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.

Ars Poetica: The Death (and Resurrection) of Poetry

The Death of Orpheus by Jean Delville

I’ve been teaching a lot of poetry to undergrads these days, and these are typically the moments my teaching becomes most inspired. I’m not sure the students necessarily understand what I’m talking about—poetry is often a very foreign, very strange object to them, for ours is a culture sadly and (for the most part) unconsciously suffering from a lack of the poetic. I ask my students how many of them know any poems by heart. None. I ask them if they remember and Mother Goose. None. Then I recite Keats’s “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” part of Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” and so forth. In general, the only exposure to poetry most of my students have is when they had the writing of haiku inflicted on them sometime in elementary school. Poetry should not be a punishment. It should be a lived experience. I fear sometimes I must appear a madman from the past or future to my students, someone speaking in a strange language that sounds like English, but a language mysteriously other. It only gets worse when I speak about the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz, John Donne, William Blake, or W.B. Yeats. Surely some revelation is at hand.

This week I had one class read Dana Gioia’s now classic essay “Can Poetry Matter?” which I read long ago and which impelled me to rethink what poetry could be. Gioia discusses all of the varieties of entropy contributing to poetry’s decline—without whining about the general public. Instead, he blames the “professionalization” of poets in academic circles as well as the insular and self-absorbed culture created by MFA programs in poetry. Before his untimely death, Franz Wright criticized the same phenomena—though in language far more strident (and far less polite) than Gioia’s.

As the founder and editor of the journal Jesus the Imagination, I can only concur with the opinions of Gioia and Wright. Most of the poetry I receive is of two types. The first is of the garden variety (I-write-for-my-cohort) MFA pablum. It all sounds the same, the voices of multitudes homogenized into a dull uniformity. This is depressing. The other kind of poetry I tend to get is reactionary formal verse, apparently intended to revive the golden age of Christendom. I have nothing against formal verse—I’ve written and published a ream of it myself—but this reactionary propaganda is poetry as ideology. And it’s bullshit.

In fact, I was so discouraged by the recent batch of submissions (not that all of them were lacking in imagination, but…) that I almost decided to suspend publication of Jesus the Imagination. But only almost. When I founded the journal, my primary inspiration was the reimagination of culture, not the regurgitation of fallen ones. Among those already mentioned, I looked for inspiration to Paul Claudel, William Everson, David Jones, and Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz-Milosz—poets unafraid to move into a space reserved to prophets—not in imitations of style but of their daring. But we live in fearful times. As Blake quotes Numbers in the Preface to Milton: “Would to God that all the Lords people were Prophets.”

In closing, let me share some thoughts from the chapter entitled “On Poetry and Prophecy” from my book, The Incarnation of the Poetic Word:

What I am describing here, then, is no less than what Nikolai Berdyaev has called “the apocalypse of culture.” Such is the product of our decent into spiritual torpor and thence into slavery: a slavery in our day of our wills to technology, our feeling to a shallow narcissism, and our thinking to the opinions of the electronic coterie which turns us all into mimetic sciolists. Cultural ennui is indistinguishable from spiritual and religious ennui. Culture without religion rapidly decays, while religion without culture loses its mooring in actual human life and has nothing to claim but the past:

“Behind the ideal values there stood prophets and geniuses in their day, with creative inspiration and fire. But when monuments have been erected to the prophets and the geniuses, and the streets have been called by their names, a chilled and mediocre culture comes into shape which no longer endures a prophetic spirit and a new spirit of genius.”1

The apocalypse of culture ensues: “Culture must be transfigured into a new life, as the whole earth must be. It cannot linger on indefinitely in its mediocrity, in its cold legalism.”2

The prophet is he who lives in the barren places, attentive to parousia, eating locusts and wild honey as he awaits the coming of the divine utterance. The poetic vocation also requires such wildness, such authentic transgressivity. The much-lauded “transgressivity” of the academic poet has nothing transgressive about it. If the coterie holds the same opinions, there is no transgression. Transgression, to be authentic, requires the ground of the spirit, the source of all life. The transgression of the academy is mimetic transgression, anchored in the world, possessing no life. And, because of its privileged status, it spreads like a cancer….

...The primal quality of the prophetic voice is fearlessness. Fear of speaking permeates our society. Indeed, such fear has become its hallmark. It infests academe: show me a professor not afraid to speak truth before the archons of the academy and the assured punishment inflicted by the egregore, and I’ll show you a career destroyed. Fear poisons workers in the arts, who then become its tools of power. It even touches the episcopacy. Fear, we know, is the primary tool of the Enemy.

“All the tortures of repentance are tortures of self-reproach on account of our leaving the Divine Harvest to the Enemy, the struggles of entanglement with incoherent roots. I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of mind & body to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination.” (William Blake, Jerusalem, plate 77)

Like Blake, Joséphin Péladan recognized the divine nature of the poetic vocation, a legacy fundamentally abandoned in our current cultural milieu, a milieu in which the guardians of art and poetry offer incense before the idols of utilitarianism, politics, and self-promotion and leave prophecy to the extravagances of a past that, in their postmodern positivism, they regard with condescension, themselves satisfied with the puny returns of publication, position, and notoriety.

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.

1 Nikolai Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom, trans. R.M. French (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944), 129.

2 Ibid.