iHuman: Transhumanism is Bullshit

an image from 'Blade Runner' (1982)

Twenty years ago, I began my career as a college English professor, teaching an evening composition course at the Catholic liberal arts college I had attended as an undergraduate. The theme of my course was “Being Human,” and I used a reader by that same title and edited by Leon Kass, M.D. I loved the book, as it included selections from philosophy, mythology, the hard and social sciences, literature, and even science fiction. One of the science fiction selections was a chapter from Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which was later made into the now classic 1982 movie Blade Runner. I remembered being an unemployed nineteen-year-old when the film came out and seeing it for $1.50 in an afternoon matinee with my buddy and how the film had struck me then. But I hadn’t seen the film in almost twenty years, so I decided to hit the video rental store (remember those?) and rent a copy.

What struck me on that second viewing was that director Ridley Scott does a masterful job of manipulating the audience into sympathizing with the wrong guy. The wrong guy in question is the replicant (the film’s term for “android”) Roy Batty (played by Rutger Hauer), who is a ruthless murderer but possesses a completely cool postpunk vibe and dashing good looks. The film’s fictional Tyrell Corporation, the makers of the replicants, has as its advertising slogan the phrase “More Human Than Human.” And it is this marker that both Scott’s film (and Dick’s novel, but to a lesser degree) and my course explored.

When Roy first appears on film, he speaks a line of exquisite poetry. “Fiery the angels fell,” he says, “deep thunder rolled around their shores, burning with the fires of Orc.” Game on, right? The line, in fact, is a misquote (or misappropriation) from William Blake’s America: A Prophecy, but Blake’s language says “Fiery the angels rose.” At least we know what we’re dealing with here—but by the end of the film the audience is typically all in for the anti-hero Roy, as he busts out some more poetry in his death scene:

Eventually, I wrote an article on the topic, “Meditations on Blade Runner,” that was published in 2005 and then republished in 2015 (you can find a pdf here).

During about ten years or so of teaching that course, I expanded its focus to be on various aspects of what was being called transhumanism. The students usually thought it was a crazy idea and one that would never catch on. I also used the notorious academic paper “After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?” by Francesca Minerva and Alberto Giubilini which argues on behalf of the ghastly practice of “aborting” [sic] a child even after birth, “until it can have preferences,” perhaps even to the age of eighteen months or more. I’m so not kidding: it’s in the article.

In many of my courses over the years, particularly in philosophy, I have often raised the problem of transhumanism and asked my students to deeply consider what it means to be human. I’m not sure I was very successful. But I gave it a shot. Nevertheless, as we have seen in recent years, Minerva and Giubilini’s proposal is fast becoming accepted—and now even the world Archons, such as Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum (and, is it just me, or does he look just like Dr. Evil?) and Bill Gates, are endorsing and promoting transhumanism—not in some amorphous future, but as a way to get out of the pandemic. This is fucked up.

My interest in transhumanism (philosophically and theologically) has everything to do with my profession of Sophiology. Transhumanism is the Anti-Sophiology and it’s anti-human, anti-nature, anti-spirit, anti-Sophia, anti-God. Just notice how these demons (or the demons working through them) have capitalized (note the metaphor) on the pandemic as a way to implement the “Great Reset.” It’s not a conspiracy theory if they tell you this is what they’re doing. Their masks have come off, while they force masks on everyone else.

Propaganda is a powerful tool and social media and the internet have made it even more powerful—and we know the guys and dolls over at Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and so forth have been playing all of us like a game of Yatzee. How could anyone trust them? Yet how many times have you heard friends say “They’re privately-owned companies.” And let me say one thing: if Waldorf teachers and Anthroposophists (who have admirably gone against the grain on the “vaccine issue” for decades) overwhelmingly voted for Biden—who promised a mandatory vaccine—we can see just how powerful this manipulation is. There is still time to repent. At least I hope there is.

I imagine this will come to a head, hopefully not in a violent way, though I wouldn’t rule it out. As I heard Catherine Austin Fitts say in a podcast recently, “There are worse things than dying; and slavery is worse than dying.” People need to have sovereignty over their lives and—why do I even need to say it?—their biology. To pretend these powers know what’s best for you is to be a fool. And I know a lot of fools.

Yes, transhumanism is bullshit, evil, and inhuman. But we still have the power to stop it. As St. Paul told the Ephesians:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness. And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;

And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,

For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. (6:12-20)

Don’t let yourself be fooled: this is a spiritual battle.

The French connection.

You may find this prayer of help in these trying times.

Michael’s latest books are an edition of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: The Garden.

Prosopon: The Dream of the Face of God

The dream:

I am at church, waiting for a service to begin (but it’s not the Divine Liturgy). Fr. John is at the altar preparing something like a monstrance (which is odd, since we don’t use a monstrance in the Byzantine Rite). There is no iconostasis and almost all of the icons are covered in green duct tape; the only one not covered is a small icon of Christ. I don’t really want to sit anywhere (I feel estranged from everything) but find a seat to the side facing away. Fr. John comes over to speak, but I have no words.

In the morning yesterday, as my wife and I were getting ready to head out to the barn and milk our cow, Fiona, I told her about dream and how strange the green duct tape was. “It wasn’t tape,” she said. “Those were masks. With everyone wearing all these masks, we can no longer see each other. And then we can’t see the face of God. We’re the image and likeness of God. Without faces, we can’t experience that.”

She’s right. And I was wrong. It wasn’t duct tape. It was, quite literally, masking tape. And Christ’s face (in the dream) was almost too small to see. Truly, the sudden coldness of the world has reduced our experience of Christ. And by design, I fear.

In Greek, the word for face is prosopon, a term used in theology to describe the phenomenon of the countenance of the divinity being turned toward Man. But in the New Testament, this term is also used to describe the encounter of each of us, prosopon pros prosopon, face to face: a desire for which even imprisonment can’t eradicate.

In fact, what we are experiencing is a kind of imprisonment, though cheaper than an electronic tether (we actually pay for that by a monthly service fee). But an imprisonment, all the same. St. Paul knew what this was like as he was held awaiting trial in Rome, but his captivity did not erase his desire for communion (of every kind). As he writes in 1 Thessalonians, “But we, brethren, being taken from you for a short time in presence, not in heart, endeavored the more abundantly to see your face [prosopon] with great desire” (2:17). Interestingly, even the word here translated as “presence” is prosopo.

This same desire for communion characterizes Paul’s (and his community’s) frustration at not being to experience God fully. “For now we see through a glass, darkly,” he writes in 1 Corinthians, “but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (13:12). We all desire to know even as we are known by God; and we also desire to be known by each other. I’m coming to the end of a semester at the college where I’ve been teaching. Usually, I know every student’s name and face by the third week. That didn’t completely happen this semester. I have “known” these students for almost twelve weeks. And I still don’t know what most of them look like. We are hidden from each other.

The eschaton, always/already happening, is upon us. It is a moment when “they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads” (Rev 22:4). But the countenance before you is the place it begins.

Michael’s latest books are an edition of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: The Garden.

My Rosary

Well, I had to retire another rosary this week. It happens. Since I pray the rosary every day—sometimes while driving, sometimes in the house before everyone in my crowded house wakes up, sometimes in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, sometimes in the garden—I like to have one with me at all times. Since I’m both a scholar and a farmer, my pockets are a poor choice for a place to carry a rosary. Rosaries tend toward tangling in pockets anyway, but when in the company of loose change, pens, screws and nuts, and other assorted things, that makes things even worse. Add to that the many times I have to lift heavy objects—logs into the bed of my pickup truck, for example—I have often broken the chains—or even beads!—of rosaries so many times I needed to find a better way. A better way, as it turns out, has been to wear it around my neck. Rosaries still can get broken there, but not as frequently, although, inevitably, repairs need to be made or a replacement is in order.

That’s my recently retired rosary in the picture. If you look closely, you can see where the silver coating has worn away from the beads. It’s not that I have such an intense prayer life; it’s only the usual wear and tear of any tool on the farm (which, by the way, we named Stella Matutina in honor of the Virgin). The crucifix you see is probably the third one that’s hung on this rosary. Its predecessors must lie somewhere in the soil of my farm, or in the barn, maybe in the pasture or woods. But this past week I had to repair the rosary almost daily. Then I lost a bead. So, I found another, a crystal rosary with a pendant of the Virgin instead of a crucifix (I think it belonged to my grandmother) which is now hanging around my neck.

A priest once asked me what my spiritual practice was like. I probably disappointed him. My spiritual practice revolves around saying the rosary and contemplative paying attention. I pay attention, for example, to literature (including scripture), and especially poetry (what I have called, following William Desmond, agapeic reading), as well as to music (we’re all musicians at my house). I also pay attention to the way things grow and to changes in the animals (not to mention people!) who share this farm with me. Farming is a contemplative activity (an oxymoron, I know), at least biodynamic farming is. We do most farm work by hand, only using a rototiller once in a while, though I have a deep affection for my chainsaw. I try to turn as much of what I do in the course of a day into a contemplative activity. It’s called presence. Parousia.

Now, my way of praying the rosary is (big surprise) pretty idiosyncratic. We never said the rosary in my Catholic family when I was growing up —though rosaries were around—and I didn’t know how to pray it until I was in my late twenties. I could never get with the maudlin prayers added to the rosary from the visionaries of Fatima (“O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell…”). Coupled with the children’s version of The Baltimore Catechism, I bet this little number has inflicted untold neuroses on the Catholic soul. Instead, I kind of do my own thing. In place of the Fatima prayer and the Creed (not that I have anything against the Creed), I have, for the last year or so, been offering Valentin Tomberg’s “Our Mother” prayer on the centerpiece and at the end offering the prayer of the Lady of All Nations. I also invoke the Mother, the Daughter, and the Holy Soul (I only hope the Inquisition doesn’t find out). At other times, I’ve prayed the Trisagion on the centerpiece. I have even offered Dante’s beautiful prayer to the Virgin from the Paradiso.

I follow the more-or-less traditional sequence of the Mysteries, praying the Joyful Mysteries on Mondays, the Sorrowful Mysteries on Tuesdays and Fridays, the Glorious Mysteries on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. I also pray the Luminous Mysteries (the Baptism, the Marriage at Cana, the Preaching of the Gospel and the Feeding of the Five-Thousand, the Transfiguration, the Institution of the Eucharist) on Thursdays. I know a lot of my traddie brothers and sisters dislike the Luminous Mysteries as a Modernist innovation of that heretic John Paul II, but—come on already!— they belong!

I have learned much through this single religious discipline I have chosen (or has chosen me). Primarily, I have learned that a spiritual practice is as simple as living a life in parousaic attention, as messy as that can be. If you will recall (and many don’t), at the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost an important figure was at the center of the cenacle: “They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers” (Acts 1:14). That’s all it takes. As Christopher Bamford writes in his beautiful essay on the rosary, “I learned it with the force of revelation through the Rosary at the feet and in the presence of Mary Sophia.” [1]

That’s all it takes.

Tomberg’s Our Mother Prayer

Our Mother, Thou who art in the darkness of the underworld,

May the holiness of Thy name shine anew in our remembering,

May the breath of Thy awakening kingdom warm the hearts of all who wander homeless,

May the resurrection of Thy will renew eternal faith even unto the depths of physical substance.

Receive this day the living memory of Thee from human hearts,

Who implore thee to forgive the sin of forgetting Thee,

And are ready to fight against temptation, which has led Thee to existence in darkness,

That through the Deed of the Son,

The immeasurable pain of the Father be stilled,

By the liberation of all beings from the tragedy of Thy withdrawal.

For Thine is the homeland and the boundless wisdom and the ail-merciful grace, for all and everything in the Circle of All. Amen.

Prayer of the Lady of All Nations

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Father, send now Your Spirit over the earth. Let the Holy Spirit live in the hearts of all nations that they may be preserved from degeneration, disaster and war. May The Lady of All Nations, who once was Mary, be our advocate. Amen.

St. Bernard’s Prayer to the Virgin (Paradiso, Canto XXXIII)

O, Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son, Humblest and greatest of all creatures; The eternal counsel’s predestined end;

Thou hast brought such glory to human nature That its divine Creator did not scorn To make Himself the creature of His creature. The Love that was in Thy womb enflamed

Sends forth the warmth of the eternal peace Within which this flower has bloomed. Here to us, thou art the meridian face Of charity; and among mortal men, The living fountain of hope. Lady, so great are thy power and worth That who seeks grace without recourse to thee Would have his wish fly without wings. Thy sweet benignity not only brings relief To those who seek, but, indeed, oftentimes It graciously anticipates the plea. In thee is mercy, in thee is kindness, In thee munificence, in thee unites All that creation knows of goodness.

Michael’s latest books are an edition of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: The Garden.

1. Christopher Bamford, “Deserts and Gardens” in his An Endless Trace: The Passionate Pursuit of Wisdom in the West (Codhill Press, 2003), 275.