Friday 21 November 2008

How He Will Live



In the last post I suggested that the overman- the next step in evolution beyond man- will not be a lifeform the type of which we have as yet seen.

My suggestion was, that he will ultimately proceed from being the physical incarnation of our collective consciousness.

This of course, got to me thinking about the actual physical nature of the overman's existence. What would it entail? How WOULD such a being come into existence? What would the life of such a creature be all about?

Now, to consider the lives of ordinary human beings in such a scenario is simple. It was described in the previous post, but let's reiterate it again. A life where each individual is catered for, having a few responsibilities, primarily monitoring a tiny portion of the infrastructure, and all humankind receiving food and materials produced by the infrastructure. For every human being alive, life has become technotopia. No human being has a life of stress. Life, as I suggested, would have become one long party for every human being alive. Every human being would continually be connected into the human species of the star system as a whole.

Life for human beings would the most blissful existence possible. The Infrastructure simply delivers.

And up there, contained somewhere in some central computer somewhere, lies one human form wired up into the mainframe of the infrastructure, a physical body connected up to the entire knowledge of mankind.

The overman.

To say that mankind will have spent its entire existence spreading out power and bringing it further towards the people only to hand it over, will not be the case. The overman will not be ABLE to be a tyrant. Because the overman isn't the body of the man who houses him- he is something else.

But what?
What is your mind?
Which of the cells in your body does it rest in?

The same will be true of the overman. The overman won't be the body that houses him. He will be- more than that. Something that body could not be on it's own.

Because the body that houses the overman should probably be seen more as a host- a temporary vessel housing the consciousness of the overman. A human form will be needed to house him, because ultimately it is from humanity he springs, and it is protecting what humanity has become that is his function. But no one human form can call itself the overman. In a sense, all humanity is part of him.

I would guess that our descendants will tackle the overman by putting two reins on what he is.
The first will be that once he is selected, you take away his individuality. The overman will be a lifeform, but not an individual human being. The form that he lives in will need constant monitoring.
And the best guardians for that form- will be clones of him.

So picture Ceres of 2600 AD.

Thousands of clones of one form all watching screens. Watching every heart movement, every chemical imbalance. And as soon as something looks wrong, it will be corrected.

When the overman was born, he was one of many. He was chosen, because even amongst clones, there will be variation. He was chosen, the rest watch the monitors that control him, keeping his mind and body stable. And if at any point, his stability becomes unrectifiable, he will simply be replaced by another clone.

One day, each physical overman will die. But the overman won't. A new clone will replace him, a clone who, like all the others has been trained from birth to ever serve or be the overman, has seen no other human being in the flesh who is not an overman clone, sees the rest of humanity through screens, who sees themselves as PART of the brain of the overman and has no knowledge at all that they are individuals.



They see the lives of all the other overman clones that existed before their birth, as actually being their lives. They are unable to see the difference between what THEIR brains personally remember, and the history of the star system that the communications infrastructure gives them.

So each current overman sees his memories of his own childhood as incidental. It is what the central computer tells him is his memories, are his memories. In that sense, he was born when the species came to that star, he will die when the human infrastructure bleeds that star dry. In a sense, he may live for millions of years.

He will be the collective consciousness of all mankind- or mankind in orbit around that star, at any rate.

So the overman will primarily have two levels of consciousness. Meeting the physical needs of his body will be that of his lower consciousness, one he will be for the most part only dimly aware of. I doubt he will even move. Just as he ultimately provides for the 'cells' of his multicorporate body, the 'cell' he is housed in will be catered for that way. The feeding of that body, the physical satisfaction of that body, will not be something he needs to be conscious of.

What he will be focused on is the macrobody, the multicorporate lifeform.

He will feed that by monitoring the intake of fissionable material from the star he orbits. That fissionable material will keep the whole body going.
He will reproduce by selecting a genetic heir to be carried forth to a new star system, to infect that star system with the virus known as Homo Sapiens, which will erect a new human infrastructure and a new overman. The overman will send forth millions of these in his lifetime- a lifetime of millions of years.

What is the second rein we will put on upon him?

Well, I think we will give him love. I think we will find a way to ensure that the overman can never truly lose the plot.
Because the overman of course, has two natures, like Christ. Not human and divine, but simple 'cell' and host of the consciousness of the overman.

And the consciousness of the overman, will need love.

The only way to do it, will be to make the infrastructure female. After all, that will essentially be what he does, interact with the infrastructure. Him on one side, the rest of us on the other. Indeed the main reason why I keep saying 'him', is because it actually makes a lot of sense having the decision maker as male, and the computer female. I've worked the logic through, and it doesn't in fact work the other way.
The whole reason why this idea works, is that is almost a 'balanced' system. Man moderated by machine, or machine moderated by man. What essentially we have, is a computer ACTUALLY taking care of the wellbeing of mankind, merely offering a finite set of options to an organic mind to make decisions on. Essentially, its a system of checks and balances.

By having the computer as female and having it actually present a conscious persona to the overman- so that they ACTUALLY talk and interact with eachother, it will be possible to make the overman LOVE. The computer which instructs him (and all his clones) will be his mother when he is young, then his lover as he reaches maturity. It will be the entirety of male relationships with the opposite sex rolled into one. Not only will this channelling of the overman's emotional needs actually mean that in spite of his isolation, he will emote like a human, he should hopefully love and care for ALL mankind, who, he should come to regard as his children. Because when he 'talks' to his beloved, it will be decisions concerning their 'children' they speak of.

And the overman will not be so very alone either. Because he will live for millions of years in a sense, as we have said. So the life of one of his 'bodies' will seem like less than a day. A conversation with another overman across the heavens that would seem to take up a whole human lifetime to us, would just be a chat to him.

Likewise, an amoeba doesn't live very long, nor do the cells of our body. As life has progressed it has- slowed down. So it will be for the overman.

We forget sometimes. This star we orbit now is probably a third generation star. Wow, we say. Look how old Earth is, and yet it is formed from a dead star, itself formed from a dead star.



The universe is still, VERY, VERY young. There are millions of generations of stars yet to come.

Millions of years from now, maybe this galaxy will be filled with stars, each one infected by that virus humanity, the virus that turns stars into conscious entities, but accelerates the inorganic star into a hastened organic death.

And the consciousnesses that govern these stars are the highest lifeforms in existence. But they are not the end.

Who knows what they will have done?

Who knows what laws of physics they will have brought under the control of their consciousnesses?

Life is a truly amazing thing.
And life will conquer all.

Life, life is a miracle.

Nothing else deserves to be considered so.

Have faith in life.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a lame comment for a great post, but I'm having bad headaches.You should write science fiction--this post makes me think of Clarke.

Anonymous said...

I dig it. The vision you have is much more articulated than the vision I had when I read Nietzsche.

If I may quote the master from Thus Spoke Zarathustra... (because it is such a glorious quote)

Man is a bridge tied between Beast and Over-Man--a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end; what can be loved in a man is that he is an overture and a going under. I love those who do not know how to live, for it is they who cross over.

I know you have read it, but I bring it here just in case others have not.

Most of us--I speak now of many of us bloggers, as well as artists and writers, musicians and the current philosophers in training sitting alone in front of their computers, trying to make sense of it all while slowly beginning to understand that sometimes being alone is the greatest gift one can have and to cherish moments like that, as well as speaking of you or I, are who Nietzsche was speaking of. I have no doubt that we are over the abyss, that we sometimes shudder and look back but we will cross over. We will transcend. But the way will not ever be easy. And times will change, but we will change along with them.

It is we who are looking for how to live, and in the process, we are truly living.

I hope I don't sound crazy.

This is the kind of post that I love to read. And respond to. This post has a ring to it like perfect music.

And as for your offer of alerting people about my posting if i do continue to disappear and reappear. The offer is that much more of an honor since reading today's post about how you link people and the gravity of that decision.

I think no, it's OK. I really would only deserve such treatment if I can manage to get back up towards 10 to 20 posts a month, like I was at before. And then, I wouldn't need it.

But I thank you for the offer! And if you were to do something like that, then I would gladly accept it. Thanks for the offer.

Anonymous said...

I find it absurd for someone who cannot find a mature, stable relationship with a woman predicting what will become of the human race. Your self absorption and general overblown ego kind of hurts your overall argument. It makes you sound very young and as if you are trying too hard to impress.

Interesting reading, though. I wish you'd try harder to look in your own backyard fearlessly rather than outside yourself rather than justify so much of your cynicism and behaviors with psuedo-intellectual essays. You show potential, but it's focused all the wrong way, imho.