The Fourth Turning Halftime Update

[Eric the Green]

(11-05-2018, 09:40 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(11-01-2018, 03:43 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The field of expanding human potential, as opposed to the very different field of the transhuman, still beckons. What more can we be? How much can our inherent life abilities expand?

I know you sort of wrote me off, but...

What are those "inherent life abilities" which cannot be expanded using biotech?

Everything we know, just about. Not applying technology to expand our range, but expanding our potential of our given bodies and souls. And the word "soul" is important, even if you don't think the individualized consciousness survives death and possibly returns for another go-round.

For starters, our physical athletic ability. Sure, athletes might convert to prosthetics, but it is also possible to increase our abilities without them. A lot of this goes back to job one, learning to develop our mental and consciousness abilities. This has been developed for centuries in Oriental countries, but is largely ignored in the West, as monasteries have been limited to Christian devotion, whereas Buddhist and other monasteries in the East have trained peoples' minds to focus.

You may have heard of speed reading. If people were taught to read without talking to themselves, instead of talking to themselves or say words out-loud as they read, our reading abilities would increase, and so would our focusing ability. Job one is to learn to think without talking to ourselves. That would increase human abilities many times over. But it's too hard for the average person to learn now. Supports for meditation is an expanding frontier of human ability.

Our personal relationships are really screwed up. People offend others, and are also too easily offended. The ability to put ourselves in others' shoes and observe the golden rule remains a learning curve on the path of developing our inherent life abilities. When will we be able to have intimate relationships with more than one person, and thus have a society with more love, without the feelings of jealousy and abandonment ruining them? How about a freer sex life, but without abuse and harrassment? What about our tendency to remain slaves to our past hurts, which screws up so many of our relationships? How about our abyssmal family structures, with all the abuse and the lack of respect for young people or elders?

And our social and political life is even more screwed up. So many reforms, and the ability of our systems to enact them, remain undone. Most of our societies on Earth are oligarchical, authoritarian or even genocidal. Even Buddhists in places like Myanmar cannot necessarily observe their spiritual principles in the way they treat other religions. We are barely out of the cave in developing our inherent life ability to communicate and respect others' rights and fulfill our responsibilities to others in society. Another tech network like facebook will not help us at all. We can see this here with people like Galen and other libertarians who don't even have a concept of social responsibility. And people on other extremes like the tyrants in fascist and communist lands and their supporters who have not developed respect for human rights, and people like Trump and his followers who cannot empathize with people of other nationalities, races and genders. And this does not even mention our relationships with other species and with Earth, which are the most screwed up and tyrannical relationships of all. But our very lives also depend on improving this.

This does not even mention the path of spiritual enlightenment, which has been pursued by a small minority before the new age, but is now open to all, and yet still traveled by relatively few. It comes down to what we can do and perceive, not what a machine can do for us, even if tech and pharmacy can help open the doors. Our psychic abilities and our ability to contact the dead and know our past lives and history, is a frontier that would transform us enormously if pursued. Our metaphysical, spiritual and philosophical knowledge and our experience of God is neglected, while scientific knowledge expands, although there's still much to learn along all the paths of knowledge.

And our arts and music are neglected, resulting in a crass popular culture that surely could be improved if we took some interest in developing our sensitivity and creative abilities, and in supporting them and freeing them from corporate market commercial domination. No people have ever had the knowledge of other cultures past and present, the potential of our new media, and ability to access inspiration, as we have today, and yet our potential to create an artistic renaissance remains untapped. Creativity is not a technological ability; it's an inherent soul ability. Even technological invention itself depends on human inspiration and perspiration.

There's just a sample. I have no hope at all that tech can fix these things. On the contrary, over-reliance on tech progress, and neglect of human life progress, is the biggest problem we face today. These are considerations not to write off.