Disconnected Connected

 

We are the most disconnected connected race of humans ever to live.  Constant computer use is changing our brains and making us more impatient and dangerously impulsive.  This kind of rapid change is unnatural.  Nature evolves slowly, but we are evolving more rapidly than any other species before us.  What will this mean for the adaptation that emerges?  

It is not just in our imaginations that this evolution is happening faster than previous editions.  It is not just that we sense an imminent mutation that it all seems to be happening so fast.  Evolution is speeding up, but that speed is not tied to one direction.  Evolution is a multi-dimensional and multi-directional phenomenon.   

The speed of it all is overwhelming us.  As a species we are more connected, but we are fragmented, thinned out, and more depressed and lonely than we ever been in past epochs.  We need to unplug to reconnect with what it means to be human, to stay in touch with that, and to create.  We need to use our right brain more, the side that is least like the computer, to return to the depth of our imaginations and break away from the consumerism that is speeding up the evolution beyond our capacity to adapt.  

We are in an age of digital dualism, meaning we are replacing human contact with digital contact. Cyberspace is filling human psychological needs and the void left by religion that has not adapted to the Einsteinian world view.  In this new age technology promises salvation and immortality in the same way religion once did.  Transhumanism is the use of new technologies to improve our mental and physical processes and become a new species better adapted to the world as it is.  This mutation can be a good thing, but if we let it happen without compassion and foresight, it will be disastrous for the human species.   

Reflections from Ilia Delio retreat based on her new book  A Hunger for Wholeness: Soul, Space, and Transcendence. 

Cyborg Manifesto

 

Throughout the world the human brain is adapting to new ways of understanding the future.  In some places this is happening more rapidly than others.  As humans use technology to build new fields of creativity we are evolving to adapt to it the new environment it creates.  One aspect of the future that is already emerging is the post-human person, a new genus of the human species.

Homocyborgian is a human being with some processes controlled by mechanical, electronic, chemical, and technological components.  Many professions will soon be run by cyborgian hybrids that are part human and part technology.  In a sense many of us are already becoming cyborgs with laser vision and digital hearing devices, with Bluetooth earlobes and mechanical arms and legs, with computerized implants and extensions.  
  
We need do not understand how cyborgs work to see how pervasive they are.  We do not need to control the process of their invention and computer coding to see that we already are complicit in the evolution taking place. 

A cyborgs transgresses the boundary of what it has traditionally meant to be human.  It is transhuman, perhaps even ultrahuman.  It is the next evolution of what it means to be human.  The Cyborg Manifesto written in 1985 by feminist philosopher Diane Holloway is a classic that predicted how this would happen.  It is a gradual process that is in full swing all around us.  Consider yourself, and the implications of this in your own life.  Then think about the future.  

Scientists already predict that skin, human flesh as we know it now, may not be necessary for the new human.  Think of what this will mean for the aging process of the human being.  Editing of the human genome is on the cutting edge of an evolution in human flesh.  All of nature is fluid and the advance happens gradually, inexorably so that it feels "natural" in the unfolding as it advances.  

The human brain is becoming rewired and a new species is emerging.  We hope that theology can embrace this new reality so that the advance incorporates the wisdom, compassion and divine love of the religious sentiment.  The youngest generation emerging today is different from previous generations at the base level.  Before the end of this century homocyborgians with virtually indestructible exoskeletons will supplant homosapiens with vulnerable flesh in many areas of daily life.  Scientists are already working on the development of operating systems that will know us completely and love us for who we really are.   

Reflections from Ilia Delio retreat based on her new book  A Hunger for Wholeness: Soul, Space, and Transcendence. 

Evolution Will Happen

Many of our greatest minds are unconsciously trapped in a sixteenth century view of the world.  This is particularly true for secular humanitarians, theologians and religious philosophers.  Consequently, many minds that could most be of service in creating a future that is not devoid of compassion are self-isolated.  Feeling misunderstood, disjointed and out of touch, they are afraid of scientific and technological advancement.   Theology and science are not incompatible disciplines, in fact they are complementary.  

Religion without science is delusional.  Science without religion is self-destructive.  The religious ideal of divine love is not an idea that is counter-productive to the scientific development.  It is the best idea humanity has come up with to describe a meaningful existence.  All of humanity desires to be deeply loved on the personal level.  Whether we know it or not, all of us are part of a cosmos that resonates with the divine impulse to love and be loved.  

We can't control nature.  We are nature, and nature has the capacity to move beyond whatever is stifling it.  Evolution will happen with or without us.  Technology is not an obstacle to any of this.  Uniting technology with theology provides infinite space of creativity to build new life in the cosmos, and this is already happening at a remarkable pace in all directions at once.   

Consider the advances of the past few decades.  There is more technology in one smart phones than there was on the first spacecraft that landed on the moon.  Technology is not a new idea or something to be feared.   Nature itself is technological.  Each human person is a creative activity of life projecting itself forward into the next moment.   We can engage fully in the evolution happening now, or be brushed aside as the advances happen.  We cannot control nature, but we can engage or disengage.

When we allow our human brains to be limited biologically and undisciplined educationally, we fail to grasp fundamental truth.  Our biases and sluggishness makes us cling to assumptions that were long ago proven false.  We are not the center of a universe that revolves around us. There are many universes and all are in constant motion.  Our failure to see time and space as it really is slows us down and obstructs evolution of life on the planet. 

Reflections from Ilia Delio retreat based on her new book  A Hunger for Wholeness: Soul, Space, and Transcendence.