A Symbiosis of Humans & Technology – Changing The Conversation
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A Symbiosis of Humans & Technology – Changing The Conversation
What worldview and state of consciousness should hold our ever advancing technology?
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Have you ever noticed that discussions about transhumanism tend to focus on technology more than humanism? The journey to reaching our highest potential as a species is usually focused externally on technology rather than internally on our conscious evolution.
This is probably because people assume that conscious evolution is more about spirituality whereas technology is more to do with the things humans create.
The two paths are interdependent so we need more conversations between experts in each of these fields. It will only be through a recognition of the symbiotic nature between humans, their technology, and the environment that we will avert self-destruction.
trans·hu·man·ism (n.) 1. A belief that humans should strive to transcend the physical limitations of the mind and body by technological means. 2. A movement of people who espouse such a belief.
Standing at a Crossroads: The influence that technology has on society and culture is called, techno determinism. Most of us carry mini supercomputers in our pockets called smartphones. These devices act as external brains which seamlessly integrate into most aspects of our life.
Most of us are completely dependent on them for travel, work, communication, entertainment, and beyond. Take a moment to consider the future implications of augmented reality, artificial intelligence, machine-learning, mass surveillance, automation, genome editing, nanotechnology, and their potential influences on society, culture, and our environment.
When I think about these things, I can’t help but ask:
Why aren’t people like the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, and Dr. Andrew Weil conversing more with people like Ray Kurzweil, Elon Musk, and Steve Mann?
Ancient Futures: It will become increasingly imperative for our most advanced technologies to be informed by the natural ethos of indigenous people blended with the emotional-intelligence of our enlightened spiritual masters.
We must remember that the first humans who captured fire to light their cave, stay warm on a cold night, or cook their food were using technology. Anthropologists proudly call us humans “tool-makers” as one of the attributes that make us distinct from most species.
Paradigm Shift: Conscious evolution will require a concerted effort to communicate across silos and disciplines. Cooperation and collaboration towards collective goals will need to take the place of competition for personal gain. What are we hoping to accomplish, and at what cost? We are a risk-taking species and that drives us to exceed all our limitations. Let’s make these be calculated risks because with our technology also comes a great responsibility.
Start Within: Even our most sophisticated technology does not possess the complexities of organic systems. Computers and machines can do many things for us but they will never be able to feel for us. The realm of emotion is central and unique to our human experience yet it is only now starting to be recognized as a valuable form of intelligence.
“Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to recognize one’s own and other people’s emotions, to discriminate between different feelings and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior.” -Andrew Coleman A Dictionary of Psychology
Research in multiple fields of study shows that curiosity, creativity, taking initiative, multi-disciplinary thinking, and empathy are skills that will redefine traditional beliefs about intelligence. The ability to accommodate new information requires a certain level of mental flexibility, humility, and ultimately character. It is through our ability to feel and process our emotions that our higher intelligence flourishes.
See our course: Overcoming Bias & Improving Critical Thinking. A course that embraces embodiment to unlock all layers of intelligence.
SuperHumans: Any sports fan knows that there are individuals who possess superhuman gifts. Think of popular sports stars like Michael Jordan, or any of the various extreme sports heroes who somehow manage the seemingly impossible. We also have various musical or art prodigies who express the skills of a master before the age of 10.
We have seen humans walk on red-hot coals with bare feet, walk a tightrope between skyscrapers, and exhibit mind-boggling feats of mental-focus, and will-power.
Humans are capable of amazing things when they channel discipline, practice, creative brilliance, fearlessness and focus. We have barely scratched the surface of what is possible!
Global Meditation: This simple practice of quieting the mind, and bringing presence to one’s breathing has a long list of documented benefits that include enhanced neural connections, deep feelings of connection and well-being, as well as a strengthened immune system.
When we compound this focused intention to include tens of thousands of people all over the world, we begin to literally shift planetary magnetic resonance. The science does not lie, we are potent electrical beings with the ability to focus consciousness and create beyond our wildest imaginations.
Everything technology offers is a reflection of the technology that we, as humans are. Learning to laugh at ourselves a little while delving into our emotions and making room for possibilities beyond our currently held beliefs is essential for this journey. In order for us to create technology that is aligned with all of life and our planet, we must first become aligned with ourselves and each other. Global meditation is where we practice together!
We can no longer claim that technology is advanced if it is destroying our skies and rivers or perpetuating harmful practices like war and domination. These are examples of misguided technologies. Our DNA has been informed by countless generations of evolution.
It is time that we focus our consciousness towards the natural wisdom kept by indigenous people, while embracing the presence of enlightened spiritual masters. This will allow us to infuse our science and highest technological advancements with ecological and emotional intelligence for the benefit of all life.
Related Resources
Develop embodied sensemaking and critical thinking in our course: Overcoming Bias & Improving Critical Thinking.
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A Symbiosis of Humans & Technology – Changing The Conversation
"Eventually the machines would come to direct our travel, pull at our fingers, formulate our thoughts, and replace our words in a deluded notion of ‘progress’1. By the 21st century, children are begotten by production, introduced to their environment through machines, and begin their lives within virtual worlds via lifeless devices that they feel impotent and groundless to be without. Virtual worlds begin to displace authenticity, definitions dissolve, and fabrications shout down actualities.
Something is happening…..
We have long lost sight of our true nature as fundamentally heart centered spiritual creatures of energy, functionally supported in life by the processor that is our brain. Artificial Intelligence profoundly exacerbates the long standing capture of culture by the Cartesian delusion that we are mind centered beings – cold, calculating data processors serviced by a simple pump in our chest, who traverse an exclusively physical Universe.
In all worlds AI, ‘Love’ can never be more than an empty word peeling off of a line of code.
We must recover our sense of being as nature, and evolve accordingly toward an ORGANIC “singularity” – through the Authentic Intelligence everyone seems to be missing.
It is time we redirect technology toward the truly ORGANIC evolution we so desperately need, arrest our descent to extinction, and manifest a paradigm that transcends our shortcomings."
https://bohobeau.net/
Thank for your timely article, Jacob, on the relationship between technology and humanity.
i would like to focus on your statement "Everything technology offers is a reflection of the technology that we, as humans are." The technology you are referring to, would be "digital technology," since all of what you have listed as today's technology of note: "augmented reality, artificial intelligence, machine-learning, mass surveillance, automation, genome editing, nanotechnology" is basically digital technology. Even genome editing -- which is about the alteration of the basis of natural, organic life, still utilizes a very unnatural, non-organic, digitally-based process to accomplish it.
Some digital technology may initially require the capability to interconnect, at the input and output level, with our natural consciousness, however i disagree that what the technology then does, after the interconnection is made -- needs to still be in line with the natural processes of human consciousness. It becomes a true mind warp, of where it can take us. i also believe that the technology that operates differently from natural human consciousness this way, might not even have been developed completely through human endeavour, or for human benefit, either.
As humans, we are naturally very adaptable, not only in our behaviour, but also in regards to the optimization of our own consciousness itself -- in order that it may operate most effectively for us, in the progression our lives. Carl Jung's concept of the Transcendent Function, relates the natural evolution of the personality towards the holy grail of the Jungian psychoanalytic process -- individuation: "[whereby] “everything that happens at the behest of nature, unconsciously and spontaneously, is deliberately summoned forth and integrated into the conscious mind and its outlook [is] expressed in the transcendent function." But what happens when "the behest of nature," is no longer predominant in our lives, and we have turned instead, towards experiencing a virtual reality, rather than one created and maintained by human endeavour and Nature's life force ? Will our inherent Transcendent Function, which Jung identified, then operate to optimize this artificial situation, instead ?
Digital technology today typically has a serious bias -- in that it serves, to a large degree, the collective interests of corporations, government and globalist goals -- to surveil and manipulate the individual user's behaviour as well as their mental processes. It rarely serves the individual user's own needs, as its primary purpose.
Digital technology requires manufacturing processes too expensive and complex, be accomplished by an individual person or even by a small collective of people, as more basic technology certainly could be done in the past, i.e. in your example of the ancient human “tool-makers.” Not that far back in our history, it was different. Still in our living memory -- is Steve Wozniak's Apple II, which -- through one person's (and their supporting team's) ingenuity -- did serve the individual user, by means of its highly user configurable hardware and accessible software design, so that each user could tailor their computer to fulfill their own creative ventures, whatever they may be. Today's digital devices and applications are never designed in order to benefit the user's own needs, as their primary function. They only appear to come with multitudinous features and user configurability, but from a perspective taken at the beginning of the computer age, anyone back then would be able to see just how similar (and therefor restricted) today's digital products are becoming -- they are designed, to only be posted on-line, while human discourse is being geared only to on-line interaction, plus the following of, or the accumulation of followers -- which are people the user will likely never meet in person. It is clear that we are being led down 'the garden path,' while the garden becomes a Photoshopped menagerie, and the path leads only inwards -- to more and more direct and autonomous external access to our own mind and Inner Self, by forces beyond our control and even awareness. The fact that all this is happening w/o our awareness of even anything being amiss -- is the most concerning of all.
i don't believe this agenda is the work of evil billionaires -- the implementation timeframe is just too long to provide a pay-off within the lifespan of any individual human. If it does appear to benefit an individual in terms of accumulation of massive wealth, there are a number of instances where these actors will then use (or are required to use) their wealth to further nefarious agendas that only play out numerous decades (or even centuries) in the future. There are also instances in history where important innovators who forged new pathways of thought and technological progress -- claim they were in regular contact with "intelligences" from space or other non-human domains (e.g. Nicola Tesla and Carl Jung).
Good evidence exists that humanity was manipulated to go down this 'digital garden path.' For instance, a former member of President Eisenhower’s National Security Council, Colonel Philip J. Corso, revealed (with ample corroborating documentation) that after the Roswell crash in 1947, the ETs involved, gave the Americans the initial capability to create digital technology and then guided them down this road ever since. https://www.amazon.ca/Day-After-Roswell-William-Birnes/dp/150117200X/ Had our scientists discovered this technology on their own (as was likely to have happened anyway, except that it would have taken a bit longer), they would never have been indebted to the ETs to walk this digital garden path we all walking now. Had the development of computers progressed naturally, things could have been very different from what they are now -- where digital (or just 'electronic') tech would be oriented to serve humanity's betterment, rather than an alien race's.
There are even clues that the "flat screen" devices, which replaced the electron beam television-type displays in the 2000's, were developed with ET technology, or at least were imbued with "sentient oil" from extraterrestrial sources (even if only a minute quantity was inserted in each device) in order to co-opt the attention and intention we aim through the screens of our devices, and direct it instead to other domains, ultimately enabling the changing of our consciousness (i.e. through our natural Transcendent Function) -- and thereby also unwittingly enabling those domains to connect directly back into our consciousness. https://youtu.be/9Q34bBluvb8?t=2429