The logic of the thought of men like Ray Kurzweil is that, since the brain is a computer, that the contents of our minds can be decoded, copied, and reinstalled into a more durable structure than the organic one within which we evolved.
If we move on to the “Matrix”, new skills can be downloaded, and any experience you can imagine is possible, in utter and complete safety. You need never fear death, and your power for experience is unlimited. Many people, including–if I’m not mistaken–Bill Gates, admire Ray for the daring of his ideas, and are of course cautiously sanguine that they can live long enough to see what I believe he calls the Singularity, when man the biological machine becomes man the durable machine.
This is the optimistic side of things. The shadow side of this is asking the simple question: if skills can be downloaded, why not ideas? Why could some person or group not take control of the process and make of all of us their playthings? Let us posit, for the sake of argument, that the intent was outwardly and rhetorically benign, as in Mao’s China, where brainwashing (food deprivation; carefully directed peer pressure; exhausting work; and constant slogan chanting) was purportedly for the “liberation” of the person under the thrall of Capitalistic and Imperialistic ideas.
Upon what basis would ANYONE decide who other people should be? When you look at the field of evolutionary biology, what one sees is a reckless disregard for the consequences of and direction of their work. Their basic position seems to be that morality is a product of evolution, even though phenomenologically it is quite clearly presented as moral postulates, which are discussed in groups. If we are discussing ourselves, there is no “out there”. What we are doing, even if their ideas are correct, IS the product of evolution, and they are doing it incompetently.
There is, moreover, this subtle and barely detectable sadism latent in their proclaiming from the tops of the University buildings the LABORATORY death of God. They know these ideas are unpleasant to most people, but they don’t care. For THEM, for the scientists, these ideas animate and drive them. They can act on them. They can grow through them, intellectually. It is a fascinating puzzle, to be solved.
For everyone else, though, it is an ontological, existential problem, dumped without further ado in their laps, on the way to the next conference or book signing.
Structurally, this is comparable to the obvious point that Socialism is a solution to the problem of Meaning FOR INTELLECTUALS. They are the revolutionaries–the professionals that Lenin insisted must lead all revolutions–but they are never the workers. And they don’t actually solve problems for anyone but THEMSELVES. They acquire, through their cultish political devotion, a reason for living, but are unable to offer it to anyone else. This point escapes them, though, in their narcissistic Abstractionism.
The Buddhists, who arguably put together the most clever philosophy in the public history of humankind, considered time, space, and Self to all be discontinuous. Take time and self: what if you woke up somewhere you had never been, and forgot who you were? Who are you then? Simple: you are who you decide to become. This is the real “you”.
I offer up three core principles: the Rejection of Self Pity, Persistence, and the systematic and principled quest for understanding. These things can be transported to all places and all circumstances. You need have no name for God–in my view, God is everywhere, and everywhere knowable.
We need to understand that the inner and outer life of man both matter. The doctrine of Scientism rejects the former, while its adherents short-sightedly claim they are Humanists of one sort another. At a minimum, that they are NOT engaged in something that will damage humanity, and which will probably help it, somewhere down the road.
As our problems become larger and larger, we seem to be getting dumber and less wise. This need not continue, but one must first recognize the pattern to be able to fight it. We live in a world of fog and zombies right now.