Philosophical Speculations

Many of the philosophical questions that have bothered humanity for thousands of years are now becoming practical. Previously philosophy was a kind of luxury: You can indulge in it or not. Now you really need to answer crucial philosophical questions about what humanity is or the nature of the good in order to decide what to do with, for example, new biotechnologies.

Jim Cross wrote: ↑Tue Nov 09, 2021 6:28 pm Honestly I have never been able to see that much that was insightful in what Harari has written. It always seems either banal or over generalized.

I pretty skeptical too about 2%. I would like to see what the investment is. Whatever investment is made has to be counterbalanced with stopping the bad stuff we do and that may be harder than coming up with the investments.

If you're looking for a metaphysical link there's this:

Many of the philosophical questions that have bothered humanity for thousands of years are now becoming practical. Previously philosophy was a kind of luxury: You can indulge in it or not. Now you really need to answer crucial philosophical questions about what humanity is or the nature of the good in order to decide what to do with, for example, new biotechnologies.

Lou Gold wrote: ↑Tue Nov 09, 2021 7:10 pm

Jim Cross wrote: ↑Tue Nov 09, 2021 6:28 pm Honestly I have never been able to see that much that was insightful in what Harari has written. It always seems either banal or over generalized.

I pretty skeptical too about 2%. I would like to see what the investment is. Whatever investment is made has to be counterbalanced with stopping the bad stuff we do and that may be harder than coming up with the investments.

If you're looking for a metaphysical link there's this:

Many of the philosophical questions that have bothered humanity for thousands of years are now becoming practical. Previously philosophy was a kind of luxury: You can indulge in it or not. Now you really need to answer crucial philosophical questions about what humanity is or the nature of the good in order to decide what to do with, for example, new biotechnologies.

Yup and a transhumanism combining AI and human biology is what has been predicted as a saving vision by the originator of the Gaia Hypothesis of a future epoch in which humans and artificial intelligence together will help the Earth survive. See James Lovelock: "Novacene"

Gebser wrote:The new mutation of consciousness, on the other hand, as a consequence of arationality, receives its decisive stamp from the manifest perceptual emergence of the spiritual....

Two apocryphal statements of Christian doctrine clarify in their way what is meant here: “This world is a bridge, cross it but do not make of it your dwelling place,”2 and “I have chosen you before the earth began.”3 They point to the spiritual origin prior to all spatio-temporal materialization. We may regard such materialization as a bridge that makes possible the merging or coalescence, the concrescere of origin and the present. The great church father Irenaeus presumably had these sayings in mind when he stated: “Blessed is he who was before the coming of man.”4 We have seen him; he revealed himself in space and time. In his departure he was beheld by his disciples in his transparency, a transparency appropriate only to the spiritual origin (if anything can be appropriated to it), the transparency which a time-free and ego-free person can presentiate in the most fortunate certainty of life. The grand and painful path of consciousness emergence, or, more appropriately, the unfolding and intensification of consciousness, manifests itself as an increasingly intense luminescence of the spiritual in man.

Throughout the millennia the traditionalists, the “initiates,” have seen man’s previous journey as a decline, a departure from the affinity to and a distanciation from origin. Painful as this distanciation may be, it has served the requisite intensification of consciousness. Only distanciation contains the possibility for the awakening of consciousness. The phenomenon releasing origin is spiritual, and with each consciousness mutation it becomes more realizable by man. With respect to the presently emerging mutation we may speak of a concretion of the spiritual.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Nov 10, 2021 5:12 am But to end on a more positive note, I will quote this Wisdom expressed through Jean Gebser and The EPO:

Gebser wrote:The new mutation of consciousness, on the other hand, as a consequence of arationality, receives its decisive stamp from the manifest perceptual emergence of the spiritual....

Two apocryphal statements of Christian doctrine clarify in their way what is meant here: “This world is a bridge, cross it but do not make of it your dwelling place,”2 and “I have chosen you before the earth began.”3 They point to the spiritual origin prior to all spatio-temporal materialization. We may regard such materialization as a bridge that makes possible the merging or coalescence, the concrescere of origin and the present. The great church father Irenaeus presumably had these sayings in mind when he stated: “Blessed is he who was before the coming of man.”4 We have seen him; he revealed himself in space and time. In his departure he was beheld by his disciples in his transparency, a transparency appropriate only to the spiritual origin (if anything can be appropriated to it), the transparency which a time-free and ego-free person can presentiate in the most fortunate certainty of life. The grand and painful path of consciousness emergence, or, more appropriately, the unfolding and intensification of consciousness, manifests itself as an increasingly intense luminescence of the spiritual in man.

Throughout the millennia the traditionalists, the “initiates,” have seen man’s previous journey as a decline, a departure from the affinity to and a distanciation from origin. Painful as this distanciation may be, it has served the requisite intensification of consciousness. Only distanciation contains the possibility for the awakening of consciousness. The phenomenon releasing origin is spiritual, and with each consciousness mutation it becomes more realizable by man. With respect to the presently emerging mutation we may speak of a concretion of the spiritual.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Nov 10, 2021 5:12 am

Lou Gold wrote: ↑Tue Nov 09, 2021 7:10 pm

Jim Cross wrote: ↑Tue Nov 09, 2021 6:28 pm Honestly I have never been able to see that much that was insightful in what Harari has written. It always seems either banal or over generalized.

I pretty skeptical too about 2%. I would like to see what the investment is. Whatever investment is made has to be counterbalanced with stopping the bad stuff we do and that may be harder than coming up with the investments.

If you're looking for a metaphysical link there's this:

Yup and a transhumanism combining AI and human biology is what has been predicted as a saving vision by the originator of the Gaia Hypothesis of a future epoch in which humans and artificial intelligence together will help the Earth survive. See James Lovelock: "Novacene"

Unfortunately, these things will become more common as people do everything possible to avoid confronting the spiritual reality which is irrupting within the physical. How do you stop an unstoppable force of Nature from manifesting in human experience? You don't fight the force itself, but try and stop people from ever noticing it or understanding it by getting them to willingly replace all of their life (soul) and thinking (spirit) processes with lifeless mechanism. But to end on a more positive note, I will quote this Wisdom expressed through Jean Gebser and The EPO:

Gebser wrote:The new mutation of consciousness, on the other hand, as a consequence of arationality, receives its decisive stamp from the manifest perceptual emergence of the spiritual....

Two apocryphal statements of Christian doctrine clarify in their way what is meant here: “This world is a bridge, cross it but do not make of it your dwelling place,”2 and “I have chosen you before the earth began.”3 They point to the spiritual origin prior to all spatio-temporal materialization. We may regard such materialization as a bridge that makes possible the merging or coalescence, the concrescere of origin and the present. The great church father Irenaeus presumably had these sayings in mind when he stated: “Blessed is he who was before the coming of man.”4 We have seen him; he revealed himself in space and time. In his departure he was beheld by his disciples in his transparency, a transparency appropriate only to the spiritual origin (if anything can be appropriated to it), the transparency which a time-free and ego-free person can presentiate in the most fortunate certainty of life. The grand and painful path of consciousness emergence, or, more appropriately, the unfolding and intensification of consciousness, manifests itself as an increasingly intense luminescence of the spiritual in man.

Throughout the millennia the traditionalists, the “initiates,” have seen man’s previous journey as a decline, a departure from the affinity to and a distanciation from origin. Painful as this distanciation may be, it has served the requisite intensification of consciousness. Only distanciation contains the possibility for the awakening of consciousness. The phenomenon releasing origin is spiritual, and with each consciousness mutation it becomes more realizable by man. With respect to the presently emerging mutation we may speak of a concretion of the spiritual.

Ben Iscatus wrote: ↑Wed Nov 10, 2021 12:24 pm The idea of God becoming Man is important in Analytic Idealism, because it can be interpreted as God's need for Man's metaconscious morality.