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- Convenors:
-
Gareth Breen
(London School of Economics)
Nicholas Lackenby (University College London)
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- Discussant:
-
Jon Bialecki
(University of California, San Diego)
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 10 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Recent popular techno-scientific visions of humanity's future have suggested that with increased capacities for prolonging, transforming and creating life we are on the verge of evolving into 'Homo Deus'. But are we being too quick to assume that becoming gods has the same significance for everyone?
Long Abstract:
Recent popular techno-scientific histories and visions of humanity and its future (e.g. Kurzweil 2005; Harari 2015; Pinker 2018) have suggested that, with increasing capacities for indefinitely prolonging, transforming and even creating life, we are on the verge of evolving from 'Homo Sapiens' into 'Homo Deus'. But are we being too quick to assume that becoming god(s) has the same significance for everyone? What it means and how it feels to be deified is surely socially, historically, and individually specific. This panel aims to investigate just this. On the one hand, it will engage and problematise the burgeoning popular and academic literature on the future of humanity and the role of technology within it by grounding the engagement in a comparative historical approach to human-divine relations which many such discussions relegate to the past and peripheries of human progress. On the other hand, the panel will seek a deeper ethnographic engagement with current techno-scientific feelings of becoming god-like. Not only a corrective to linear, Euro-centric thinking, the panel will aim to re-ground techno-scientific possibilities for becoming divine in the manifold forms and experiences of being god-like around the world. Rethinking the ways in which human beings might actually and metaphorically become 'divine' (or indeed resist deification through, for example, 'becoming cyborgian' (Haraway 2006; Parkhurst 2012; Puar 2012)), is to rethink the global cultural-political present from the horizons of its divine potentials.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 10 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
In Russian Orthodoxy, the possibility of transcendence is built into the fabric of the creation by God. It is not something that one only begins to access with the development of new technologies. This paper examines this proposition in relation to their approaches to space exploration technologies.
Paper long abstract:
In the transhumanism of Bernstein's (2019) and Farman's (2020) interlocutors, the transcendence of death is to be achieved through technological means. The immortality that these groups advocate is otherwise impossible: new technologies open the very possibility of this materialist transcendence. Mormon transhumanists (Bialecki 2022) also believe in a transcendence – theosis, or communion with God – achieved through the invention of new technologies. This, I argue, is in a stark conflict with how the Russian Orthodox relate with technology, old and new, as they work towards theosis.
I suggest that the crux of this difference lies in the Orthodox temporal ontology of transcendence that underlies how the Russian Orthodox relate with the material. For the Orthodox, the possibility of theosis is already out there in the creation. It is built into the fabric of the creation by God. It is not something that they only begin to access with the development of new technologies.
However, some new technologies may work well for theosis, but not because of their technological advancements or a reordering of the materiality to give rise to the possibility of theosis. It is because – akin to religious technologies, such as icons – they help an Orthodox person orient themselves towards God. This paper will examine this proposition in relation to the ethnographic examples drawn from fieldwork conducted with the Russian Orthodox, devising approaches to the space exploration technologies.
Paper short abstract:
Edmund Leach challenged humans in his 1967 BBC Reith lectures to understand their divinity. This problem haunts the present because it remains unresolved. This paper asserts the need to confront this problem and find consensus.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines Edmund Leach’s Reith lectures recorded by the BBC in 1967 to excavate questions and insights that have relevance now. Leach argued that every generation is beset by anxieties in response to technological and concomitant social change. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) and societal transformation gave tangibility to public anxiety at the time of Leach’s lectures but Leach’s insights into the apparent Runaway World of his time are as instructive to the problem of AI and the future of humanity now as to his audience and their concerns 55 years ago. “Men have become like gods. Isn’t it about time that we understood our divinity?” so Leach posits at the start of his Reith lectures. Leach’s question remains potent and problematic; it necessitates reflection on ‘change’, ‘control’, ‘time’, ‘purpose’, ‘value’ and of critical importance: which gods to be like? Leach concludes that “We could act like gods” but the modal verb used heralds caution. It is this tone of caution that haunts the present because if it cannot be agreed which gods we could or should be like then our techno-creations and the social complex in which these creations operate will be contradictory. It is concluded that until the ‘which god to be like?’ problem becomes resolved and a consensus found the future remains incoherent; humans as heroes or villains with techne but not like gods. To plan an advanced AI future we must first decide what kind of gods we must become.
Paper short abstract:
By drawing on related literature and through an exercise in symmetrical anthropology, I discuss whether and how transhumanism (broadly understood as future making projects which aim at radically changing the human condition through high technology) can be seen as a modern form of transfiguration.
Paper long abstract:
Attempts to overcome the human condition through self-enhancement by encountering and affiliating with an unknown-wished-other, whose multiple revolutionary forces one seeks to instrumentalize with the help of appropriate materials, rituals and techniques, have been documented in diverse places and times since antiquity. One of the names given to this pursuit was transfiguration. Despite its associations with Christianity, transfiguration can be understood also as an archetype (relatable to that of the saviour) found in diverse religious traditions and systems, like in ancient religions of Egypt, Iran and in Buddhism (see e.g. Eliade’s ‘History of Religious Ideas’). Would it also not be the case to speak of transfiguration when one takes a closer look at contemporary evolutionist transhumanist movements in techno-scientific societies? For instance, does the ongoing (biomedical and non-biomedical) turning of aging into a disease to be overcome through applied reason and by further advancing science and technology share common fears and longings with those found in Zarathustra’s pursuit to ‘cure existence’ through sacrifice, or in the struggles for immortality undertaken by Buddhists through Yoga and by Christians through baptism?
In this paper, I reflect on transhumanism, which I here broadly understand as the set of future making projects which aim at revolutionarily changing the human condition through rational reason and yet to come technologies (Huberman 2021), in light of transfiguration as analytical tool. By drawing on related literature and through an exercise in symmetrical anthropology, I discuss whether and how transhumanism can be seen as a modern form of transfiguration.