Bits and pieces #5
I wonder if each age has diseases which reflect its excesses? I know it sounds apocalyptic and God-Ordained, but I'd rather plump for irony. If syphilis highlighted the fraudulent piety and repressed sexuality of Victorian times - and doubled as slight payback for the illness inflicted on the colonised, travelling back from South America as a visible sign of carnal sin, then perhaps cancer and depression are the diseases fit for our times. Cancer is disorder, a deliberate betrayal of progress and civilisation, often brought about by technological progress itself. Depression highlights the selfishness of Westerners - the heightened individualism and sense of freedom which my generation inherited from the free love and libertarianism of the post-war period has a flipside of social alienation, depression brought on by society tearing itself into smaller individual size pieces. And also, I've noticed that people in a depressive episode find it very much harder than normal to care about other people, in a bitter irony.
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I might have written about this before, so forgive me if that's the case. But if I was going to wish for a progressive future, I'd wish for science to advance enough to remove the human condition. What fascism and communism taught us - the twin extremisms coming directly from the theory of progress - was that the flaw in conceiving of a perfect world and pushing towards it was that humans are the same throughout the ages. Transhumanists have dreamt of moving beyond the constraints of flesh for fifty years, and I often feel like one of them. Wars and inequalities are part of human history for millenia. More importantly, they are part of ape history and it's hard not to conclude that war and inequality are essential to being the naked ape. I wonder if a hive mind could be created, if society could be truly recreated in a seething togetherness. Insect colonies show it is possible in a rudimentary sense, but I wonder whether information technology and storage could make us more than human.
I wonder if each age has diseases which reflect its excesses? I know it sounds apocalyptic and God-Ordained, but I'd rather plump for irony. If syphilis highlighted the fraudulent piety and repressed sexuality of Victorian times - and doubled as slight payback for the illness inflicted on the colonised, travelling back from South America as a visible sign of carnal sin, then perhaps cancer and depression are the diseases fit for our times. Cancer is disorder, a deliberate betrayal of progress and civilisation, often brought about by technological progress itself. Depression highlights the selfishness of Westerners - the heightened individualism and sense of freedom which my generation inherited from the free love and libertarianism of the post-war period has a flipside of social alienation, depression brought on by society tearing itself into smaller individual size pieces. And also, I've noticed that people in a depressive episode find it very much harder than normal to care about other people, in a bitter irony.
-------
I might have written about this before, so forgive me if that's the case. But if I was going to wish for a progressive future, I'd wish for science to advance enough to remove the human condition. What fascism and communism taught us - the twin extremisms coming directly from the theory of progress - was that the flaw in conceiving of a perfect world and pushing towards it was that humans are the same throughout the ages. Transhumanists have dreamt of moving beyond the constraints of flesh for fifty years, and I often feel like one of them. Wars and inequalities are part of human history for millenia. More importantly, they are part of ape history and it's hard not to conclude that war and inequality are essential to being the naked ape. I wonder if a hive mind could be created, if society could be truly recreated in a seething togetherness. Insect colonies show it is possible in a rudimentary sense, but I wonder whether information technology and storage could make us more than human.
posted by Doug @ 5/31/2006 09:56:00 pm
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