The Fourth Turning Halftime Update

[Bill the Piper]

(11-05-2018, 12:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: 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.

Self discipline is indeed very important. Better education, including some mindfulness techniques, would no doubt be helpful. But it's no panacea. People have been practising the techniques you describe for millennia, and it did not eradicate autocracy, violence or even stupidity. Was pre-colonial India (with roughly the type of values you prefer) a paradise on Earth? Perfected galactic humans will have brain structure allowing for more self-discipline. I don't see contradiction between "traditional" and "transhumanist" ways of improving oneself. Both can be both beneficial and harmful, depending on a choice of values. Admirable self-discipline of many shariah students is wasted on learning to conform to 7th century tosh. The same for transhumanist techniques. Imagine a bunch of neo-Nazis using genetic engineering to create a race of perfect soldiers. That would be transhumanism, but not of the extropian kind. I don't advocate for "technological might is right" but for extropianism. Combatting tyranny, poverty and disease are also extropian goals, because they contribute to many individual human minds being able to achieve higher level of development. It just happens technology is helpful in accomplishing desirable things.

Quote: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?

The above seems to require two changes in human nature:
-Improved empathy
-Lowered sex drive (few animals are obsessed with sex the way humans are)

Dionysian, sex-positive values of the millennial saeculum are a cause of many social ailments. Broken families interfere with children's emotional development. Racy pop culture prompts teens to have sex before they achieve the necessary maturity. Many young men suffer from porn addiction. This value system needs to be terminated. If you have any doubts, remember that the fall of Roman civilization was also preceded by an era of orgies.

Empathy and sex-positive ideology are not necessarily compatible. Being preoccupied with sex makes one think of other people as sexual resources (the opposite sex) or competitors (the same sex), rather than as fellow sophonts.

Both aims I postulate here can be achieved to some degree using natural techniques. Some Buddhist meditations allegedly enhance empathy. I've heard that hypericum is a natural herbal remedy that lowers the sex drive. But there is no question biotechnological means would achieve more results. Of course, I wouldn't implant a chip in my mind if simple cures are enough. I only doubt they're enough to heal the species, which has had immense problems for at least 5000 years. It could not be otherwise, since our nature is a result of adapting to hunting and gathering on savannah rather than being a citizen of a world-society.

Quote: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.

Wouldn't improved empathy put end to market fundamentalism, tribalism and even animal abuse?

Facebook is actually detrimental to moral and intellectual development. It has nothing to do with a healthy sense of personality in community, since it merely creates a sense of being a member of a herd. Faceborg must be destroyed! Individualism must be encouraged, but an individualism of a right kind, an individualism of a self-taught philosopher and artist, not of a bully!

Quote: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.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". However... if you prove the existence of an afterlife, you win the Randi prize!

Quote: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.

I agree arts and music are neglected, especially by civic generations, who don't have the sensitivity you boomers have. People born in the 90s usually listen to primitive electronic dance music, which has no emotional dimension and is mocked even by many Xennials like me!

Tech itself may not make you more creative, but imagine developing a fully automated economy like in the sci-fi Culture series by British writer Iain M. Banks. In such an economy, labour and money are no longer necessary. People have all the time they want for social life as well as artistic and philosophical endeavour.