Dystopian Nonfiction

I have for a long time had an interest in dystopian fiction and film, and world events have made this interest in fantasy a lens for taking a hard look at our times. I assume this is not just for me. Who hasn’t thought of Brave New World or Nineteen-Eighty-Four over the past year? Isn’t our historical moment comparable to themes found in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil! or Twelve Monkeys, not to mention The Hunger Games or The Giver? We live in surreal times. Inhuman times.

Cormac McCarthy’s dystopic vision, particularly in Blood Meridian and The Road, offers some of the harshest and most brutal examinations of fallenness and human depravity in the literary canon. McCarthy draws on Jacob Boehme (about whom I’ve often written) and his ideas of the Threefold Cosmos—of Satan, Christ, and Sophia—and how these are layered in what we perceive of as reality. And Philip K. Dick’s many books, a good number of them made into films after his death, may be the master at exploring our often false perceptions of “reality” and the dangers of the simulacra, those beings and objects that appear genuine (as human, as animal, as institutions) in order to deceive and control. He was something of a prophet, as even a cursory reading or viewing of the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (made into the film Blade Runner) or the short story and film versions of Minority Report, with their themes of transhumanism and the surveillance state, readily show. Some might suggest that Dick was paranoid. Maybe he was, but that doesn’t mean somebody wasn’t out to get him.

This preoccupation also inhabits my scholarly work and certainly bears a relationship to Sophiology. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, the first academic article I ever published, “Meditations on Blade Runner,” came out in 2005, and, more than just about the film, it is a meditation on the phenomenon of transhumanism then beginning to make itself heard in the darker corners of the academic world. This was just after Francis Fukuyama’s book Our Posthuman Future was published in 2002. He saw it all coming. It’s here.

Our posthuman future, however, has gone through rebranding. Now it’s called “The New Normal.” I guess if you call something “normal” enough times, people will start to believe it’s normal. But it’s not. It’s not normal, because it’s not human. It’s not normal, because it has no relationship to the Creation, unless what one means by “relationship” is a need to dominate, optimize, and control.

Indeed, in the First Year of This Our Covid, we have seem many developments straight out of dystopian fiction become realities promulgated by the technocratic archons of our time—figures like Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, Elon Musk in concert with all the guys and dolls over at the governmental-industrial-military-pharmaceutical complex. Here’s a brief list:

• “Entrepreneur” Bill Gates has been gobbling up farmland at a disturbing pace.

• Not only that, but the Pastel Prince is also putting his substantial financial resources into a project to dim the sun. I heard that Gates was quoted as saying “One day software will control everything, and I will control software.” This may or may not be true. Nevertheless, I wish he would stick to software, as bug-ridden as his is.

• Apparently, Gates’s newfound career as an agriculturalist has something to do with his wish that the wealthier nations turn entirely to synthetic beef. Plan on a run of Soylent Green before too long.

• Fellow gazillionaire Elon Musk has launched fleets of satellites, “Starlink,” (over 1000 of then as of January 2021) into the stratosphere. Ostensibly, this is for the humanitarian purposes of widely available broadband internet, but for practical purposes that means surveillance on steroids.

• Muskie also want to put a microchip into your brain.

• Canada has apparently set up “Quarantine Camps” that sound like veritable hellholes. I understand the USA has some similar facilities prepared for inmates.

• And, as he shamelessly admits, Klaussie Schwab thinks transhumanism is a goal devoutly to be wished and that “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” will usher in “a fusion of our physical, digital and biological identity.”

Meanwhile, people, good people, are increasingly pitted against each other and discouraged from the kinds of human interactions we all not only crave but need for human flourishing. Only a few of the consequences of this (I do not feel confident enough to say “unintended consequences”) are the dramatic increases of child and teen depression and suicide, poverty, unemployment, increased alcohol and drug addiction, and, above all, an all-encompassing anxiety and dread. Likewise, “two weeks to flatten the curve” metamorphosed into “just wait until we have a vaccine” which morphed into “this may go on for two to seven years.” Wear us down enough, it seems, and we’ll beg for the jab and the microchip. But even then, it won’t stop.

At the same time, anyone—even “experts in the field”—who call these developments into question are deplatformed, demonized, slandered, and maligned as “conspiracy theorists”—by whom? As my friend Guido Preparata used to say, “Conspiracy theory is too important to be left to conspiracy theorists.” The rest of us do our best to avoid being lobotomized by a constant barrage of propaganda and newspeak. It’s a full-time job.

Even as long ago as in that Blade Runner article, I saw this coming. I also write about it in both The Submerged Reality and Transfiguration. I just didn’t think it would happen this rapidly. We are living the dystopian dream, though we know it not.

In some forms of Gnosticism from late-antiquity, this predicament is described as being drugged, or asleep, or somehow or other unconscious of our own selfhood. Learning what reality is, true gnosis, allows to once again enter the Kingdom. There yet exists a spark of divinity in ourselves, in our world, in one another for us to release.

But I’m not out of hope. Sophiology, the relationship to the Real—in its natural and supernatural forms—is the only way out of this nightmare. Call it by other names, if you like, but without an integral vision of ourselves in relationship to the Divine and the Creation (and by implication with each other), the technocrats will win.

Don’t let them win.

A powerful clip from The Road, and a fit analogy for our 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.

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.