunkshow-
single.php?chunk=chunkfrom-2005-07-21-
1346-0.txt
"Take The Red Pill."
http://www.techgnosis.com/redpill1.html
"The Matrix Way of Knowledge"
http://www.techgnosis.com/matrixre.html
"Technomancer"
http://www.techgnosis.com/chunks.php?cat
=phantasy&sec=articles&file=chunkfro
m-2008-01-22-1647-0.txt
Timothy Leary
Interview with Skip E Lowe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkv-
lFHQjfI&feature=related
The Eightfold Model of Human
Consciousness
http://www.nii.net/~obie/8_larvals.htm
Mark Pesce
Becoming Transhuman
Part 1
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4
291550723579995591
Part 2
http://www.viddler.com/explore/mpesce/
videos/11/
Part 3
http://www.truveo.com/Becoming-
Transhuman-part-3/id/850238096
"Toys and the Playful World"
http://hyperreal.org/~mpesce/WIT.html
Terence McKenna Land
http://deoxy.org/mckenna.htm
Terence McKenna & Mark Pesce
Dialogue at Esalen Center
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPrfDA
CDccw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=l38faoCTyTE&NR=1
David Pearce (Also interviewed in this issue
of h+)
Personal correspondence
http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/bio/post-
darwinian-ethics
