This is Whack: A Transhumanism Critique
This is Whack: A Transhumanism Critique
why I fear for where this timeline goes
OK ladies and gentlemen, and esteemed readers… Today we are going to have an intense conversation… about transhumanism.
The war for your mind has heated up to the point I can't really keep my mouth shut anymore.
In this essay we're going to talk about genetic engineering, brain computer interfaces, virtual reality, the "Psychedelic Renaissance" and other controversial topics. As well as the organizations pushing for these things, and the real motives behind it.
Now this will be a difficult conversation for a number of reasons.
It might look like cognitive dissonance. Especially coming from someone you might consider a "Futurist".
A word to the weary:
If you are easily triggered by challenging ideas or controversial takes, this essay is not for you.
There's nothing wrong with being sensitive, And I don't blame anyone for not wanting to slog through a long form rant about depressing topics and ideas that society and the media have intentionally encouraged people to not address… Ideas that have been framed in such a way that might make people think that anyone who brings them up is a… God forbid… "Conspiracy Theorist."
That weird slur that floats around these ideas like a specter, one used to discredit anybody who would want to investigate.
"Conspiracy theorist" is a term that the mockingbird media uses to try to discourage anybody from thinking about or sharing these concerns.
Anybody who would try to coerce you into adopting any kind of change without letting you investigate Is trying to limit your ability to give informed consent.
There's nothing wrong with asking questions.
A healthy society should be able to withstand critique.
I am a cultural commentator, a futurist and philosopher. I explore the ethics of technology among many aspects of how technology impacts society.
This is my commentary and if you have any issues with it, my apologies that it's simply not for you and that's okay. And with all due care, compassion and respect, that's something for you to address within yourself, not with me. Thank you in advance for understanding.
To begin with it will be important to separate the concept of futurism and futurists from technology. Futurism is simply about the future. Oftentimes that is interwoven with technology, but they are not necessarily inseparable. Now before you run off calling me a Luddite, it's important to understand that critiques are valid forms of criticism when backed up with verifiable observations and data. I am not a luddite. I am a concerned futurist.
Transhumanism: An Introduction
For those of you who might be unfamiliar, transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement which "advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies that can greatly enhance longevity and cognition."
That's the definition per Wikipedia.
It became popularized in the late 90’s and 2000’s by Ray Kurzweil.
The concept of the technological singularity, or the ultra-rapid advent of superhuman intelligence, was first proposed by the British cryptologist I. J. Good in 1965.
I'm here to suggest a different hypothesis regarding it. I personally don't believe it is what we've been led to think. My perspective comes from many years of fascination and research, with initial hope and observation dissolving to dread.
(So you understand from my personal contextual perspective, here's a revelation about myself.
I am a mutant. I have a genetic mutation on my collagen gene, it affects my body's ability to produce connective tissue. It makes my muscle tissues and joints, and even digestive organs, fragile and weak. It has caused me a great deal of pain and struggle in my life. I typically keep it to myself as many people with chronic illness do. We fear being judged and isolated from our peers as a result of our illness.
For myself on a personal level I would want nothing more than the ability to heal this gene and get back the time and strength I've lost in my life as a result of this mutation.
So, anybody who might think to criticize me for being critical about transhumanism and its related sciences are misguided. I have just as much if not more to gain from these technologies than the average person. My critiques of the field are not something that comes lightly.)
What are the applications of transhumanist technologies we are seeing in society now?
It's not about the transcendence of humankind from the weakness of flesh.
They are mechanisms of totalitarian control that we are being hood winked into adopting.
Once we explore some of these technologies, I will break down the reasons for my hypothesis.
Of course, this idea of transcending the limitations of our bodies has been around for thousands of years.
According to Nick Bostrom, transcendentalist impulses have been expressed at least as far back as the quest for immortality in the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as historical quests for the Fountain of Youth, the mythical elixir of life and other efforts to stave off aging and death.
It's really only been in the past 50 years or so with the discoveries of genes and computer brain interfaces that some of these potential techniques seem within technological grasp.
Genetic Engineering
What a transhumanist won't tell you about the sophistication of genes in DNA, Is that organic life and the flesh of flora, fauna, fungi and microorganisms are the most sophisticated processes in the universe that we know of.
Did you know that RNA and its mechanism of transcription has been the longest lasting biological molecular structure on the planet? lasting longer than any geological formation?
Did you know that something as simple seeming as vitamin D is responsible for regulating the expression of nearly 1000 genes?
(Check out Dr. Rhonda Patrick's work on how amazing and sophisticated Vit D actually is.)
To think that a fledgling genetic engineering species has anywhere near the intellectual sophistication to understand the mechanisms we are tinkering with is staggering. We are in PRESCHOOL when it comes to understand what promethean fire we are fucking with.
The use of these technologies in our food are dangerous and reckless.
It's extremely important to highlight the distinction between selective breeding and genetic engineering for those of you who are unfamiliar with the distinction.
Selective breeding is a process by which agriculturalists and farmers will choose traits they find useful and desirable among their livestock as well as their flora and breed those particular organisms in an attempt to foster the expression of those desirable traits.
Genetic engineering on the other hand is not through a reproductive process it comes from actually manipulating the genes of an organism. and this can happen in a number of ways but oftentimes it involves using enzymes to splice the genes of an organism and put foreign genes from another species into that creature. These are called transgenic chimera. They have DNA from multiple organisms, oftentimes from completely different animal kingdoms. The long-term effects of these genes and the splicing techniques including CRISPR-Cas9 and their potential impact on surrounding organisms and ecosystems is not studied in long form ways.
In the case of CRISPR, we have seen already seen extremely troubling complications in the years since its discovery and implementation.
“P53 is a tumor suppressing gene that works by stopping cell growth if there is damage to the genome and initiating programmed cell death to prevent the cell from becoming cancerous. Mutations in p53 are found in more than half of all human cancers. Not only do the mutant proteins lose the tumor suppressing functions, but they also often acquire oncogenic gain-of-functions that actually cause tumors to form (2). The normal function of p53 creates the problem when it responds to damage caused by CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing”
https://www.oligotherapeutics.org/does-crispr-gene-editing-increase-the-risk-of-developing-cancer/#:~:text=Not%20only%20do%20the%20mutant,by%20CRISPR%2DCas9%20gene%20editing.
Genetic pollution refers to the uncontrolled gene flow of genetically engineered and modified organisms into wild, unaltered populations.
In tandem to the unknown consequences of genetic tampering, oftentimes genetic modified crops are used in poorer still developing countries first as a means of trying to bolster nutrition and staving off starvation. We are essentially experimenting on these populations. Rolling the dice how they'll be affected. For example, the studies regarding GMO crops like golden rice were unethically carried out. No one seems to care about doing the science right if they stand to profit immediately from it.
They're already engineering real Chimera, and that's just what they'll openly talk about in above board science circles.
Imagine what black ops have already done.
(Stay tuned for a Dreamseed_VR episode about chimera)
As we develop genetic literacy and even greater medical technologies, Mortality rates will decrease, yet the unintended consequences of GMO exposure, as they already have over the past 100 years, will put increased pressure on poorly organized infrastructures and allocated resources such as health care.
The Power Grab
What we are seeing over the past several decades if not 100 years, but especially the past 4 years.. Is a power grab.
What we will experience in the next next several decades will be Another "great squeeze"
Aka a population and evolutionary bottle neck meant to cleave and cull you off.
You see, all of the lower class people who are not elite are extra fat. They were used to build up the world, to extract resources, to come up with new technologies and applications. To be the new serf class. But now the elite don't need you anymore, and they don't want to share the future with you.
They used us to build up civilization and now they want to shed us like a skin.
The process the elite are putting humanity through right now with the implementation of authoritarian controls under the guise of fear is meant to cull the underclass.
There are the same ones that sent our families to war for poppies and oil.
Do you know how Forbes made his money?
On opium.
These are the same people who funded Hollywood movies telling us exactly what their plans are for decades. They want our complicity. They want our manufactured consent.
The cyber dystopia none of us wanted is happening, and we are letting it happen.
We've all seen it, the Black Mirror jokes.
How our major cities are following the plot points of Robocop.
They want a one world government. They want one world digital currency, to monitor and limit your transactions and "carbon footprint" while they fly private jets to tell us we are killing the earth. They want to absorb the telecommunications companies into the government (news cycle Nov 2023), they want to implement a social credit system, to keep you in line and censor you from speaking out.
They want us to be locked down in our homes, now prisons, to work in the metaverse when applicable, own nothing, eat bugs, and "be happy."
The Psychedelic "Therapy" Revolution
They want to use psychedelic drugs to pacify us about our troubles as the new Soma, ala "Brave New World" (Aldous Huxley) to distract us with individual "spiritual" hedonism, and dissuade us from organizing and connecting with each other and waking up the broader culture.
They want us so focused on our own personal "healing" and spiritual psychedelic experiences, wrapped up in our Burningman branded hedonism, that we forget the forest for the trees.
John Perry Barlow once said that Burningman is a distraction from greater cultural change and social renaissance.
The work of Robert Forte offers a brilliant critique of the psychedelic revolution and illuminates the darker history of psychedelics.
Did you know that Google owns 51.2 percent of Burningman? As of 2019. I'm not joking. Look it up yourself.
Electric Cars
Did you know in 2019, almost two-thirds (63.3%) of global electricity came from fossil fuels?
Or for example that 70% of the wind turbine energy generated is lost as it moves across Texas to get to Austin?
Or that California doesn't produce 30% of its own electricity?
Or that California's electric grids have been unable to sustain the shift to electric vehicles in that state?
Or that they've had rolling blackouts for years?
(During devastating heat waves and forest fires directly caused by power company negligence and poor state forestry practices? I'd know, I lived through it. And my hometown was a pilot city for the first gen of electric cars in the 90’s that FAILED)
What makes the politicians think the grid will support electric car adoption when they can't even support the current 13 percent adoption.
Did you know lithium mining is brutal on the earth? That it's also a finite resource? Yet they package and market these things as progressive, as "futurism". As essential for "the Earth"
Did you know that hydrogen fuel cells are being developed? Or that there's even hints of plasmoid generators being a new viable way of reducing the need for gasoline? (Malcolm Bendall's Thunderstorm, Sept 2023)
Why have these technologies been suppressed for so long?
As you can tell there's lots of open-ended questions in this essay. They're here because I actually respect your critical thinking skills and I know you're a smart cookie. If you want to know, the information is out there. Sometimes it's about asking the right questions.
The Bugs
Genetic engineering didn't go so well in the early days of public opinion, so the elites and their bought regulatory agencies have started being sneaky about labeling. And now it's happening again with another new ingredient to western food.
Bugs. They're putting it in to the cheesy puffs and chips in the lunch pails of Australian school children..
And they are trying to convince you it's the morally right thing to do.
Did you know that the Chitin of arthropods exoskeletons, aka bug shells, is a polysaccharide that is indigestible to humans? What little chitinases (gastric juices that break down some chitin) have been found in several human tissues, their role has been associated with DEFENSE against parasite infections and to some ALLERGIC conditions. People who experience allergic reactions to shellfish are also at risk for allergic reactions relating to relating to chitin..
Chitin has also been associated with inflammatory reactions. It also happens to be connected to cancer, in particular, a nasty and rare fast moving brain and spinal cancer, glioblastoma.
This happens to be the same form of cancer that killed Terence McKenna. Now I'm not saying that Terence ate bugs. but what I am saying is that brain cancer sucks and if eating bugs is going to increase risk factor for that you probably don't want to eat the bugs. That particular brain cancer took a brilliant mind from us too soon.
Bugs are also an incredibly high vector for the transmission of parasites that can infect and harm humans, including WORMS that can burrow into your flesh. Their vector rates are even higher than raw fish!
Meat doesn't have to be bad for the Earth
Ironically beef and bison have a remarkable ability to remediate and maintain grass land that absorbs carbon significantly when properly integrated agricultural techniques are used..
There WAS lovely TED talk on it if you don't believe me. But TED removed it, oddly enough, it happened after the USDA refuted these claims. Hmm, I wonder if it's because they have a conflict of interest?
The now removed video's former link that was cited in the USDA's refutation:
Beef is also very low lectin, meat in general is.. lectin is a corrosive sticky protein found in high concentrations in plants. Its been implicated in the digestive issues, erosion of the intestinal mucosa, aka leaky gut, and subsequently Mast Cell Activation (an incurable auto immune disease).
I'd know. I have it. I was vegetarian for 13 years. And a very "good" one at that, minimal processed goods, etc.
That collagen mutation I mentioned?
That in combination with vegetarianism nearly killed me.
Too many plant proteins are often very bad for humans, plants literally use these proteins as a means of protecting themselves from being overgrazed. Because plants are immobile their only defense is molecular. These diseases caused by lectins plague many vegans and vegetarians. (Historically these lectins are the reason why we soak our beans/legumes, sprout grains and seeds, ferment soy, and bake potatoes before ingesting them.)
Human beings often have very different genetic traits. It's not only the traits that you can see with your eyes. It's not just hair color and eye color and skin color that makes us look unique from one another. Oftentimes the way people respond to foods is vastly different. It's important to understand and respect that not everybody can eat the same diet. This goes hand-in-hand with understanding that meat is an essential food for many people.
Rather than guilt tripping people into stop eating meat we need to pressure companies to find more humane ways of cultivating it. Proper stewardship and raising of animals actually have the ability to nourish topsoil. Topsoil erosion has been one of the most devastating ecological problems in the past several 100 years because of corporate agricultural techniques.
Our bodies are very finely tuned organisms that have evolved for thousands of years. Our digestive systems are not well equipped to digest chitin, or excessive lectin. Respecting nature means respecting the way we're made too. Finding balance is not going to come in adopting diets that have been survival strategies for desperate people in protein scarce ecosystems of poorer countries.
Virtual Reality / BCIs / Metaverse
I bet you're begging me to get onto the more interesting stuff right the things like bring computer interfaces and virtual reality and psychedelics? You're here for the techy stuff I know.
Well now that we've covered some of the ways that the world elite are changing the real world around us, let's go ahead and focus on how they're changing the landscape of our minds.
Virtual reality is in its fledgling phase atm. Its growing adoption has been a boon for the imagination and gaming. But it also comes with a dark side. Ironically it was my trepidation of this dark side that has led me to get into the industry. You see if you can't stop a thing, you might as well leave some easter eggs for those in the future to find their way back.
We've already seen with the advent of social media that the way it operates on the human psyche is very much like a drug. Drugs the mechanism of which typically operate on your dopamine and serotonin systems.
Social media was always a weapon, a psy op.
When we are scrolling and see that somebody has liked a status or a selfie, we've posted it gives us this little jolt of social satisfaction, a little hit of dopamine. As a social species we're hard wired for approval, we want to be liked and accepted by our peers; it's an essential part of our survival.
Unfortunately, we have seen since its adoption over 20 years ago, social media is directly responsible for a stark rise in mental illness among young people as well as adults.
This hard wiring for social approval and connection has been hijacked by big tech. It seemed fun at first, we were excited about new friends, new connections, and having a virtual town square to share our passions, our art, and even grow new careers and follow our passions.
Then came algorithms, censorship, shadow banning, cancel culture, data hacking, the corruption of search engine results, social division, and political weaponizing of our opinions and stances to damage our real lives. People who spent years growing audiences for a variety of talents and trades, were coerced into silence and complacency because if they didn't, they'd be trounced by big tech and their lives would be destroyed. No one wants to go back to being a barista after they spent 10 years developing their own business. But it wasn't just Big Tech, it was also the banking services. PayPal, Mastercard. If you don't follow the status quo, they will pull out the rug from under you. They will digitally de-person you. They will put you in an electronic gulag.
The ever-shifting sands of terms and condition contracts with these companies make it so even if you think you're following the rules they can change the rules at any moment and recognize assault you assault your platform. And when you complain, naysayers say "well, build your own!"
Many people have built their own, and then they've just been taken offline by the people who provide servers, or app stores. which for the most part is Amazon, Google, and Samsung/Android.
They call them Tech giants for a reason. There are titans. If you don't have millions or billions of dollars that startup money, your efforts to create alternatives will be throttled.
We are being psychologically trained to be subservient and obedient out of fear. The same fear let them lock us in our houses for 2 years.
The same fear that coerced people into taking an experimental medical treatment (of which sent 2 of my dearest friends to the hospital with life threatening side effects). Those same companies actively tried to hide the documentation from the public. Fear of separation, fear of isolation, were the stick. The illusion of freedom and a normal life again, the carrot.
But that's just what they did.. they separated us, they isolated us. They told us if you don't obey it's going to get worse. They also used it as a test case, an opportunity to see how many people would pick a virtual world over such a sad isolated reality.
I know it's bleak but do you see the picture yet?
I'll admit for the 1st few months of the Pandy I Was pouring through research, trying to understand the pathogen. Trying to understand to mitigate the risks for myself and my elderly Dad. But about a month and a 1/2 2 months into it I started noticing discrepancies. As a kid I desperately wanted to be an epidemiologist… so I knew a thing or two about all of the big words flying about. I kept hearing the same things from mockingbird media. (If you don't know what mockingbird media means it refers to the regurgitated scripts that all of the mainstream media companies use across several networks.) They often said the same thing word-for-word verbatim.
It's the hierarchical nature of humanity that has led us to this situation.
Our tendency to appeal to authority, to not question what the higher ups say, to go along to get along, to just focus on the next paycheck and mind your own business and don't get your toes stepped on… I've privately spoken to friends who are doctors who know that what they're being told is lies, but they cannot say anything because if they do, they'll lose their license and they won't be able to pay off their insane debt for medical school. They're completely corralled and trapped in a one-track career no other job has even the remote potential of being able to pay off a debt that large. So, they keep their mouth shut even though they know their patients are at risk taking the "thing" and that their silence is just as bad as peddling lies.
Social media is the gilded bars of this new cage we have been lured into. (To borrow and remix some poetic verbiage from Mary Wollstonecraft)
Now, let's look at the next level of cage they have laid out for us.
Video games, addiction, trauma
Research on Addiction has a direct relationship with trauma. In a society full of people with unresolved trauma, and lack of familial support, there will be a higher risk of addiction.
We know this from all forms of addiction; from drugs, to porn, to gambling, etc.
Yet there'd a newer kind of addiction that has youth culture in a vice grip.
Society has been struggling with video game addiction for many decades in various forms.
From World of Warcraft, The Sims, Fortnite, Elder Scroll, Balder's Gate.. the list goes on.
Generations of men have struggled with game addiction. Giving hours and hours of their lives away to simulated experiences, fleeting dopamine hits that oftentimes have a negative impact on the rest of their real lives. Giving time away they could spend improving their lots in life. This is not to say that women don't play video games. They mostdefinitely do. Typically, though they don't play long form titles and aren't as impacted by video game addiction.
Now this isn't a critique of fun, it's a critique of the game industry's profit from addiction. It's a critique of a society where people are driven to escape.
Video games have become our bread and circuses.
Next is when video games become immersive.
Some of you have seen Ready Player One.
For the few that haven't, it just summarized as a dystopian world where everybody has abandoned reality for VR, and as a result the real world is crumbling.
Now I personally see a potential in virtual reality.
I see it as a way to prototype potential realities.
Architecture, environments, social systems... It's a way to create social experiences that transcend geography.
There was a point in the book Ready Player One, that I feel like most people missed in exchange for the pop culture infused hyper-glossy fantasy.
"I was afraid, for all of my life, right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it's also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real. Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a star."
Reality is the only place where you can get a good meal, The only place where you can feel a real embrace. Reality Is the inspiration for art in all its fullness..
Is not to be exchanged for simulacra.
Many scientists wonder if this is a simulation or what they would call base reality. In either case, the risk of falling into a simulation is very real at this point in our technological development.
A number of theoretical developments are making this potential possible.
Projecting directly onto the retina, using brain computer interfaces, which is direct brain stimulation, (i.e. something like neural link)
In 20 years, these games could read your mind in real time and craft worlds as you play them, in effect playing off of your reward systems and creating the greatest trap mankind has ever known.
Do you think the people of the future will have the willpower to escape this when it's normalized?
When if you critique it, you will be an outcast pariah? A luddite?
When it becomes the predominant medium of social interactions? When the 2D chat bar becomes a VR bar coercing your brain chemistry into submission?
Dark, I know.
Now you know what Dreamseed_VR is really about.
It's breadcrumbs out of that Matrix, moving backwards in time from that grim future trying to guide us away from that fate.
A society that has dysregulated dopamine cycles, trauma, and is gradually more and more isolated, is being handed a pandora's box of paradox. What looks like escape, is prison, not panacea. They're being handed the portal to a Matrix world where they don't have to address any of their real-world problems, or shortcomings. They can live fantasy lives and be seen for what they want; not what they've actually worked to become.
Not everybody is going to fall into this virtual reality hole, but the thing is that if you get enough people to, it causes huge problems for society.
It impacts emotional regulation, depression, interpersonal relationships, jobs, finances, health.
Neural link is the world's most well-known BCI to the public, but many other companies are racing for a viable product to bring to the market.
Many are direct interface like neural link, some want to utilize non invasive techniques.
(The problem with direct interfaces in many internal medical devices is inflammation.
Medical Mesh technology causes systemic and site-specific inflammation/scar tissues that cause more problems that it aids in resolving. Major class action lawsuits have been in the courts over the damages caused by hernia and uterine meshes. These same principles of inflammation are relevant in other applications of meshes including those in the brain for BCIs.
Direct brain interfaces are wetware, whereas indirect interfaces will be reverse engineered from the ways our nervous system transmits data natively. Check out my BCI YouTube series on Dreamseed_VR for more information on these technologies)
So, in summary, the BCIs aren't a good idea. The genetic engineering isn't a good idea. The lithium mining, the eating bugs, the VR pods.
(yes. The VR pods. I can't tell you how often I've PERSONALLY heard REAL LIFE billionaires joke about this.)
The experimental "thing" they tried to force everyone to take. The video game addictions… hell, the porn addictions! The darpa dogs, the digital currencies, the Canadian MAID program.
The Swiss "Sarco" suicide pods. (Didn't Futurama have a joke about that? Didn't anyone see the old sci fi movie Soylent Green? Where the old man went to a suicide clinic? And they played nature videos and classical music for him as they euthanized him?)
Anyhow… The smart cities, The bugs, It's all by design. This future barreling down the pipe isn't your friend.
Now that I've effectively painted an exceptionally grim picture of the potential future for you all, what now?
I invite you to use the sacred "No".
The "No thank you."
Our worlds are made of tiny choices, and bigger choices, every day. It's time we stop dissociating and start making informed and conscious choices.
The, "No I won't sacrifice my real life for wasting inordinate time in a video game."
The, "No I won't be scared into taking the word of a corrupt organization without doing my own research."
The, "No I won't be scared into not telling my friends or family what I learned today, or what I actually think about it"
The, "No I won't be suckered into having my empathy hijacked for fake politicians."
The, "No, I won't be guilt tripped into eating bugs."
"No, I don't like those terms of service."
"No, I prefer non GMO and organic food thank you"
"No, I actually prefer meat, but thank you"
"No, I won't ignore social media issues to just go along to get along."
"No, I'm not afraid of being called a conspiracy theorist."
You get the picture.
The thing they're selling us in the glimmering vision of a transhumanist future aren't real. We will not engineer ourselves to live for hundreds of years.
THEY want that, but you won't be able to afford it. They won't be able to upload their minds to digital formats. They won't get off world either.
But they'll sure as hell try.
They want your complicity to experiment with our reality, to no actual benefit to you. They'll pretend they're curing diseases; they'll pretend they're helping quadriplegics have more agency. Then they'll use those technologies to soup up the Darpa dogs and autonomous drones. They already are.
It took me about a year to be brave enough to write this. I still on some level may yet come to regret it. But on many levels, I regret not writing it sooner. I face that fear because I love this world. I love the people and plants and animals in it, I love our experiences in it together, and I want to do my part protecting it the only way I know how, sharing what I've learned with you.
Please take a moment to like, share, and subscribe to this Substack and my YouTube channel. I'm currently also expanding to other video services in light of YouTube censoring other thinkers who cover these sorts of topics.
I will do my best to share regular content, but I also have a fabulous catalog of previous works you can find here and on Medium.
Thank you for your time and attention, I'm forever grateful.
What should we talk about next? AI? It might finally be time.
In the interim, Take care and be good to yourself.
Agree 99%. The one percent is about the use of "they". They and us are the sides of the same coin. They are our shadow, our weakness.
Excellent writing. Thank you.