The Threat of "Singularity" in the Transformation of Humans to Machines
Part 1: The mortal threat of a chain of deceptive ideas
INTRODUCTION
During the 1950s, of all the gifts that a young boy could receive from his parents, these were at the top of the list:
A Zorro uniform for Halloween
A Superman uniform for any time, so that he was always properly prepared to fight for “truth, justice, and the American way!!”
I’d first met Ralph Jenkins, who became my best friend, when I was five years old. When I was seven years old, one day I decided to go play with Ralph. When I got to the front gate, and grabbed the doorknob of the gate to open it and enter the tiny courtyard, Ralph had just burst through the front door, stood on the porch a few seconds, fully dressed in his Superman uniform, and hollered “Here I come to save the DAYYYYYY!!!”
He then leaped into the air, his chubby torso landing flat on the concrete walkway at the bottom of the steps that he could have simply walked down. Ralph was taken to Provident Hospital, where it was discovered that he had broken an arm. His face, to use his own expression, had also been “rearranged,” though it eventually healed up.
It was astonishing that the injuries weren’t worse. Ralph had always been fat, so maybe the fat cushioned the fall. The very odd thing about Ralph’s attempt to save the day, Superman style, is that Ralph was, by far, the smartest dude on the block. Now, before you say, “Damn, you must have lived on a block filled to the brim with stupid kids,” Naaaa, that wasn’t the case.
Ralph was that guy on the block who would try anything, and was usually good at it. Ralph was adventurous; daring. But (obviously) he had a very active and impressionable imagination. Well, needless to say, Louise, Ralph’s mom, forbade Ralph to watch The Adventures of Superman anymore on TV after he got out of the hospital.
Ralph was the first dude on the block to build his own Go-Kart, in 1959, when he was nine years old. He gathered parts by walking down alleys and finding old lawn mowers that he would strip of their motors and other parts. He’d gather wooden planks, baskets, wheels, etc. His mom, a postal worker, had purchased subscriptions for him to a number of hobby magazines that gave full instructions on building all kinds of things. Plus, back then, there were hobby shops all over Chicago where books and parts for building things could be purchased.
Ralph was a genius. Ralph could make small clocks. He would head the crew of us friends of his, leading us through the construction of a tree house. Ralph showed us how to make bottle-cap shooters. He made his own bow-and-arrow weapon. Ralph made his own kites, and showed us how to make them and fly them. Ralph once made a radio. By the time we were close to our teenage years, Ralph was the first one in the neighborhood to make his own zip-gun. And it worked. Luckily, he never shot anyone with it, only taking it to Washington Park to shoot into trees. When Ralph wasn’t around, we used to say, “Wow, Ralph can do anything!!!” Yep! Except fly.
Ralph’s quick “flight” was, of course, a demonstration of the limits imposed on the physical human entity by the forces of gravity, although I once read a book by an American scholar who’d traveled in China and reported that, one day, he was in a rikshaw, being pulled to his destination. As the rickshaw moved forward, he saw a Buddhist monk floating down the street, about two feet above the ground. Ralph had never studied Buddhism. And if he had, it was certainly not at the level of that monk. Ralph didn’t float.
We’ll get into Singularity in the next part, Part II, of this three-part article. Though the concept of Singularity derived from one idea that emerged through the study of the evolution of the universe, it has different meanings for different areas of human endeavor—natural sciences, social systems, technology, robotics, AI (Artificial Intelligence), etc.
But first, the subject of Singularity, as understood and lauded by technocrats and “futurists” like Ray Kurzweil, raises an important question, as well as huge concerns: What is it about our species that keeps us restless? What keeps us believing that we can or should break beyond what appear to be natural impassable boundaries? And what causes us to attempt—sometimes succeeding—to obliterate, or leap over, boundaries? Are there boundaries that, despite our restlessness and curiosity, we should remain within? I think Ralph discovered the answer to that question.
The more I think about it, the more Ralph’s crash landing appears to represent a metaphor for what will happen to human beings if we allow Superman, no borders, Ralph-consciousness to dominate: We’ll be smashed into concrete, the only difference being that, as a species, we won’t get back up. We will come to an end.
And I say that for three reasons. Firstly, because I believe that there are borders beyond which we should not attempt to crash through or hurdle over. Secondly, in reading about conclusions drawn by some scientists, technocrats, and “futurists,” concerning their ideas about human “advancement,” those ideas are based on limitations, in my view.
Their conclusions about how to break the limitations imposed on humanity, ironically, are based on limitations themselves. (I’ll explain soon). And what are those limitations? Their beliefs about advancement, with Singularity at the center, are based on the following constraints:
Mind
Body
Consciousness
They do not believe in, or apparently are not aware of a higher reality, other than and above Mind, Body, and Consciousness, that we have access to. Their modus operandi is to manipulate mind, body, and consciousness, artificially, for the purpose of bypassing natural human evolution, which, in their minds, is too slow, and even, in effect, demonstrates an “IQ” level that is just a little bit above zero. I kid you not. Hey, I know! Charging human evolution, in effect, to be STUPID, sounds a bit arrogant on their part. But, don’t take it from me. Here’s Ray Kurzweil, in his own words:
“Evolution has achieved an extraordinary record of design, yet has taken an extraordinarily long period of time to do so. If we factor its achievements by its ponderous pace, I believe we need to conclude that its intelligence quotient [IQ] is only infinitesimally greater than zero…Evolution is thereby only a quantum smarter than completely unintelligent behavior.”1
I am calling for the recognition, by human beings, that there exists a power that is apart from and above Mind, Body, and Consciousness. I call this power, Supra Consciousness, or The Supra Mental State. In the article I wrote entitled The Vast and Vital Importance of Intuition and Intuition Development, I already proved that that state exists and can be used without converting human beings to machines, and without claiming that Mother Nature, in the creation of its evolutionary process of advancing human beings, has demonstrated a level of stupidity, according to Ray Kurzweil, that rates her with an IQ of “only infinitesimally greater than zero.”
Do I really have to say this? Mother Nature ain’t stupid. It seems the very height of supreme arrogance to claim otherwise. And it points to a soul-lessness within the world of science and technology that, rather than lead to the expansion of the human intellect, constrains it by making the incorrect assumption that Mind, Body, and Consciousness are the only dimensions within which humanity can gain more information and more power.
As I demonstrated in that previous article, I have used the power within Supra Consciousness to relieve clients, including my wife, of physical ailments. In that article I gave two examples, from two different modalities—Reconnection Therapy and BodyTalk—to prove that Supra Consciousness, which I also call The Supra Mental State, exists.
In the next part, Part II, of this series, I will cover four topics:
WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?
WHAT IS TRANSHUMANISM?
WHAT IS POSTHUMANISM?
WHAT IS “THE SINGULARITY?”
In Part III, I will give two more examples of the existence and power of Supra Consciousness, or the Supra Mental State, as well as the effectiveness of the Supra Mental State in solving healthcare issues:
The Mindscape Workshop. [My personal experience]
BodyTalk [My wife’s personal experience in relieving a client’s health problem]
Keep in mind that my experience in dealing at the level of Supra Consciousness is limited to healthcare. Can the Supra Mental State be accessed, and used, to solve problems, or find answers, in fields other than healthcare, such as technology, building construction, communication, energy production? I think so. At YouTube, you can find videos, for example, that show what the Egyptian pyramids were really used for: free energy generation, believe it or don’t believe it. If you read up on “dream incubation,” you’ll discover that dream incubation was once used, all over the planet, to solve problems.
NOTES:
Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines (p. 78). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition